Sell online
An ecommerce website builder for shops that already sell in person
Most ecommerce website builders assume you are starting from nothing: no products, no stock, no counter. They are built for someone whose business will exist online and only online, and everything about them follows from that — you build a catalogue for the website, and the website is where your products live.
If you already run a shop, that assumption is wrong in an expensive way. You already have a catalogue. You already have stock. What you need is not a second place to describe your products, it is a storefront onto the products you are already selling — because the moment there are two catalogues, somebody maintains both, and the two disagree about what is in stock.
sell.ke builds the storefront from the catalogue your counter already reads. Publishing it is a matter of choosing a layout and pointing a domain at it, and the thing you avoid is the entire category of work that comes from having described your business twice.
What you get
What this gives you
No code, and no second catalogue
The storefront is generated from products you have already set up: images, variants, pack sizes, prices and stock. There is nothing to re-enter and nothing to keep in step.
Your own domain
Point a domain you own at the store — yourbusiness.com, not a subdomain of ours with our name in it. Included from the Basic plan.
Stock that is honest
Availability shown online is the availability at the counter, per location, because it is the same number. Customers stop being sold things that are not there.
Checkout with the payment methods you use
Card and mobile money where available in your market, with the money landing in your own account. Delivery zones and fees are set per area you actually serve.
Orders where the sales are
A web order arrives in the same system as a counter sale, tagged by channel, ready to be picked, collected or delivered — not in a separate inbox to be re-entered.
Findable, not just pretty
Clean product URLs, page titles and descriptions per product, category pages, search, and pages that load fast on a phone — which is what most customers will be using.
Where do I make a website for my shop?
There are four routes, and they suit genuinely different businesses. A hosted store builder gives you a storefront as a subscription with the technical work handled — quickest to launch, least to maintain, least control. A self-hosted platform gives you full control and a large plugin ecosystem, in exchange for hosting, updates and security being your responsibility. A custom build gives you exactly what you specify, at the highest cost and with maintenance permanently yours. A marketplace gets you in front of buyers immediately and takes a commission, and the customer relationship is theirs, not yours.
For a business with a physical shop, there is a fifth consideration that cuts across all four: whether the store shares stock with your counter. A beautiful storefront that oversells is worse than a plain one that does not, because the cost of the first is a refunded customer and the cost of the second is a slightly plainer page.
That is the trade sell.ke makes explicit. There are fewer themes here than in a mature ecosystem with thousands of them. What you get instead is that the store cannot be wrong about what you have.
How to build an ecommerce website without coding
Nothing in this requires code, and it has not for years — the question is really about how much configuration you are taking on. With a store generated from an existing catalogue, the work is: get the products right, choose a layout, connect a domain, switch on payments, define delivery, publish.
The step people underestimate is product data. Photographs, honest descriptions, correct variants and accurate stock are what actually determine whether the store sells, and no builder does that part for you. If your catalogue is currently a supplier price list, Amina can build products from a photo or PDF of it, which is the difference between an afternoon and a fortnight.
The step people overestimate is the domain. Buying one takes ten minutes and pointing it at the store is two DNS records. It is worth doing properly though — a store on your own domain accumulates search authority that a subdomain of somebody else's platform never transfers to you.
- Products with real photographs — the single largest driver of conversion
- Variants and pack sizes set up properly, so the basket maths is right
- A domain you own, not a subdomain you rent
- Delivery zones and fees that match where you will actually deliver
- A returns policy written before the first order, not after the first dispute
What this is not the best choice for
If you have no physical shop and no counter, the unified argument does not apply to you, and a dedicated ecommerce platform with a deep theme and app ecosystem will give you more storefront capability than this does. That is a fair reason to choose one.
If your business depends on sophisticated merchandising — extensive A/B testing, complex subscription products, a heavily customised checkout — the same applies. This storefront is deliberately conventional, because its job is to sell your stock honestly rather than to be a platform for experimentation.
Where this wins is the specific and very common case of a real shop that also wants to sell online without acquiring a second system, a second catalogue and a second set of stock figures to argue with.
Compare
Four routes to an online store
| What you are comparing | Hosted builder | Self-hosted platform | Custom build | sell.ke |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | Days | Weeks | Months | Hours, from an existing catalogue |
| Who maintains it | The vendor | You | You or an agency | The vendor |
| Cost shape | Subscription, often plus app fees | Hosting plus paid extensions plus your time | Large up-front plus retainer | One subscription, from the Basic plan |
| Shares stock with your counter | Via a POS add-on or connector | Via a plugin you maintain | Only if built and paid for | Yes — same record |
| Design flexibility | High, within the theme system | Very high | Total | Moderate — conventional by design |
| Best for | Online-first sellers | Teams with technical capacity | Specific, funded requirements | Shops that also sell in person |
Questions
Ecommerce website builder — questions
How do I set up an online store for my business?
Get the product catalogue right first — that is the real work. Then choose a layout, point a domain you own at the store, switch on the payment methods available in your market, define your delivery zones and fees, and publish. With sell.ke the catalogue step is already done if you are running the counter on it, which is why most shops go live the same day.
Can I use my own domain name?
Yes, from the Basic plan. You buy the domain from any registrar and point two DNS records at the store. Using your own domain matters beyond appearances: search authority accumulates to the domain, and authority built on a platform subdomain does not come with you if you ever move.
Do I need separate hosting?
No. The store is hosted as part of the subscription, including SSL, and updates happen without you doing anything. This is the practical difference from a self-hosted platform, where hosting, certificates, updates and security patches are all your responsibility and all have a failure mode.
Will the online store show accurate stock?
Yes, because it reads the same stock record the counter does, per location. There is no sync interval to fall behind and no connector to fail quietly. This is the main reason a shop with a counter should think differently about store builders than an online-only seller does.
Can I keep the WooCommerce or Shopify store I already have?
You can keep a WooCommerce store and run sell.ke behind it — the integration means the counter and the storefront share stock without you rebuilding anything. Whether to move the storefront itself is a separate decision about themes, plugins and accumulated SEO, and it is worth making on its own merits rather than as part of a POS change.
How long does setup take?
A single-counter shop is usually selling the same day. The work is the product list, not the software: import a spreadsheet, scan barcodes, or let Amina build products from a supplier invoice or a photo of your price list. A multi-location business with thousands of SKUs and opening stock counts should plan about a week and run the old system alongside for a fortnight. The 14-day trial is long enough to do exactly that.
Can I bring across the products I already have?
Yes — bulk import from CSV or Excel, including photos, variants, pack sizes, prices, cost prices and opening stock counts. If what you have is a supplier price list rather than a clean spreadsheet, Amina can build the catalogue from a photo or a PDF of it, which is usually faster than retyping.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Which countries does sell.ke work in?
The software is not geographically limited — the counter, inventory, the storefront, reporting and accounting work anywhere, in multiple currencies. What is market-specific is two things: the payment rails available to you, and your country's tax-invoicing rules. We currently run with merchants in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria, and the deepest local payment and compliance integrations are in Kenya. If you are outside those markets, ask before you sign up and we will tell you precisely what would and would not be connected for you.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
How to set up an online store
The seven steps, in order, with the one that actually takes the time flagged.
What an online store costs
The four cost shapes, what is genuinely unavoidable, and where budgets overrun.
Shopify vs WooCommerce vs all-in-one
Three different purchases, compared on architecture rather than feature counts.
Selling products online
Your own store, a marketplace or social selling — what each actually costs you.
POS that syncs with your website
Real-time stock between counter and storefront — because they are the same system.
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store
One system for the counter, the stock and the website — not three that sync.
Go deeper on a feature
An online shop off the same stock
A branded storefront on your own domain, reading the same products, stock and prices as the till.
Delivery that pays for itself
Zones with their own rates, so the delivery fee covers the delivery instead of eating the margin.
Prices, price lists and promotions
Wholesale and retail off one product, quantity breaks, customer-specific lists, VAT-inclusive display.
See it for your trade
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.