How we compare e-commerce platforms
We list 13 e-commerce platforms sold to UK merchants, and the number we can cost from a published rate card is 13 providers. Where a vendor quotes for its top licence instead of publishing, we show the quote rather than invent a figure.
The calculator runs on your monthly online revenue, your average order value and how many items you sell, because those are the axes this market prices on. Revenue matters because some platforms take a percentage of each order as well as a subscription, so the bill grows with trade. Ranking is arithmetic on those inputs. Commission never moves a provider up or down, and the cheapest row is whatever the sum says it is.
Prices are what each vendor publishes to a UK buyer. Read the billing basis as carefully as the figure: several headline prices here are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment rather than a rolling month, and where a vendor bills in US dollars its pound figure drifts with the exchange rate.
One limitation worth stating plainly. BigCommerce gates its real plans on trailing twelve month revenue, and our cost engine has no revenue axis, so it is held as a single plan at its published entry price of £29/mo (Core). Our estimate for it does not step up as your turnover crosses the vendor's own thresholds, so read its pricing page before committing.
The UK-built e-commerce platforms, and when a domestic option earns its floor
Most of this market is American or Canadian software sold into Britain. A small part of it is not, and that is a genuine choice a UK merchant has.
EKM and ShopWired are both UK-founded, price in pounds without a conversion in the middle, and staff their support here. EKM lists support as UK-based account manager, phone, email for a market it describes as Established UK SMB. ShopWired lists UK-based phone, email, chat against UK SMB.
That buys a working day matching yours and someone who understands a UK delivery problem with no timezone in the way. What you pay is a higher floor. EKM's entry plan is £327/mo (+VAT) and its top plan £327/mo (single plan, steps up with turnover), a single-plan shape rather than a ladder you climb. ShopWired runs a conventional ladder from £34.95/mo (Essentials) to £149.95/mo (Premium), with an item allowance of 750 (Pro) to Unlimited and staff logins of 2 (Pro) to 15 (Premium). Neither takes a cut of sales through an external gateway the way some global platforms do: ShopWired lists 0% and EKM 0% with EKM Pay, 0.6% external. A higher subscription against no percentage on turnover is the whole argument for them, and it gets stronger the more you sell.
Be honest about where you sit on that curve. If you are launching with a handful of items and no proven demand, the domestic floor is hard to justify and you probably do not need it yet. Squarespace, Wix and Ecwid bill UK customers in pounds too, so pound billing alone is not the reason to pay more. UK support is, and it is worth money only once an outage costs you orders.
The flip side is the connections list. EKM lists 40+ payment gateways and ShopWired 20+, where WooCommerce lists 100+. If you need an unusual gateway or a niche integration, check it by name first.
Wix or Shopify: the e-commerce platform question UK shoppers actually ask
This head-to-head dominates British search here, and it is asked as a price question when it is really a shape question. Both list technical skill as None, both recover abandoned baskets, and both sell digital goods. Where they separate:
How the bill is built. Wix's entry plan is £16/mo (Core) and Shopify's £19/mo (Basic). Wix's platform cut is 0% while Shopify's entry plan lists 2% (Basic), and Shopify's own checkout rate is 1.7% + 25p (Basic) against Wix at 2.9% + 30p (approx). Those pull in opposite directions, so which is cheaper turns on your revenue and average order value, not on the headline. Put your own figures into the calculator.
What you bolt on. Typical app spend runs £40 to £150/mo on Shopify and £0 to £40/mo on Wix, off ecosystems of 10,000+ apps and 500+ apps. A deep app store is a capability and a running cost at once, and the running cost is the half people forget.
Dropshipping. The other recurring British search against these two, and the answer is not symmetrical. Shopify lists dropshipping as Native (DSers, Oberlo legacy) and Wix as Via apps. Both work, but Shopify's supplier tooling is native rather than bolted on, which shows in your daily workflow rather than your monthly bill. Dropshipping from outside the UK also makes you responsible for import duty and VAT on the way in, which neither platform handles for you.
Selling elsewhere. Shopify lists channels as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok, Pinterest and Wix as Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon (via apps), with staff logins at 2 (Basic) and Unlimited.
Adobe Commerce and the small business mismatch on e-commerce platform shortlists
Adobe Commerce, still widely called Magento, appears on British small business shortlists more often than it should, because its price reads as free.
Its entry line is £0 (open source), which is the software and not the shop. Hosting is No, at around ~£50/mo (managed); extensions typically run £80 to £400/mo; the skill level listed is Developer; and the licensed enterprise edition is Quote (Adobe Commerce licence). Add a developer's rate for upgrades and security patching, which someone has to do and it will not be you.
That is a coherent product for a business with a development team and complex catalogue rules. For a shop with an owner and a part-timer it is a mismatch, and the honest answer to "should we evaluate Adobe Commerce" is usually that you are at the wrong end of the market.
If the attraction is the open-source idea, the small business version of that argument sits elsewhere on this table. WooCommerce lists skill as Basic to Developer with hosting at ~£10/mo (managed), and PrestaShop, whose strongest base is in Europe, lists Developer with hosting at ~£8/mo (managed).
The platform's own cut: what an e-commerce platform charges on top of your gateway
This is the charge that surprises people, and it is not the one you are thinking of.
Your payment gateway charges you to process a card. That is a separate market with its own rates, and our card machines comparison covers it. On top of that, some e-commerce platforms levy their own percentage of every order, purely because you processed it through a gateway that is not theirs. It buys you nothing. It is a toll.
The mechanism is consistent: take payments through the platform's in-house checkout and the cut is usually zero, use an external gateway and it applies on top of the gateway's own rate. Moving up a plan often removes it too, which is why the same platform can carry a cut on one rung and none on the next.
Read the row rather than the marketing. Shopify lists 2% (Basic), Squarespace 3% (Basic), 0% (Core+), Webflow 2% (Standard), 0% (Plus+) and EKM 0% with EKM Pay, 0.6% external, against BigCommerce at 0% and Wix at 0%. Since taking the platform's own processor is how you avoid the cut, read the in-house rates beside them: Squarespace lists 1.4% + 25p, Square 1.4% + 25p (online) and GoDaddy ~1.9% + 25p. Some have no processor at all: BigCommerce lists Via partners (no native processor) and Ecwid Via connected gateway (no native processor).
A percentage of turnover behaves nothing like a subscription. A fixed monthly fee is a known cost you can plan around; a cut of every order grows precisely when the business is going well, and it never appears on the pricing page's biggest number.
Selling to EU customers from a UK e-commerce platform after Brexit
A parcel to Dublin or Dusseldorf is an export now. That changes the paperwork, who pays the VAT and what your customer sees at their door, and no platform setting makes it go away.
Your sale is zero rated for UK VAT and taxed at the other end. Goods leaving Great Britain for the EU are an export, so you do not charge UK VAT, but you need evidence of export and must keep it. Import VAT falls due on arrival.
The default is that your customer pays that import VAT. Ship without handling it and the carrier collects the VAT plus a handling fee on the doorstep, which is the fastest way to turn a good order into a refund request.
IOSS avoids the doorstep bill. Registering for the EU's Import One Stop Shop lets you charge the destination country's VAT at checkout on consignments up to a value of 150 euros and remit it through one return. Above that, or without IOSS, you are back to import VAT at the border. Every parcel still needs a customs declaration with the right commodity code, origin and value.
The platform's job in this is narrow but real: show the right currency and tax at checkout, and carry the payment methods European shoppers expect. Multi-currency is not standard. Shopify lists it as Yes, BigCommerce as Yes and Ecwid as Yes (Unlimited), while Webflow lists Yes (Plus+), Wix Limited, Squarespace No and Square No.
Payment coverage follows the same pattern, because European buyers reach for local methods as a matter of course, and a short gateway list constrains what you can offer. Squarespace lists Stripe, PayPal, Webflow Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and Square Square only, where Shopify lists 100+. If the EU is a rounding error in your orders, none of this should drive your choice. If it is a real slice of the business, it should narrow the table before price does.
Setting up the business behind your e-commerce platform: VAT and the 14 day cancellation right
British searches for this category pair the platform with company formation surprisingly often, which makes sense: people open the shop and register the business in the same week. The platform does neither legal job.
Incorporating and registering for VAT are different things at different bodies. Companies House incorporates the company. HMRC handles VAT, and you must register once taxable turnover passes the threshold over any rolling twelve month period, or when you expect to pass it within the next thirty days. Check the current threshold on GOV.UK, and watch the rolling window rather than your financial year, because that is the part that catches people out. Registering voluntarily below the threshold is often worth it if you buy stock with VAT on it.
Digital goods are taxed where the buyer is. Sell downloads, memberships or courses to consumers in the EU and the VAT is due in their country from the first sale, with no threshold. Most of this table can sell them: Shopify lists Yes, EKM Yes and Webflow Yes (via Memberstack), while GoDaddy Online Store lists No. Being able to sell them is not the same as being able to charge the right tax on them, so check the tax settings before launch.
Distance selling gives your customer 14 days to change their mind. Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations a consumer buying online can cancel for any reason within fourteen days of receiving the goods, then has a further fourteen days to return them, and you refund within fourteen days of receiving them or of proof of postage. This is not a faulty goods return and you cannot write it away in your terms. You must also tell the buyer about the right before they order: fail to, and the window extends by up to a year. Digital content downloaded with express consent is one of the genuine exceptions.
So your platform has to let you publish and edit real policy pages, and ideally adjust the checkout, which varies more than you would expect. WooCommerce lists Yes (fully customisable), Shopify Limited (Plus only for full), Squarespace No and Webflow No (uses Stripe Checkout).
None of this is a reason to delay opening. It is a reason to pick a platform whose tax and policy settings you can actually reach, because the alternative is finding the gap at the moment a customer asserts a right you did not know they had.