Bonanza may be winding down its usefulness. Here are some free ecommerce webstore alternatives.

There are a LOT of complaints from the BBB about Bonanza right now over the last year. Sellers getting charged for things years ago, customers getting ripped off regularly. Just really, really bad image. The responses are really template responses too. 

www.bbb.org/us/wa/seattle/profile/online-retailer/bonanzacom-1296-22476619/complaints

I remember in 2007 when Wagglepop peaked, it was painful like this. Lots of people complaining about no customer service, fraud sellers, etc. The owner/admin even had shell accounts to fill the site up as sellers began leaving and was taking on the alter egos of 3 different people on the forums and in emails to make it not seem so bad. I absolutely rocked this site too. Hundreds of orders a month. However, it just dropped to near zero. Fortunately I found Bonanza about the time I was moving on. I became user 6,476 in the early days of the site, and am proud to have been a founding member.

I was hopeful that when the site was sold a few years ago, the growth would continue. After all, I was paying about $5,000 a year in fees, and so were many other sellers. They had a tremendous business. My feeling now though is the old ownership realized the site was going to become more difficult to maintain profits, and they decided to move on while they still could. The new owner is a very smart guy. He had a plan. Unfortunately that plan involved external expansion instead of growth. He launched several different businesses under Bonanza, like an online pharmacy, lending platform, shipping platform, and a new webstore builder Vercado.
It seems like the Bonanza owner put his all into the Vercado webstore builder and wanted to capitalize on the thousands of Bonanza sellers to build that platform, but nobody wanted to use it because it was too expensive at $100/month. Now he's finally realized it, and has reduced it to $35/month. Sadly though, the community of avid members and sellers have dwindled far down from the highs. I even left 2 years ago and ran my business on eBay until I saw market trends shifting away from my products. Now, with little in house inventory, I have been looking to rebrand into a similar but new line and move back to Bonanza.

I was going to shoot for adding products and rebuilding my rebranded store, but not sure now. I know a lot of people in the same boat, so this is my input.


Some free alternatives are:
Odoo.com: Great themes, free store. You can select one app free, so select "ecommerce" for your site. Other features available for a fee. 
Ecrater.com, which has marketplace sale fees but no direct store sale fees. In business since 2005, not likely to up and vanish.
Square Online (squareup.com) 100% free except payment processing. Also has more options for a fee. This is a publicly traded company, and probably won't go away anytime soon.
Also, freewebstore.com allows you to build an unlimited free store with Paypal only for payments. Has upgraded stores for a fee.
Gumroad: Free store, but has a 10% fee for direct traffic, marketplace sales though are 30% fees.

Last, there is a $5 monthly Shopify "Starter" option. It includes a basic webstore with no categories or collections, but is a great way to start building too. You get the majority of the apps, blog, and all their payment options.

What's your favorite free webstore builder?