Most e-commerce platforms charge you before you sell a single item. Shopify's Basic plan is $39/month — before transaction fees, before app subscriptions, before your first order ships. For sellers in emerging markets who operate on COD (cash on delivery) with thin margins and high return rates, a $39 monthly fixed cost before revenue is a real barrier.
OrderWitness includes a free hosted online store — your own product catalog, checkout, and order management system — built specifically for COD sellers. No monthly platform fee. No per-transaction percentage. Just a clean, fast store that handles orders, fraud scoring, WhatsApp confirmation, and an AI chat assistant all in one place.
What the Free Online Store Includes
Every OrderWitness account gets a public storefront at orderwitness.com/shop/your-store-name (or your own custom domain on paid plans). The store includes:
Product Catalog
Add products with images, descriptions, variants (size, color), price, sale price, and stock status.
Cart & Checkout
Full multi-step checkout flow — customer enters name, phone, address. COD payment by default.
AI Fraud Scoring
Every order from your storefront is automatically scored 0–100 for fraud risk before it hits your dashboard.
WhatsApp Confirmation
New orders trigger an automatic WhatsApp confirmation to the customer — confirm or cancel before you ship.
SHA-256 Evidence PDF
Cryptographic tamper-proof PDF generated for every confirmed order — your permanent dispute proof.
Order Status Page
Customers can check their order status via a dedicated public page — reduces support messages.
How It Compares to Shopify
| Feature | Shopify Basic ($39/mo) | OrderWitness Free |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $39/month ($468/year) | $0 (up to 50 orders/mo) |
| Transaction fee | 2% (+ Stripe fees) | 0% transaction fee |
| COD payment support | Manual setup required | Built-in, default |
| Fraud scoring | Not included | AI scoring on every order |
| WhatsApp confirmation | Requires 3rd-party app | Built-in (Meta Cloud API) |
| Evidence PDF for disputes | Not available | SHA-256 signed PDF auto-generated |
| AI customer chat (WhatsApp) | Requires separate chatbot app | Built-in on Pro plan |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes (paid plans) |
| Storefront page builder | Yes (Shopify 2.0) | Yes (Pro plan) |
Key difference: Shopify is a generic e-commerce platform that requires paid apps to handle COD fraud, WhatsApp confirmation, and evidence generation. OrderWitness is built specifically for COD-heavy markets — these features are included at the platform level, not add-ons.
The Storefront Builder (Pro Plan)
On the Pro plan, the storefront becomes a full page builder — the OrderWitness equivalent of Shopify's Online Store 2.0. Sellers compose pages from a library of typed sections:
- Hero — full-width banner with headline, subheadline, CTA button, and overlay image
- Product Grid — filtered product listing with sort and collection filters
- Collections — curated product groups (e.g. "New Arrivals", "Sale", "Men's")
- Rich Text — formatted content block for brand story or announcements
- Image with Text — side-by-side visual and copy block
- Testimonials — customer reviews with star ratings
- FAQ — collapsible accordion with your common questions
- Banner — promotional announcement strip
- Newsletter Signup — email capture block
- HTML Embed — custom code block for any third-party widget
Pages are rendered server-side as fast HTML — no JavaScript framework, no heavy SPA. They load instantly on 3G and score well on Lighthouse performance. An auto-generated XML sitemap is updated as you add products, collections, and pages.
Built-In AI Customer Chat
Unlike Shopify where you'd need a third-party chatbot app (typically $20–100/month), OrderWitness includes AI customer chat connected directly to your WhatsApp Business account. When a customer sends a message to your store WhatsApp number, the AI:
- Reads your live product catalog to answer stock, variant, and price questions
- Answers delivery time and return policy questions from your store settings
- Handles conversations in the customer's language
- Escalates to you (human handoff) when it cannot answer
- Optionally creates draft orders from WhatsApp conversations
Real coverage: 70–80% of customer questions to online stores are about stock, sizing, delivery time, or return policy. The AI handles all of these automatically, 24/7, without any human agent cost.
COD Fraud Protection — Built Into the Store
This is what separates an OrderWitness storefront from every other free e-commerce builder. Every order placed on your store automatically goes through:
- Fraud scoring (0–100) — phone history, order velocity, address quality, value outliers
- WhatsApp confirmation — customer receives a branded message with Confirm/Cancel buttons
- Evidence generation — SHA-256 signed PDF created for every confirmed order
- Customer blacklist check — orders from known bad actors flagged instantly
No Shopify app provides this level of integrated fraud protection for COD orders. On Shopify, you'd need separate apps for WhatsApp confirmation, fraud scoring, and evidence generation — each with its own monthly cost and integration complexity.
Custom Domain & SEO Features
On paid plans, you connect your own domain to your OrderWitness store. The platform handles:
- SSL certificate provisioning (HTTPS)
- Auto-generated XML sitemap (updated as you add products)
- Google Site Verification meta tag support
- Product page structured data (Schema.org Product markup)
- Custom meta title and description per product
- Canonical URL management for collection and product pages
Free plan store URL: On the free plan, your store is accessible at orderwitness.com/shop/your-slug. Custom domain requires the Starter plan or above. For most sellers testing the platform, the default URL is perfectly usable for sharing on social media and WhatsApp.
How to Set Up Your Free Online Store
- Create an account at app.orderwitness.com — free, no credit card
- Go to Store Settings — set your store name, logo, theme color, and tagline
- Add products — name, description, price, variants, and photos
- Enable your store — toggle "Store Active" in settings
- Share your store link — send it via WhatsApp, Instagram bio, or Facebook page
- Connect WhatsApp — set up order confirmation (optional but highly recommended)
Your store is live within 5 minutes. Orders placed on the store are immediately visible in your dashboard with fraud scores and confirmation status.
Get Your Free Online Store
OrderWitness gives you a free hosted store with built-in fraud scoring, WhatsApp confirmation, and AI customer chat. No Shopify fees. No transaction fees. Start selling in 5 minutes.
Create Free Store →