EasyStore is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in Malaysia. Its affordable pricing combined with powerful e-commerce features make it one of the top platform choices for both hobbyists, as well as businesses.
Since its launch in 2013, EasyStore has grown its set of features to make it increasingly easier for Malaysians to launch their own e-commerce website and make money online without any coding skills.
But should you sign up for EasyStore? Is it worth it? Does it have all the features that will supercharge your store?
I’ll help you decide by evaluating EasyStore’s
- Cost – how much do you really need to kickstart your e-commerce store?
- Core e-commerce features – what features does EasyStore come with out of the box?
- Apps – how can you expand EasyStore’s features using apps?
- Themes – what type of e-commerce themes does EasyStore offer?
- Payment gateway – is it easy to integrate EasyStore with a payment gateway of your choice?
- SEO – to what extent can you optimise your EasyStore website for SEO?
By the end of this guide, I hope you’ll have enough information to help you decide if you should sign up for EasyStore.
Review updated: August 2020.
Table of Contents 1What is EasyStore?EasyStore vs Custom E-commerce Website (Built from Scratch)2EasyStore Pricing – Affordable Enough New Businesses?Want to save money? Go for EasyStore’s yearly plansBonuses can make it even cheaper to get started3EasyStore Themes – Are They Well-designed?4EasyStore Sales Channels – Where Else Can You Sell On?Marketplaces (Shopee, Lazada, Lelong, etc)WhatsApp (Popular)Offline (POS Feature)Referral Marketing5EasyStore Shipping – What Shipping Options Do You Have?6EasyStore Payment Gateways – How Can Customers Pay You?Payment Gateways & E-wallets7EasyStore Sales & Promotion FeaturesDiscount and VouchersFree GiftsPurchase with PurchaseCredits8EasyStore’s Analytics Feature9EasyStore’s Search Engine Optimisation Features10EasyStore Hosting and Security11EasyStore’s Customer Service12The Verdict: Should You Use EasyStore to Build Your E-commerce Website?Score: 4.5/5 (Improvement from 4.0 in 2019)
What is EasyStore?
EasyStore is an all-in-one e-commerce solution for individuals and businesses that want to launch their online store without any coding skills or spending too much money. You can sell using your own branded store, or sell multi-channel by syncing your products across marketplaces like Lazada and Shopee.
(14-days Free Trial) Pricing: RM59/month – RM499/month (10 – 50% off on yearly plans) |
|
|
Pros
|
Cons
|
EasyStore vs Custom E-commerce Website (Built from Scratch)
While there are many reasons why you’d want to hire someone to custom-build an e-commerce site for you, the truth is that for most people, it’s way easier (and cheaper) to launch one with e-commerce platforms like EasyStore.
Customising an e-commerce site from scratch is like getting someone to custom build a car for you. It’s more expensive, time-consuming and harder to maintain than buying an off-the-shelf car from a reputable brand like Toyota.
Owners of custom-built e-commerce websites share one thing in common with owners of custom-built cars: they both have very deep pockets.
If you aren’t ready to drop a 6 or 7 figure on a custom built e-commerce site yet but want to get your e-commerce engines running, solutions like EasyStore can help you get there.
Like Toyotas, EasyStore sites are affordable and get you from where you are now to where you want to be – without all the headaches that come with custom-built sites.
14-days free trial
EasyStore Pricing – Affordable Enough New Businesses?
tldr; EasyStore’s monthly pricing is easy on the pocket, starting at just RM59/month. On top of this, you don’t need to pay any transaction fees for sales made through EasyStore. A lot of popular apps like marketplace sync is also free in EasyStore. Themes are also free.
When compared to similar solutions, EasyStore’s pricing is pretty affordable:
- EasyStore Lite – RM59/month: the smallest plan; suitable for businesses with 1000 products or less; comes with basic marketing features; you still get zero transaction fees and free themes; apps are capped at 5 per store
- EasyStore Standard – RM199/month: for SMEs with more than 1000 products; you get everything in EasyStore Lite plus additional sales, marketing and checkout features as well as unlimited apps
- EasyStore Business – RM499/month: for large e-commerce businesses; you get everything in EasyStore Standard plus Wholesale B2B features
All plans come with a 14-day free trial period and the following free features:
- Zero transaction fees – pay nothing extra to EasyStore when you make a sale
- Free e-commerce themes – no need to spend extra money buying themes – set your store up with one of the free themes in EasyStore’s library
- Marketplace sync (with apps) – sync your site with popular marketplaces like Shopee and Lazada without paying extra
Want to save money? Go for EasyStore’s yearly plans
You can get up to 50% off when you go for EasyStore’s yearly plans:
- EasyStore Lite (Yearly) – RM53.10/month (10% Off)
- EasyStore Standard (Yearly) – RM139.30/month (30% Off)
- EasyStore Lite (Yearly) – RM249.5/month (50% Off)
Bonuses can make it even cheaper to get started
EasyStore also comes with extra partner bonuses that can make it even cheaper to set up your online store. Check out some of the bonuses you can claim when you sign up for an EasyStore plan:
EasyStore Themes – Are They Well-designed?
tldr; EasyStore’s themes are clean and e-commerce ready. Though they are slightly dated now, for something you don’t need to pay extra money for, they are pretty nice.
EasyStore’s templates are clean, modern looking and mobile-responsive. Best of all, you can set up a theme for your website with just a few clicks. No design skills required.
This makes it easy for you to set up a clean and modern looking website fast. You will have almost 50 pre-designed themes to pick from!
EasyStore Sales Channels – Where Else Can You Sell On?
Marketplaces (Shopee, Lazada, Lelong, etc)
Whether you are an existing or new seller on marketplaces, you’ll find it easy to sync your EasyStore product with your store on popular platforms like Shopee, Lazada, and Lelong by using one of these apps:
All you have to do is install these apps to your store, and sync any products you want to sell on your seller account in Lazada, Shopee, Lelong or 11Street with the click of a few buttons. This is a time-saver for individuals or businesses with multiple marketplace stores.
WhatsApp (Popular)
WhatsApp is a communication channel that is hard to avoid when you are doing business in Malaysia. If you are tired of manually taking orders from your customers via WhatsApp, you’ll be happy to discover that EasyStore now comes with a WhatsApp Order Form. So instead of transferring order details from WhatsApp to your store, you can now take orders directly inside WhatsApp.
This feature is only available in the Standard and Business plan, however.
Offline (POS Feature)
With EasyStore’s POS feature, you can sell offline and make sure your store inventory info stays up to date. This is ideal for businesses that have both an online and offline store. You can do this using EasyStore’s mobile app (available in iOS and Android).
Referral Marketing
Your existing customers are probably the best brand ambassadors for your e-commerce store. What better way to promote your business and reward your loyal customer base by having a referral program in place?
If you’ve been thinking of adding a referral scheme in place, you can now do that with EasyStore’s referral marketing feature. With this feature, you can:
- Provide your customers with unique referral codes
- Create custom reward tiers
- Decide on the the type of rewards you give
This feature is only available in the Standard and Business plan, however.
EasyStore Shipping – What Shipping Options Do You Have?
You can integrate some of the most popular shipping solutions in Malaysia to your store. These include:
- Poslaju / SendParcel
- JT&T
- NinjaVan
- DHL eCommerce
Alternatively, you could use EasyParcel, which helps aggregate all popular shipping solutions under one roof and provide you with more shipping options:
You can do this with any app that’s available inside EasyStore’s App Store. Check out the full list here.
14-days free trial
EasyStore Payment Gateways – How Can Customers Pay You?
Payment Gateways & E-wallets
Payment gateways allow your customers to pay you in a safe way through methods they prefer. EasyStore offers a large variety of payment options for you to pick from.
There are the conventionally popular ones such as iPay88 and MOLPay and even e-wallet options such as Boost, AliPay, WeChatPay and more:
Especially if your store is targeting a Malaysian audience, you’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to picking payment gateways for your customer!
EasyStore Sales & Promotion Features
tldr; EasyStore’s sales and promotion features are pretty complete. To get everything though, you’ll need to be on at least the Standard plan. The good thing though, is that, the Standard plan can still turn out to be cheaper than buying these apps individually on platforms like Shopify.
Discount and Vouchers
Discounts and promotions are one of the most effective ways to drive sales. With EasyStore, the promotion system is already set up.
You can choose from a large number of preset discounts already in store. All you have to do is select and configure them:
Free Gifts
Free gifts are a great way of getting customers to buy. With EasyStore, you can set up free gift promos using the following ways:
This feature is only available in the Standard and Business plan, however.
Purchase with Purchase
You can further improve your sales conversions by adding a purchase with purchase deal to your store.
This feature is only available in the Standard and Business plan, however.
Credits
Finally, give cash-back rewards to your customers using EasyStore’s credit promotion:
This feature is only available in the Standard and Business plan, however.
14-days free trial
EasyStore’s Analytics Feature
EasyStore’s backend is designed to make it easy for even a total tech newbie to handle their orders as well as track visitors and sales.
You can view all your orders under the ‘Orders’ tab:
On the other hand, your monthly, weekly and even hourly visitors and sales can be found in the ‘Analytics’ section of your e-commerce store:
EasyStore’s Search Engine Optimisation Features
EasyStore’s pages come baked with search engine optimisation (SEO) tags. You can easily add an SEO title and meta description to your product, blog or any page inside your store and start getting sales from organic search.
EasyStore Hosting and Security
EasyStore sites are hosted locally and usually very fast. They all come with a free SSL certificate. For the non-tech-savvy, this can give you a peace of mind. You don’t have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to hosting and site security. EasyStore’s well-built infrastructure takes care of this for you.
EasyStore’s Customer Service
One of the most important things for you if you are not experienced in setting up e-commerce stores is having people to talk to when you have a problem.
In EasyStore, customer service is easily accessible through chat on the store itself. All you have to do is start a ‘New Conversation’ and describe your problems to the customer service representative. They will usually get back with you within 24 hours except during festive seasons such as Chinese New Year!
14-days free trial
The Verdict: Should You Use EasyStore to Build Your E-commerce Website?
Score: 4.5/5 (Improvement from 4.0 in 2019)
EasyStore has come a long way since it first launched in 2013. Every year, we see new features being added to the platform to help e-commerce store owners to not only smoothen their store operations, but boost sales as well.
For the features it offers, EasyStore’s pricing is relatively affordable. Starting at RM59/month, EasyStore’s pricing plans offers something for everyone from the newbie starting out to the big store with wholesale needs.
Themes are free, and advanced promotion and checkout features are built into EasyStore’s core plans, making it cheaper than platforms which require you to pay extra (like Shopify and BigCommerce).
One of EasyStore’s best feature sets is undoubtedly its multi-channel – you can integrate your EasyStore with popular channels like Shopee, Lazada, and WhatsApp.
For individuals or businesses wanting to sell from Malaysia to Malaysians, EasyStore is an affordable, pretty much complete e-commerce platform.
The biggest drawback for EasyStore at the moment is for the e-commerce store owner who wants to scale their store outside Malaysia. With EasyStore’s focus on improvement and growth, however, I can see this in the horizon.
14-days free trial
Compare EasyStore to Shopify:
Shopify Malaysia or EasyStore Malaysia: Which E-commerce Website Builder Should You Use?
Have you used EasyStore to set up your e-commerce website? What do you like or don’t like about it? Share your thoughts about EasyStore in the comments below.
13 Responses
EasyStore has updated their pricing plan and it became ridiculously expensive compared to its previous plan. I’m not really sure what are their upgrades though from the previous plan as per plan tiers.
Yes Elisha, you are right. They recently launched their new pricing tiers at RM59 and RM199 a month. An update on this review is in the works to reflect this. I agree with you as of now, it appears to me a bit too pricey for what it offers. This makes Shopify the more attractive for what it offers at its price point.
Hi, I would like to get some advice from you. I am a 18 years old student, I want to make money through online and I found drop shipping, my questions are:
1. what does it need to start drop shipping?
2. Do I need credit card to start a online business like drop shipping?
3. Do you recommend students like me to start online business? If so, where should I start?
Hope to hear from you very soon!Thanks
Hey Teck Jenn,
Sure, I’ll be happy to share what I know.
1. Hard skills wise you need to learn how to sell online, how to identify winning products and how to scale your business. Soft skills wise you need to be patient as you will need to work very hard before seeing any success (for e.g. 6 months to 3 years is common).
2. Not necessarily. It depends on how you arrange the business and where you do it. Specifically, if your dropship suppliers are based in Malaysia, you can always use bank transfer. If you don’t have a stable income yet you may not be able to get a credit card.
3. Sure. I started at 20, not too far from your current age. I was a 2nd year university student then. On where to start: it depends on your skills now. If you like writing, I recommend learning SEO and building niche sites and monetizing with AdSense and affiliate marketing. If you don’t, I recommend learning how to do FB ads (but you need to keep some more money for this as you will need to spend money on ads to learn).
Hope that helps.
By the way, you only need to leave your question once. I’ll be able to see them no matter where you post them. All comments go under moderation first so you won’t see them published until I approve them. Hope that clarifies.
Best,
Lu Wee
Hi, thanks for reply! I’ve already started shopify dropshipping last week and about to start advertising using facebook ads. But I have 1 more question about the legal stuffs, which is:
1. Do I only need to register a business with SSM if I dropshipping worldwide?
2. what is the total cost to register a business and cost of business renewal?
By the way sorry for spamming because I didn’t saw my question pop up at that time????
Hey Teck Jenn,
You’re welcome 🙂
1. Generally speaking, if you start a business in Malaysia, whether online or offline, it is illegal to run it without registering it with SSM regardless of if you sell to local or overseas market.
2. It depends on what kind of business structure you go for. If you go for sole prop, it will be around RM60 for SSM, then another RM100 – 1,000 for a certified tenancy agreement (including taxes). LLP is RM500 for SSM, then maybe ~RM1,000 – RM2,000 for a partnership agreement. For Sdn Bhd, I’ve only created one through a company secretary before and it was RM2,000+.
No worries – the moderation system is in place to capture any spam comments that’s why you didn’t see your comment initially.
Hope the above helps!
Best,
Lu Wee
You mentioned : If you go for sole prop, it will be around RM60 for SSM, then another RM100 – 1,000 for a certified tenancy agreement (including taxes)
Q :
Why is there a need for tenancy agreement ?
Hi,
This is mostly required as proof of business address.
Hope this helps!
– Lu Wee
Hi Lu Wee,
it is easy to link my FB page & FB pixel to Easy Store most basic plan ?
Hi,
Yes, EasyStore has their own FB connection so you can place your pixel inside.
– Lu Wee
Hello! I wonder, should we get go for the standard package or the business package? I have a small business on instagram with 20k followers and i need a website that can allow customers to pay And order online without having them to whatsapp me personally. Do u suggest for me take the standard or business package? Thankyou in advance for answering
Hi! The main difference between the Standard and Business is the wholesale feature. If you are not wholesaling, the Standard plan should be sufficient.
Hope this helps!
Currently i am using EasyStore and in the middle of deciding to renew my plan or migrate to Shopify as most my clients are US based but worry too much of work or unwanted troubles throughout the process. Can you assist on this matter? Thanks.