Anycast DNS – Why start using it today?

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Have you heard about Anycast DNS? You haven’t? No worries, here it is everything you need to know about it. Why it is really an important tech that should not be missed. Together will explore, other types of communication too. So, buckle up, and let’s start! 

Here, I won’t go deep, explaining what DNS is. DNS is the solution that we use to facilitate the Internet. It helps us resolve domain names, and we don’t need to remember countless IP addresses.  

Types of communication/routing methods 

When you want to send or receive data, you have a few options. Each has its specifications and can be used for a different purpose. 

Unicast

Unicast is one-to-one communication. It is the simplest method; the traffic is directed to a single host. The rest of the hosts will just ignore the traffic. When we talked about DNS, the request must go all the way to the single host who has the information. The host (DNS server) can be far away, and this will create high latency. 

Broadcast

Broadcast is a term that we all know from TV and radio. It means that the information is sent from one point to all. As you probably guessed, if DNS was using the broadcast method, the whole Internet would be impossible to use.

Multicast

Multicast is also one-to-many, not to all, but the group who is interested in the traffic. It is useful when there are no local nameservers. If a computer from this type of group needs a new IP address, it will send a query, and the answer will get back to all of the connected devices to that group. The IP address will be saved in the mDNS cache on the devices. 

Anycast

It can be seen as similar to Unicast, but with one very big difference, there are multiple hosts. A query will travel, searching for the host, but it will be redirected to the closest host (sever). That way, the query will get resolved a lot faster. 

What is Anycast DNS?

In the Anycast DNS scenario, there are multiple servers with the same IP address. A DNS query will start its journey, hopping from a server to another. But contrary to the Unicast DNS, there are a lot more servers who can answer the query. The closest server will resolve the DNS query and give a fast result. In case that the closest server is down, there are many other servers that can answer. Anycast DNS can also be used as a load-balancing method to distribute the traffic and lower the precision of a single server, which is located in a busier area. 

Setting it up is fast too. You need a single IP address that you will put in a DNS record and share it among the servers. 

So Anycast DNS is fast, provides redundancy, and it is easy to set up. 

Why start using Anycast DNS today?

If you have an international website, app, or service, you want speed and reliability in each location. You don’t want angry customers, do you? Anycast can provide excellent performance at different locations and manage the traffic more efficiently. Better network performance can translate into happier customers and probably more sales. If you have suffered from bad DNS performance in the past, you should check it now!

If you want to learn more about Anycast DNS, I recommend you to check this article – What is Anycast DNS and how does it work?

Conclusion:

So, what do you think about Anycast DNS now? It sure has advantages and can boost network performance significantly. It is also easy to set up and practical for scaling. Definitely, a tech that you must check!

Sources:

https://serverfault.com/questions/279482/what-is-the-difference-between-unicast-anycast-broadcast-and-multicast-traffic

https://ma.ttias.be/address-types-unicast-multicast-anycast

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast

How can the Monitoring service benefit your business?

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You know that one of the primary functions of management is controlling. You can’t truly manage a business or a website if you can’t see what is happening with it. When we are talking about a site, knowing if it is online (not experiencing downtime), seeing how busy it is, and checking if the servers are experiencing any troubles are crucial. For all those purposes, you can get a Monitoring service.

Monitor every aspect of your digital infrastructure

There are Monitoring services that include multiple monitoring types. For example, some can check your business DNS infrastructure to see if your domain is responding. You can also check your business’s web hosting with a web check or an FTP check.

Other monitors can check your email servers with SMTP, IMAP, or POP monitoring. Of course, there are also ways to check your database response with MySQL, MSSQL, or another check.

Fantastic Monitoring service with a variety of check types!

24/7 Monitoring is a great benefit for your business

24/7 Monitoring really matters. Now, in the world of globalization, you can have clients from all around the world. That means that your business can’t afford downtime. It must always be online. You need a Monitoring service that can constantly check it and alarm you in case of a problem. That way, your team can see the problem on time and act accordingly. Remember, downtime means fewer clients, and that can affect your revenues. 

Visual understanding of the situation

One of the benefits for your business that a Monitoring service can bring is a better understanding of your business and its traffic. You can see graphs and charts that can better show you the vital information. Yes, the IT crew can read even hard-to-understand messages generated by servers, but for the rest of the team, a beautiful graph that synthesizes the most important information is a huge plus. 

Better security

A Monitor service won’t protect your business but will alert you for troubles. You can identify bad traffic or unauthorized activity on time, act fast and reduce the damages or completely evade problems. You can also see which points of your network are attacked more frequently and add extra security there. 

Manage your reputation

Experiencing downtime can severely damage your business reputation. If you can see the problems right on time, you can evade them or bring up your business fast. You don’t want that client to relate your brand with downtime, sluggish service, and overall bad experience, do you? 

Easy forecasting

If you have more information, you can easily forecast the future. Based on the data you are collecting, you can make predictions about the traffic, server demand, and plan accordingly. One time you can get surprised, but the next time, you can use the experience and be prepared to respond correctly. 

Conclusion

Thanks to the Monitoring service, you can have all the essential information, refreshed live or almost live. Those benefits will allow you to manage your business better and be sure that your customers get good service.

What is the purpose of a Private DNS server?

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Purpose of Private DNS server

As the name suggests, a Private DNS server appears to be something personalized. It links your network and the Domain Name System server, protecting data from being intercepted by third parties. They are DNS networks that are not linked to the Public DNS. Consider it a Private library with a small collection of books. This has both advantages and disadvantages. Yes, you will be unable to read certain types of books. Nevertheless, there is one advantage: no one will know what you are reading because your library is secret.

Furthermore, we refer to Private as DNS over TLS (Transport Layer Security) or DNS over HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). This is because when you use DoT (DNS over TLS) or DoH (DNS over HTTPS), all DNS queries are encrypted. This makes it far more difficult for malicious third parties to monitor your online activity.

Elements

The followings are the components of the Private DNS server:

  • TLS stands for Transport Layer Security and is used to secure two-way communication between a client and a server on one side and a server on the other. Furthermore, SSL (Security Socket Layer) has been totally replaced with Transport Layer Security (TLS).
  • HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) – It generates encryption codes or session keys that must be validated by a third party. Users without authorization will not be able to access the information of others due to the system’s security.

Private DNS server vs. Public DNS server – Differences

  • Companies are in charge of their own Public DNS servers. For example, pages linked to the company’s public website would get components for a website from this Public DNS server.

A Private DNS server, on the other hand, may be only responsible for addressing queries related to the company’s internal assets. System administrators can optimize the performance of each program by configuring the servers and networks.

  • The most important advantage of adopting Private DNS is security. The usage of DNS for public and private purposes is kept separate to avoid confusion. The Public DNS server only provides IP addresses for web servers and other publicly accessible assets. Only a Private DNS protected within the internal network’s perimeter can be used to obtain IP addresses for internal support.

An additional motive for businesses using Private DNS is to protect their employees’ online usage. Public DNS providers gain a comprehensive image of their consumers’ online activities, which they can exploit to create resale profiles. The traffic patterns are disguised via a Private DNS.

Conclusion

Let’s review. Public DNS is one of the most critical security concerns on the Internet. The Private DNS server, on the other hand, is an excellent defense against this. It can be configured to protect you and your devices from malicious Internet actors. So don’t be hesitant to take advantage of this opportunity.

Teardrop attack explained

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Teardrop attack is another threat that is popular and could cause a lot of damage. So, let’s explain a little bit more about it!

Teardrop attack – Definition

The Teardrop attack is a common type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. The criminals who initiate the attack aim to overwhelm their victims and make their devices or networks unreachable. For that purpose, they send a massive amount of oversized data packets.

How does the Teardrop attack work?

Cybercriminals take advantage of the vulnerability of some devices and affect the reassembly process of TCP/IP or its fragmentation codes. As a result, their victims are experiencing difficulties through the process of reassembling these modified data packets and bringing them back in their correct order. They continuously try to reconstruct them when finally the victim’s network or devices crash completely.

As we mentioned, the Teardrop attack also includes sending a large amount of traffic to the victims. The reason for that is simple: attackers want to make sure their attempt is going to be successful, and the stress over their target is going to be significant. The endless repetition of the unsuccessful reassembly and traffic demand is going to lead to the exhaustion of the victim’s resources. Thus, it becomes unable to function and lacks availability.

Main targets of Teardrop attack

The attackers commonly use the Teardrop attack to hit operating systems (OS) that are considered a bit aged. For example, versions of Linux before 2.0.32 and 2.1.63. and Windows versions such as NT, Windows 3.1x, Windows 95, Windows 7, Windows Vista. They are not supported anymore, and there are no security patches.

The new versions of operating systems are not the popular choice for attackers. So, you are probably suggesting that this type of attack is a bit outdated. Yet, that is not actually true. A lot of big government and healthcare organizations are still using these former versions. In addition, a significant number of them also still work with old devices and computers to complete their day-to-day tasks.

How to prevent it?

There are some things you could do to prevent the Teardrop attack. Let’s see what the options are:

  • Protect your network with a robust firewall. It is going to filter junk and infected information, and your network is going to be safe.
  • Prevent packet segmentation. You could accomplish it via path MTU discovery (PMTUD). The technique allows you to determine the maximum transmission unit (MTU) dimension on the path of a particular network between two IP hosts.
  • Set maximum segment size (MSS). MSS allows you to determine the maximum size of data (in bytes) for each data packet. 

Conclusion

The Teardrop attack is an actual cyber threat, and it should not be neglected. In case you are using these operating systems (OS) that are considered a bit aged, try implementing all or some of the measures for prevention.

Use DNSSEC to secure your traffic.

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What is DNSSEC?

Domain Name System Security Extensions or, simply for short, DNSSEC combines several security measures that implement cryptographic authentication of the DNS information. It serves to prove that the DNS data has not been modified, although it still does not encrypt the DNS records. It acts similar to a chain of trust that supports verifying each step that a DNS query makes. 

At its origin, the DNS (Domain Name System) is fast and stable. However, it has one great downside, which is exactly lacking security. When we look back in the days at its creation, it was not that big of a deal. But, unfortunately, things have changed, and more protection is highly required.

Get your DNSSEC service to improve your protection.

Thanks to the DNSSEC, we are able to take benefit from such security. Its main purpose is to keep safe the integrity of the DNS data from various cyber threats. 

DNSSEC is able to provide a higher level of security thanks to the fact it operates with a combination of public and private keys.

From what it keeps you safe?

The main and most important goal of DNSSEC is to produce restrictions for third parties. That way, they would not be able to try to forge any of the DNS records. In addition, when the following situations are limited from happening, DNSSEC is able to protect the integrity of the domain name.

DNS Cache Poisoning

It is a very common and widely used type of man-in-the-middle (MITM)attack. The main purpose of the criminal by initiating this attack is to flood with false DNS data a particular DNS recursive server. However, it is not an unusual situation in which the attack could progress even more. That involves setting a fake end result in the cache memory of the DNS recursive server. Then, the resolver provides that malicious and fraudulent address to each one of the users demanding that specific website. That lasts until the Time-to-Live (TTL) value expires.

Fabricated zones

DNSSEC is able to secure against DNS attacks that unfairly utilize the DNS system, including providing simulation results for DNS zones. They may not exist, really, and criminals take advantage of holes among zones. Therefore, DNSSEC offers tools for these holes not to be used and protects the entire zone. 

How to use DNSSEC? 

DNSSEC is not activated by default, but you could easily change that. The majority of DNS hosting companies have it as an included feature. 

There are a number of domains that are not able to implement DNSSEC at all. However, their amount is not significant. Popular, well-known generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) are capable of using it.

To start implementing it, you should just open your DNS hosting provider’s control panel and activate it. Then, simply find the DNSSEC and click “enable” for every DNS zone you want. Next, you will receive a DS (Delegation Signer) record and place it where your domain is registered. 

Primary DNS Zone – Everything you need to know

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Primary DNS Zone is one of the essential parts when it comes to managing your domain name. Let’s break it down and explain a little bit more about it.

DNS – meaning 

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical system. It helps with managing data correlated with Internet domain names. For humans is easier to memorize domain names rather than numbers. So DNS is making things simple, and one of its main tasks is also known as name resolution. That is the assignment of domain names to IP addresses. The Domain Name System is essential and one of the bases of the technical structure of the Internet.

On the technical side, the DNS is a network of nameservers. The connection between nameservers and domain names is, in other words explaining where the data is really located. Therefore, it is important to understand the concept of the DNS zone.

Why do you need a Primary (Master) DNS zone?

DNS Zone explained.

The DNS server you are using can hold numerous zones to manage the DNS namespace more appropriately. The DNS zone is a segment or region of that namespace. It is applied as an organizational section to achieve more control over some DNS elements, like authoritative namespaces.

If you want to have a domain that operates properly, you have to point it to several servers, such as web servers, mail servers, and so on. This can be accomplished by creating various types of DNS records in the DNS zone.

The DNS zone is the place where all DNS records are stored. Also, it is the one piece that is responsible for the existence of the Domain Name System (DNS).

For example, a DNS zone can be relevant for .com, example.com, info.example.com, and so on. Although if we inspect a subdomain as a website on its own, that will require dedicated administration. Therefore the subdomain will need a separate zone.

The DNS zone contains information about the DNS records, DNS zone administrative contact, and zone parameters like Refresh and Retry rate. The last two are defined in the SOA (Start of Authority) record. 

What is a Primary DNS Zone?

The Primary DNS Zone is also known as a Master DNS Zone. It is that specific part of the namespace that is in your control. There you can remove and add DNS records and manage your domain name in precisely the way you want. Every part of the domain, meaning every host you want to manage, could be a separate Primary DNS Zone if you’re going to administrate it. Also, a domain name is able to operate with only one Primary DNS Zone.

This DNS zone is the place where your zone file is. On the other hand, the zone file is the text document that includes the whole packet of DNS records for your domain name.

The Primary DNS Zone allows read and write, and it is placed inside a Master (Primary) authoritative nameserver. 

If you want to provide better availability, security, and overall redundancy, you can consider implementing Secondary DNS Zones. They are read-only copies of the original Primary DNS Zone, and they are located in Secondary DNS servers.

Conclusion.

Having a more precise understanding of DNS infrastructure purpose and the components, it is constructed with will be helpful for you to manage it more effortlessly.

Phishing attacks – what are they and how to protect yourself

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The phishing attacks start innocently. Somebody sent you a link with a video of a puppy or an email asking you to verify your password for a service. You click it and… 

You got phished! 

If you have phishing problems, I recommend you to take a look at this article too – DMARC, the solution for your phishing problems

You got the bait, the cybercriminal tricked you successfully, and now you are in trouble! 

You could have prevented it. If only you knew what a phishing attack is and how to protect yourself. 

What a phishing attack is? 

A phishing attack is a variety of cyberattack where the cybercriminals are trying to make you do one of the following actions: 

  • Download a file. The file can be a virus that can affect your computer or ransomware that disables your device until you paid the ransom. 
  • Enter data. You could be taken to a fake site, visually very similar to a well-known one, and ask you to fill in data. Often the data they want are passwords, usernames, emails, and bank information. 

They are doing it with a message that looks normal, and it is very hard to distinguish from any other. The text usually looks very professional, and it is something that the victim wants, like free software or something that they need, like to change their password in X amount of time. 

Hackers are using this strategy for a long time. The term “phish” came from the word fish and got popular in the late 90s. It refers to the way we lure a fish with bait and is written with “PH”, because it was a trend of the 90s hackers to write “PH” instead of “F”. 

Types of phishing attacks 

Spear-phishing/whaling 

The spear-phishing attack and the whaling bet on social and public data that users leave open. The criminals create a very personalized message that uses a lot of personal data. Those attacks could often evade the spam filter and are very effective. The big difference between the two is that the whaling is targeting bigger fish like CEOs and CFOs. 

Clone phishing

This one is very tricky. It uses previous email data and modifies it. The victim receives an email, looking like an earlier mail he or she had, but with a changed attachment (virus) or changed link (to fake external site). 

Voice phishing and SMS phishing 

Those threats are most commonly after your bank data. There are fake calls from people who pretend to be from your bank, asking you for data of your bank card and PIN. 

It could happen through voice calls or SMS.  

Suggested article: 5 types of Apps you shouldn’t download on your smartphone

How to protect from phishing attacks?

The National Cyber Security Centre of the UK has a complex multi-level security method that I think makes a lot of sense.  

To defend your organization, NCSC suggests 4 layers:

Layer 1 Make it difficult for hackers to reach you.

  • If less dangerous messages could reach your server, there is a lower chance of a successful attack. Don’t let the guard down! Implement anti-spoofing measures like DMARC, DKIM, and SPF. 
  • Reduce the amount of public information about your organization and employee. Explain to your team that unnecessary sharing of information could be used against the organization and lead to a data breach. 
  • Anti-spam filter. Use software that can intelligently detect spam and directly discard it before it gets to some of your teammates.  

Layer 2 Show to your users how to identify the threat and report it.

  • Teach your staff about the problems related to a phishing attack, distinguish one, and what to do if it happens. Show examples of popular phishing messages. 
  • Explain what information should not be shared at any cost. 
  • Create a system for reporting the possible attacks. 

Layer 3 Protection from undetected phishing attacks

  • Limit as much as possible the damages. Allow your employees only to use specific devices from whitelisted IP addresses. 
  • Use anti-virus software that can act in case someone accidentally downloads malicious software.  
  • Blacklist websites. Restrict access to websites that could only bring trouble. The other approach is whitelisting, just allow certain websites, but it could disturb your workflow.
  • Use additional verification. The two-factor authentication or 2FA requires a second step, apart from the password. This could be a mobile phone message or a flash drive. 

Layer 4 Quick reaction in case of a successful attack

Create a reaction plan, “What to do in case of a security breach”. Act according to it and lower the damage or evade it entirely. 

Conclusion

The phishing attacks are everywhere, and they happen all the time. Be prepared and prepare your team too. Everybody should be aware of them and stop trusting any link they see. Even one click from a low-level employee could lead to severe consequences. Use appropriate security and educate your employees.

What is a DDoS attack?

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It is Black Friday, Christmas, or Easter, and you are expecting to sell thousands of products on your e-commerce site. You check the site and, what do you see? It is down! It does not load, and all those potential clients can’t spend their money there. They will go elsewhere, and just because a DDoS attack completely brought down your site. 

You should have been prepared! 

What is a DDoS attack?

DDoS – Denial of service. The DDoS attack has a variety of forms, but they all are a deliberate attempt to harm the target computer/server, usually with massive traffic towards the targeted. The cybercriminals are most commonly creating a botnet, a group of infected devices, long before the attack. They build this network and keep it on standby until they are hired to target a specific site.  

Different DDoS attacks

There are 3 categories, the typical volume-based attacks, the protocol type attacks, and the application layer attacks. Let’s check an example of each type of DDoS attack. 

Teardrop attack (volume-based)

The hackers are preparing corrupted packets. They exploit a bug that exists in the TCP/IP fragmentation re-assembly. The packets reach the targeted server, but the server can’t understand them. Finally, the server can’t take it anymore and goes down. 

ICMP Flood, a.k.a Ping Flood (protocol-based)

First, there is malware that infects many devices all around the world. They become a part of the hackers’ botnet. When the criminals want to use those bots, they can redirect the traffic to the selected server (the target). Each of the bots starts to ping the target (send packets of data) continuously without carrying about the answers. The server gets overwhelmed by the traffic and can’t react to its usual traffic. 

Slowloris (application layer attack)

Just a single computer could bring down a server. You can’t believe it? In this DDoS attack, the attacker uses one device to open as many connections as possible. The trick is that the cybercriminal keeps them open for as long as possible. It does that with incomplete HTTP requests. This attack’s final goal is to open many connections and not leave any possibility for regular clients to connect.  

Other popular names of attack you can see on the Internet are Ping of Death, Smurf Attack, SYN Flood, UDP Flood, HTTP Flood, SNMP Reflection Attack, Fork Bomb, and many more. Some have cool names, others no, but all of them can severely cripple your server. 

There are even newer that has no name yet. They are called Zero-day DDoS attacks and are potentially the worse. 

So you better watch out and find a way to truly protect your server and not let any downtime caused by DDoS attacks. 

Phishing attacks – what are they and how to protect yourself

Can we really protect ourselves from DDoS attacks? 

Ok, I got you scared but, now you take a breath. There is a way to protect yourself from DDoS attacks and keep up your precious e-commerce site. You will need a DDoS protected DNS. It is a network of servers that are strategically located in important points. They can intelligently balance the load. If one gets an attack, the rest of the network could distribute the load. Even if a server goes down completely, the rest will still resolve your domain for all of your eager clients. 

Anycast DNS – Why start using it today?

Conclusion 

The DDoS attacks are a serious matter. They are capable to completely bring down your website for a long period of time. Be prepared! Find a DDoS protected DNS provider with a sufficiently large network of servers. Only with such protection, you can be calmer.

5 really useful WordPress plugins

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If you own a WordPress site, you already know the resources and possibilities of this CMS. Based on them and your needs, maybe you are being tempted to try different plugins. 

Why not? Plugins are really useful tools (software) for expanding or adding functions to websites without writing or editing code. Currently, whatever you need can be implemented with a plug-in. Enhancing SEO, boosting site speed, backup, improving security, including forms, getting donations, selling products, etc.

There are plenty of free available plug-ins for a WordPress site. Plus, paid options too. 

Today, we’re going to recommend you 5 really useful WordPress plugins you should try on your website.

WP Rocket

Users always appreciate not waiting so much when visiting your site. Besides this, loading speed is a vital factor for ranking better on search engines.

One of the most effective solutions to boost the speed of a site is adding cache. Like this, your site’s content (static items) can be saved to be shown faster when requested by users.

So this is what WP Rocket offers: It adds cache to your website to increase its speed and reduce the time to be fully loaded. 

Yoast

An effective content’s optimizer of your website’s pages and posts. It has features to help you building titles and meta descriptions following SEO best recommendations and practices. It includes two vital analysis for content: keywords and readability, to get the most attractive content aligned to SEO recommendations.

It previews page or post on search engines, detects indexable issues on the website, and more.

Managing quality SEO content is critical to rank on search engines and to retain the audience’s attention. So an extra hand with an SEO strategy is worthy of trying.

Wordfence

Shady people develop more tricks every time. So, it is a good decision to be extra protected against their attacks.

The endpoint firewall of this plugin has shown efficiency in blocking malicious traffic, IP addresses, code or content, and malware signatures. Protection gets robust thanks to the included security scanner that also verifies themes, plugins, files, detect malware, malicious URLs (redirects you didn’t put), virus code, SEO spam, questionable content, and more.

It checks the site to warn you about vulnerabilities, possible security issues, etc.

WooCommerce

Currently, many people want to sell physical products or any type of services on their websites. With WooCommerce, you can enable your website to sell everything: all kinds of physical and digital products. It offers a really wide variety of customization choices.

Shipping methods, setting of currencies, payment gateways, sorting and filtering, showing reviews, inventories, adding multiple pics per product, etc. Just one plug-in and you can add all the eCommerce functionality to your easy to use WordPress site.

Smush

No doubt, inserting attractive images is a clever resource to catch the audience’s attention. But images must be optimized; otherwise, they slow down the site’s speed. To optimize images can take a lot of time when building or updating the content of a website.

Smush can definitely help with this needed optimization (image’s format, size, position…). Defining a maximum height and width, it can compress up to 50 images keeping quality, just with a click. It quickly detects big images that are affecting the speed. It optimizes GIF, PNG, JPEG, and even next-gen images by scanning all of them (the ones already uploaded and the new ones you insert). It can be configured to work in a single site or multiple if you have more than one.

Conclusion

Competition online is fierce. To constantly enhance and to expand websites’ possibilities is a must. Plug-ins are very useful tools. Just choose smartly! There are thousands, but that doesn’t mean you have to include all or many without a good reason to do it. The excess of them can also slow down your WordPress site.

Best CMS platforms for e-commerce

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E-commerce is not new on the panorama, but the current global conditions increased it massively. Many people want to sell all sorts of products and services online, physical and digital items. 

E-commerce platforms exist to easily build your shop with all needed functionality: marketing, accounting, sorting and filtering, shipping methods, ratings and reviews, payment gateways, currency options, product images, and much more.

So if you are planning to join the trend, check what the best CMS platforms for e-commerce have in store for you! 

WooCommerce

This globally popular plug-in was built for WordPress, so it integrates content and commerce in one. It is free.

Pros:

  • It is compatible with WordPress plug-ins and features. 
  • The number of products, users, or orders don’t have limits.
  • It is an open-source, so fully customizable. 
  • It works with a modular system, so you just add the choices you need.
  • There are more than 400 extra features (official extensions) available.
  • More than a hundred payment gateways are available.
  • Secure and direct payment option (free to install). Each payment gateway could include fees. 
  • It is worldwide popular, so there is a large and active community to help you when needed.

Cons:

  • Not all extensions are free, and some could be costly.
  • It does not include a free SSL certificate. 
  • Administrating a WooCommerce site could be hard for beginners.

Shopify

Shopify is a popular, but not a free platform. Its rates are based on the features, account members, and payment fees each plan includes.

Pros:

  • The hosting service is included in the cost of the plans. 
  • There’s no limit on the number of products you sell or the traffic. 
  • It opens extra sales channels by integrating FB, Instagram, eBay, Amazon.
  • Its tools have a 14-day-free trial. Useful to avoid refund hustle.
  • It has its own App store to expand your shop capabilities. Not all apps are free.
  • 24 hours of support by email, phone, or chat. 

Cons:

  • Few themes are free, and the best ones are expensive. You can buy or develop your own. 
  • SEO limitations like you can’t customize URLs’ structure fully, and it’s not easy to create sub-categories. The blog layouts for content marketing are not so flexible. 
  • It has over a hundred payment processors, but Shopify charges you 0.5% to 2% extra for all transactions not processed through the Shopify gateway (not available worldwide). 

Suggested article: How to make my website fast as a rocket?

Magento

It is an open-source CMS owned by Adobe. The platform is free, but it has a paid version too. 

Pros:

  • The suite of features included is rich enough, but you can expand it’s possible through extensions on its Marketplace.
  • Wide possibilities for customization.
  • SEO friendly platform with control on metadata tagging, XML sitemap, well-built URL’s.
  • Multiple site setting from the same installation. Even specific features in each site can be modified from the same back-end administration panel.
  • Easy integration with all kinds of third-party services (analytic, inventory, shipment tracking… software).
  • A worldwide Magento user community is ready to answer your questions.

Cons:

  • It is heavy and requires a powerful server to run smoothly. 
  • Some basic coding knowledge is required to develop.
  • The enterprise version (paid) is expensive.

Conclusion 

These three CMSs are efficient ways to build your e-shop. 

Free platforms make things easier, but don’t take “free” literally. We talk about starting a business in a very competitive world, so investment will be required.

Choose the e-commerce CMS that better fits with your business budget and expected growth. 

Good luck, and I hope your server gets overwhelmed with plenty of orders soon!