Free plan audit
Which Ecommerce Tool Free Plans Actually Work
8 tools are reviewed on this site. 6 of them advertise a free plan. We opened the signup page for each one to find out how many a beginner can actually start — no store, no card, no sales call.
4 of the 6 can be started with nothing but an email address. One needs a Shopify store before the form will even appear. One advertises a free plan whose signup link does not work at all. The other two tools make no free-plan claim to test: one has no free tier, the other has a trial.
This is the part of a pricing page that reviews copy without checking. A free plan is a marketing claim like any other, and the only way to know whether it is real is to click the button.
Every free plan we review, checked
Last full check: 2026-09-28. Free tiers change more often than paid prices, so re-run the check yourself before relying on any of this — the six steps are at the bottom of the page.
| Tool | Can you start it? | Card needed | Platform gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| eRank | Yes, with an email | No — email only | None |
| Sale Samurai | No — link broken | Yes — on the only reachable path | Etsy only, but the platform is not the blocker here |
| Judge.me | Only with a store | No — but a store is | Shopify only. Judge.me has sunset its apps on WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Square, Duda and PrestaShop. |
| Omnisend | Yes, with an email | No — stated on the page | None. Eleven native one-click integrations. |
| Yotpo | Yes, with an email | No | An ecommerce platform connection is needed to use the plan, but not to create the account. |
| Mailchimp | Yes, with an email | No | None |
| Copy.ai | No free plan | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Jasper | No free plan | No — not on the first step | None. Runs in a browser. |
What we found, tool by tool
Each entry below says what the pricing page claims, where the signup path actually goes, and how far we got. We did not submit a form or create an account anywhere, so the limit of this page is the signup: it tells you whether a free plan is startable, not what the product does once you are inside it.
eRank
Yes, with an email
- What the pricing page says
- A permanently free plan with no time limit: 5 keyword lookups and 5 listing audits a day, one shop of up to 50 listings.
- Where the signup path goes
- members.erank.com/registration?ref_plan=free
- How far we got
- Opened the free plan's registration URL directly. The form contains a single email field and a reCAPTCHA. No payment fields are present anywhere on it.
- Verdict
- Reachable. This is the shortest path to a working free account of any tool on the site: one email address and a captcha.
Sale Samurai
No — link broken
- What the pricing page says
- A Freemium tier at $0 with 20 keyword searches and 10 listing analyses a month, described on the pricing page as requiring no payment method.
- Where the signup path goes
- The Freemium card links to /register/freemium, which redirects back to the pricing page
- How far we got
- Clicked the Freemium button on the pricing page itself, in a fresh browser session. It returned to the pricing page instead of showing a form. /register?plan=freemium redirects to /register/yearly, which states 'Next you'll add a card'. /register/free returns a 404. The only signup forms we could reach are the monthly and yearly paid trials, and both ask for payment details.
- Verdict
- Not reachable. The advertised free plan has no working signup link. Treat it as unavailable until Sale Samurai fixes the path.
Judge.me
Only with a store
- What the pricing page says
- A permanent free plan that includes unlimited reviews, for Shopify stores. The limit is on advanced features rather than review volume.
- Where the signup path goes
- The 'Collect reviews for free' button on the pricing page leads to the Shopify App Store listing
- How far we got
- Followed the free plan's signup path from the pricing page. It goes to the Shopify App Store listing rather than to a Judge.me signup form, and the install step asks for your store address in the form your-store.myshopify.com.
- Verdict
- Reachable only if you already have a Shopify store. Without one there is no form to fill in at all, which makes this the most restrictive free plan on the site.
Omnisend
Yes, with an email
- What the pricing page says
- A free plan with 500 emails a month, up to 250 billable contacts, access to all features, and no credit card required.
- Where the signup path goes
- app.omnisend.com/registrationv2/
- How far we got
- Opened the free plan's registration page. It states on the page that no credit card is required, and the form matches that: no card fields.
- Verdict
- Reachable. The catch is the allowance rather than the signup: 500 emails against a 250-contact cap is used up in roughly two sends.
Yotpo
Yes, with an email
- What the pricing page says
- A free reviews plan covering up to 50 monthly orders. Yotpo describes it as a limited plan.
- Where the signup path goes
- accounts.yotpo.com/#/signup?product=reviews&plan=Reviews%20-%20Free
- How far we got
- Opened the free reviews plan's signup form directly. It asks for name, email and password, and no payment fields are present anywhere on it. Worth knowing: the main /pricing/ page no longer advertises a free plan in its own text — the free plan only appears on the product-specific reviews pricing page.
- Verdict
- Reachable. This is the interesting case: the signup form opens without a store, even though the plan is useless until you connect one. Judge.me is the opposite — the form itself demands the store.
Mailchimp
Yes, with an email
- What the pricing page says
- A permanent free plan with 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, one audience and one seat.
- Where the signup path goes
- login.mailchimp.com/signup/?plan=free_monthly_plan_v0&subscribers=250
- How far we got
- Opened the free plan's signup URL, which carries the plan and subscriber count in the query string, so the free tier is preselected rather than something you have to find.
- Verdict
- Reachable. The free plan is real, but it excludes marketing automation flows entirely, so abandoned-cart email is not possible without upgrading.
Copy.ai
No free plan
- What the pricing page says
- No free plan. The pricing page lists Chat at $29/month, then Growth at $1,000, Expansion at $2,000 and Scale at $3,000.
- Where the signup path goes
- No free signup path exists to test
- How far we got
- Checked the pricing page for a free tier or a public trial. There is neither, so there was nothing to sign up for.
- Verdict
- No free plan to test. Evaluating Copy.ai means paying for the $29/month entry tier first.
Jasper
No free plan
- What the pricing page says
- No free plan. A 7-day free trial on the Pro plan, after which the cheapest option is $59/month billed yearly.
- Where the signup path goes
- app.jasper.ai/auth/signup
- How far we got
- Opened the trial signup page, which is headed 'Try Jasper free for 7 days'. The first step asks for an email address or a Google account and no payment details.
- Verdict
- No free plan, but the trial is the easiest paid-tool trial on the site to start, because step one needs no card. We did not go past step one, so we cannot say what a later step asks for.
Three vendor changes we hit along the way
Checking free plans means reading vendor help centres and pricing pages closely, which is how we found three things that most reviews of these tools still get wrong.
Judge.me: Stopped being a multi-platform app
Judge.me's help centre states that it has sunset the app on all non-Shopify platforms. WooCommerce, Square and Squarespace ended on 31 October 2025, Duda on 31 December 2025, BigCommerce on 12 January 2026 and PrestaShop on 31 January 2026. After those dates the app and its data are permanently removed. Any review of Judge.me that still lists WooCommerce or BigCommerce support is out of date.
Omnisend: Does not integrate with Magento natively
Omnisend's native one-click integrations are Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, WordPress, Wix, Shoplazza, Ecwid, PrestaShop, nopCommerce, Big Cartel and SureCart. Magento is not among them and needs a custom API integration with developer help. It is an easy list to get wrong because Magento is a common platform in the same category.
Sale Samurai: Advertises a free plan it does not link to
The Freemium tier is still on the pricing page with its limits and its no-payment-method promise, but every route to a signup form for it either loops back to pricing or returns a 404. This is not a pricing change; it looks like a broken link that has gone unnoticed.
How to check a free plan yourself
This takes about five minutes per tool, needs no account, and will tell you more than any review — including this one — because you are reading the vendor's own page on the day you are buying.
Start from the pricing page, not from a search result
Search results and blog posts go stale. The vendor's own pricing page is the only place that is contractually meant to be current, and it is where the signup button lives.
Click the free plan's button and watch the address bar
The tell is the redirect. If clicking 'Free' lands you on a page that mentions a trial, a card, or a different plan name, the free tier is not where the button points. Note the URL you started from and the URL you ended on.
Read the form before you fill it in
Count the fields. A card number field, a CVC field or the words 'you will not be charged until' mean the free plan is really a trial. A form asking only for email, or email and password, is a real free signup.
Look for a store or platform field
A field asking for your-store.myshopify.com, or a login wall that requires connecting a platform first, means you cannot evaluate the tool at all without a store. This is the single most common way a 'free' plan turns out not to be free for a beginner.
Check what the free plan leaves out, not just what it includes
The allowance is rarely the real limit. Mailchimp's free plan has a real send allowance and no automation flows at all; Omnisend's free plan includes every feature and runs out of sends almost immediately. Which one is worse depends entirely on what you were going to do.
Write down the date you checked
Free plan limits change quietly and often. A limit you verified six months ago is a guess now, and vendors are not obliged to announce a change that only affects the free tier.
What this audit does not cover
We tested the signup, and stopped there. Specifically, we did not create an account on any of these tools, did not enter payment details, did not connect a store, and did not use the products after signing up. So we cannot tell you how good any free plan is once you are inside it: whether the interface is usable at the free tier, whether the limits are enforced the way the pricing page describes, or whether support answers free users.
We also cannot see what a later step of a signup asks for. Jasper's trial form needs no card on the first step, and we did not go past that step, so we say only what we saw.
Where we have used a tool hands-on, that is recorded separately on the review under "What we checked in the product", with the date. Those notes do not change the score. How the scores are calculated is on the methodology page.
Start with the free plans that work
Four of the six free plans here can be started with an email address today. If you sell on Etsy, eRank is the one to open first — its free tier has no time limit and enough daily lookups to research one product properly. If you need reviews and you are on Shopify, Judge.me's free plan has no review cap at all.
Frequently asked questions
How did you test this without signing up?
We opened each tool's public signup pages in a browser and read what was on them: the URL we landed on, the fields in the form, and whether any payment step appeared. We did not submit a form, enter payment details, or create an account. That means we can tell you whether a free plan is startable, and not what the product does once you are inside it.
Why does the count say six tools advertise a free plan when the site reviews eight?
Two of the eight, Copy.ai and Jasper, do not offer a free plan at all. Copy.ai has no free tier and no public trial. Jasper has a 7-day trial on its Pro plan but no permanent free option. That leaves six tools making a free-plan claim, and this page is about whether those claims hold up.
Is a free plan that needs a Shopify store still worth listing as free?
It is free, but it is not accessible, and the difference matters to a beginner. Judge.me's free plan includes unlimited reviews, which is genuinely the most generous allowance we found — and it is unreachable if you sell anywhere else. We list it as free and mark the store requirement separately rather than folding the two into one number.
What if a free plan changes after you publish this?
The date at the top of this page is the date of the last full check. Free tiers are the part of a pricing page vendors change most often, so treat anything here older than a few months as a prompt to run the six steps above yourself. It takes about five minutes per tool and needs no account.
Does a free plan being unreachable mean the paid tool is bad?
No. Sale Samurai's paid tiers are priced flat with all features included, and the tool does what it says. The finding here is narrow: the free plan it advertises has no working signup link. A broken link is a link problem, not a verdict on the product.