Best eCommerce Platform UK 2026: 7 Compared on Real Costs

The best ecommerce platform for most UK small businesses in 2026 is Shopify – it is the most complete selling toolkit at any price, from £19 per month. But it is not the cheapest way to start: Square Online runs a genuinely free store with just 1.4% + 25p UK processing.

The right choice depends heavily on what and how much you sell. This guide compares seven platforms on what they actually cost a UK store each month, including the fees the pricing pages bury. Every price comes from the providers’ own UK pricing pages, verified July-August 2026. If you are not sure you need a full store yet, start with our best website builders guide instead.

How We Compared These Platforms

We ranked on total cost of selling, not headline price. For each platform we took the cheapest plan that runs a real store, added the platform’s own UK card processing rate, and modelled both against a realistic small-store volume. A plan that looks £3 cheaper per month routinely loses once processing is included.

Every figure was read from each provider’s UK pricing page in July and August 2026, in pounds, on annual billing unless stated. We deliberately ignored promotional first-year discounts, because they expire and the renewal price is what you actually live with. Where a platform prices in another currency, we say so rather than converting at a rate that will be wrong next month.

We also weighted three things buyers underestimate: whether you can bring your own payment gateway, what happens to your costs as you grow, and how hard it is to leave. Our own payment processing costs guide covers the card-fee side in more depth.

Best eCommerce Platforms UK: Comparison

Seven platforms cover the realistic choices for a UK store in 2026: Shopify, Square Online, Wix, Squarespace, WooCommerce, ShopWired and BigCommerce. The table compares the entry price for a functional store and the fees you pay on every sale – the two numbers that decide your real monthly bill.

Shopify is the default choice for a reason: Basic at £19 per month (annual billing) buys a complete store with inventory, shipping, abandoned-cart recovery and the largest app ecosystem in ecommerce. UK online card rates start at 2% + 25p and fall as you upgrade, reaching 1.7% + 25p on Grow and 1.5% + 25p on Advanced.

The realistic caveats are cost creep and lock-in. Premium themes, paid apps and the £25 monthly-billing price add up quickly, and if you use an external gateway instead of Shopify Payments you pay a 2% platform fee on Basic on top of that gateway’s own charges. Full plan-by-plan detail is in our Shopify pricing UK guide.

Square Online is the only genuinely free store on this list: £0 per month for a working shop, paying just 1.4% + 25p per UK card transaction – the lowest online processing rate of the seven. The free tier carries Square branding and fewer design options, with the Plus plan from £29 per month removing the limits. It is especially strong if you already take in-person payments on Square, because inventory syncs across both.

Wix eCommerce starts on the Core plan at £16 per month – the cheapest paid store here – with Wix Payments at 2.1% + 20p and no platform commission. The store tools are simpler than Shopify’s: fine for a domestic catalogue of physical products, limiting once you need multi-currency or automated tax, which arrive on the Business plan at £25. See our Wix pricing guide for the full tier breakdown.

Squarespace Commerce starts at £17 per month (Core, annual billing) and, since its 2026 fee restructure, takes 0% of physical-product sales – digital products carry a 5% fee on Core, falling to 1% on Plus at £29. Card processing starts at 2% + 25p and improves to 1.7% on Plus. Choose it when visual presentation sells your product; skip it for large or complex catalogues. Full fee detail in our Squarespace pricing guide.

WooCommerce is the free, open-source store plugin for WordPress – no platform fee, no monthly subscription for the software itself. Your real costs are hosting, a domain at roughly £10 to £15 a year on renewal, any premium extensions, and your time: you or your developer own updates, backups and security. It wins when you need something the hosted platforms cannot do, and loses on convenience. Weigh that trade-off with our Wix vs WordPress comparison.

ShopWired is the UK specialist: British company, UK support, and pricing in pounds from £34.95 per month (£31.46 on annual billing, with 20% off for two years and 30% off for three). Its stand-out policy is 0% transaction fees when you bring your own payment gateway, or ShopWired Payments from 1.9% + 20p. It costs more upfront than Shopify Basic, but for UK businesses that value domestic support and fee-free gateway freedom, it is a credible alternative the US-centric roundups ignore.

BigCommerce Core starts at $29 per month – and that dollar sign is deliberate: BigCommerce bills UK customers in US dollars, so your subscription moves with the exchange rate. Non-embedded payment providers also incur a 0.6-2% fee on order value depending on tier. Its strengths are serious: no-fee embedded payments, strong B2B and multi-storefront features, and headroom small platforms lack. For a small UK store it is overkill; for a scaling catalogue it belongs on the shortlist.

What Does an eCommerce Platform Really Cost at £2,000/Month in Sales?

Headline plan prices mislead because processing fees scale with revenue. Here is the true monthly cost of each platform for a UK store doing £2,000 per month across 50 orders (average order £40), using each platform’s own payment system on its entry store plan, annual billing.

Physical products assumed, so Squarespace’s digital-product fee does not apply. WooCommerce and BigCommerce are excluded because their totals depend on your hosting and gateway choices rather than fixed platform rates. The pattern is clear: below roughly £3,000 per month in sales, Square Online’s free plan plus the lowest processing rate makes it hard to beat on pure cost – the paid platforms earn their fees through better tools, not better rates.

Should You Sell on a Marketplace Instead?

Amazon, eBay and Etsy are the real alternative to running your own store, and most comparison guides ignore them. The trade is simple: they bring you buyers, and they charge a percentage of every sale for it. On the same £2,000 per month across 50 orders, that percentage costs far more than any platform subscription.

Marketplace fees are quoted exclusive of VAT, and the ranges reflect category rates: eBay charges 9.9% in Books and 12.9% in Crafts, while most Amazon categories land between 8% and 15%. Etsy’s 6.5% transaction fee looks modest until you add its UK payment processing at 4% + 20p, which is nearly triple what Square Online charges.

The honest read: a marketplace costs roughly five times what your own store costs on the same revenue, but you are buying demand, not software. If you have no audience and no marketing budget, that can be a good trade in year one. The catch is that the customer belongs to the marketplace, and the fee never stops. Most established sellers end up doing both – a marketplace for discovery, an own-brand store for repeat buyers and margin.

What About VAT, Multi-Currency and Selling Abroad?

You must register for VAT once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period, according to GOV.UK. It is a rolling test, not a tax-year one, so a strong Christmas can trigger registration in February. Every platform here can apply VAT to orders, but only some automate the rates for you.

There is a second VAT effect people miss. Platform and marketplace fees are usually quoted excluding VAT, so before you are VAT-registered those fees genuinely cost you 20% more than the advertised figure, with no way to reclaim it. Once registered, you reclaim it and the headline number becomes the real number.

For selling abroad, check multi-currency support before you commit rather than after. Wix puts it on the £25 Business plan rather than the £16 Core plan, so a Core store cannot price in euros. Shopify, BigCommerce and ShopWired all handle multi-currency more comfortably at their entry tiers, and eBay charges UK sellers an international fee of 1.05% to 2.0% depending on the destination.

Switching Platforms: What Migration Actually Involves

Choosing badly is recoverable, but it is not free. Products, customers and order history move reasonably well between platforms via CSV export or a migration app. What does not move is your theme, your apps and your URL structure – and that last one is where stores lose money.

If your product URLs change and you do not redirect the old ones, you lose the search rankings those pages had built. Budget for a redirect map as part of any migration, not as an afterthought. Plan a fortnight of overlap where both stores exist, and move at your quietest trading period rather than into a peak.

Two platforms deserve a specific warning. WooCommerce gives you the cleanest exit because you own the database outright. Wix is the tightest fit in the other direction: you cannot swap templates once a site is live, so a redesign generally means rebuilding. Factor that in if you expect your brand to change within a couple of years.

Which eCommerce Platform Should You Choose?

Choose Square Online to start free, Shopify when selling is your main business, Wix or Squarespace when the store is part of a broader site, WooCommerce when you need full control on WordPress, ShopWired for UK support with your own gateway, and BigCommerce when you are scaling past what the entry platforms handle.

• Testing an idea or side project – Square Online (free; you lose nothing if it does not sell)
• Serious store, physical products – Shopify Basic (£19/month annual) – the toolkit pays for itself past ~£3,000/month in sales
• Store attached to a service or content site – Wix (£16) or Squarespace (£17), whichever fits your design taste
• Selling digital products – Squarespace Plus (£29) over Core, because the digital fee drops from 5% to 1%
• Already on WordPress, or need custom logic – WooCommerce, with a realistic budget for hosting and maintenance
• Want UK-based support and gateway freedom – ShopWired (£31.46/month annual)
• No audience yet and no marketing budget – a marketplace first, then your own store once you have repeat buyers
• Large catalogue, B2B, multi-storefront – BigCommerce, priced in dollars with eyes open

If none of the DIY routes fit – complex integrations, bespoke design, or simply no time – a professional build often makes better commercial sense: our guide to the best web design companies for small businesses covers what agencies charge for ecommerce projects.

Last updated: August 2026. Platform prices verified against each provider’s UK pricing page in July-August 2026, annual billing unless stated, excluding promotional discounts. Marketplace fees verified against Etsy’s, eBay’s and Amazon’s own UK fee pages in August 2026 and quoted excluding VAT. VAT threshold per GOV.UK. BigCommerce prices in USD. Providers can change pricing at any time.

Emma Clarke

Technology & Payments Specialist

Emma covers the full range of business technology, including EPOS systems, merchant accounts, telecoms, and web tools. Her experience as a retail systems consultant helps businesses choose the right digital solutions to improve efficiency and sales.

Reviewed by

Sarah Mitchell

B2B Commerce & Finance Reviewer