Last year, the amount of goods and services sold online in the UK rose by another 6.7%. Real-world, physical stores have been experiencing significant difficulties in recent years because of rises in wages and rates and the poor performance of the pound. Perhaps the biggest reason for the decline in High Street and boutique retail, however, has been the rise of easy-to-use e-commerce platforms and customers’ increasing willingness to shop on their desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobiles.
For new and established businesses, it’s never been easier to get online than it is today nor has the competition to help you establish an Internet-based sales platform been more intense. The best Ecommerce platforms are adding new functionality and features every month and, while that might sound like it would become more complicated, the opposite is true. Ecommerce platforms have realised that their biggest target market are companies with sub-£1m turnover and, thanks to point-and-click and what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing, business owners need no programming knowledge whatsoever to get started.
In this article, we’ll share with you:
- the best thirteen platforms in the UK by user numbers and review scores
- what you should look for in an e-commerce platform
- the three different types of ecommerce platform and the types of users they’re suitable for
- beginners’ platforms – DIY platforms with in-built payment options
- next step platforms – DIY platforms where you select your own payment solutions provider
- developer platforms – highly customisable platforms for companies with programming experience
- most commonly asked questions about the best ecommerce platforms and taking payments online
Want help finding the best ecommerce platform for your business. Simply fill out the form at the top of the page letting us know as much as about your (future) online store as possible, what you sell, who you sell it to, and your (predicted) level of turnover.
We’ll then approach the companies in this article (and a few more if necessary for more complex requirements) and come back to you with 3-4 quotes from the platforms with the features and functionalities you need at the best possible prices.
Our service is free of charge and there’s no obligation on you to accept any of the offers made by our partner platform providers.
E-commerce platforms in the UK – our top thirteen
Thanks to Builtwith for the numbers of UK users and the aggregated scores from five different online review sites, we’ve compiled out top thirteen list of ecommerce platforms for British businesses.
| Platform name | Review scores | No UK users |
| Shopwired | 4.9 | N/A |
| Ecwid | 4.65 | 74,150 |
| WooCommerce Checkout | 4.39 | 112,174 |
| Shopify | 4.36 | 54,084 |
| Wix Stores | 4.31 | 50,701 |
| BigCommerce | 4.30 | N/A |
| Squarespace | 4.28 | 30,345 |
| Weebly eCommerce | 4.28 | 6,269 |
| Prestashop | 4.27 | N/A |
| OpenCart | 4.19 | 12,946 |
| Magento | 4.13 | 15,247 |
| 3dCart | 4.07 | N/A |
| Volusion | 3.02 | N/A |
Later in this article, we’ll provide you with a mini-review of each platform letting you know how much each one costs and the type of functionality you can expect from it
The review sites used to compile an aggregate score in this article are G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, Trustpilot, and GetApp. After each mini-review, you can see detailed breakdowns of the scores and the number of reviews given to each platform on each of these sites.
8 things to look for when choosing an ecommerce platform
The level of sophistication married to ease of use on ecommerce platforms is genuinely impressive. Better still, each ecommerce platform provider is seeking ways to simplify the process even further while adding even more intuitive functionality so that their clients have the best possible chance of attracting visitors and converting those visitors in sales.
Web design – WYSIWIG
Designing websites and especially ecommerce websites so that they look great and they load fast on whatever device is tremendously complicated if you were to attempt to code it yourself.
Most ecommerce platforms offer clients a drag-and-drop interface (sometimes called a “what you see is what you get” interface). These interfaces require no coding experience whatsoever and you can build your website on-screen using just your keyboard and your mouse. You can change colours, fonts, layouts, and more very simply so that your online store has just the look you want for it.
Taking payments from customers
For new or smaller businesses wanting to use an ecommerce platform and whose owners want to keep the process of getting online as straight forward as possible, you should look for an ecommerce platform with an in-built credit and debit card acceptance facility.
As your turnover increases, you may want to move to a different payment processor to benefit from lower fees. If this is the case, we would recommend starting off with an ecommerce platform with an integrated payment provider but which allows you, at no extra charge, to switch to a payment processor of your choice.
Help with marketing and advertising
Many of the platforms offer marketing support to help you advertise on a pay-per-click basis on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Many also feature integration with eBay and Amazon Marketplace meaning that you can sell your goods and services automatically on these platforms too.
One of the more useful features is the ability to send personalised email newsletters to existing customers and people who have left their details but who have not bought from you yet.
77% of email marketing ROI was a result of segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns in 2015. By curating specialised and bespoke email lists to target prospects whose details you have and whose preferences your shopping platform is aware of, you can hone in on the relevant audience.
Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media platforms, so capturing prospect data and utilise it properly may produce significantly more revenue than your general web traffic alone.
Online app stores and store management
Rather like your mobile phone whose functionality can be added to with the download of an app, so can most ecommerce platforms. Some apps are offered free to users whereas other apps will attract a one-off or recurring monthly charge.
- product sourcing (new suppliers, import opportunities, dropshippers)
- find new places to sell (other online marketplaces, social media, and so on)
- improve your store design (wish lists. translations, timers and counters, social media integrations, seo and site optimization, product options and reviews, popups and notifications, multi-currencies, maps and calendars, intuitive search, images and videos, email templates, catalogues and image galleries, cart customization, blogs, better navigation, allow a customer to log-in, improve accessibility, and so on)
- better marketing (affiliates, online targeting, pay per click)
- improve sales conversions (upselling, cross-selling, customer analytics, gifts, creation of urgency, and so on)
- handling of orders and shipping
- stock (inventory) management
- customer support tools (CRM, messaging apps, chatbots)
- finances (profit and tax calculators)
- productivity (bulk editors, workflow automation, and so on)
For those new to ecommerce, these tools can be of significant help in finding an audience and keep that audience loyal to you.
Abandoned carts
In recent years, many ecommerce platforms have built integrated systems for clients to use so that they can win back orders from customers who filled their online shopping trolley but who never completed the purchases.
Tactics include automated personalised follow-up emails, advert retargeting (the type of ads which seem to follow you around the internet), and pop-ups appearing on screen when the potential customer looks like they’re about to leave the page.
Progressive web apps
Progressive web apps are a hybrid between a standard web page and a standard app that you’d download to a mobile phone. Just like with an app, you can place an icon on your phone’s home screen to open it and it’s capable of “push notifications” – when an app sends you a message (usually about an offer or a discount of the app is an ecommerce app).
They are slowly gaining in popularity – major benefits include increased conversion rates and that they are very cost-effective compared with the funding need to pay for the development of a standard app.
Some ecommerce platforms are now offering clients the ability to build their own progressive web app based on their online store.
Ability to take payments offline
Many of the ecommerce platform payment options allow you to take payments in your retail store or out and about. For this, you need physical hardware costing from £30 which links to an app on your mobile phone or tablet.
Some ecommerce platform providers and merchant service providers will charge you less in transaction fees for a face-to-face sale.
Merchant cash advance
Some online ecommerce platforms which process your card payments for you offer you the opportunity to borrow against future income to invest in your business. These types of loans are known more widely as “merchant cash advances” and many of the platforms listed in our article provide this service.
When you take payments online, your payment processor pays you normally within 1-3 days of a transaction being made. All the transactions you take on one day are rolled up and paid in a lump sum on settlement day.
Your merchant service provider takes a fixed percentage of your daily settlement until the loan is clear – normally around 10% of the settlement amount. When business is quiet, you pay very little and, when business is very busy, you pay more.
The cost of merchant cash advances is normally about 30% of the principal – in other words, if you borrow £10,000, you’ll probably pay back around £13,000 in total.
The 3 types of ecommerce platform you need to know about – and which one is right for you.
Different types of ecommerce platform are suitable for businesses at different stages of development. The higher your online revenue, the more control you’re going to need over your ecommerce platform to control costs and to provide the functionality your company needs to react quickly to clients’ online orders.
We’ve decided to split the article into three different sections with the most popular and highly-regarded platform for three distinct types of user:
Brand new business and/or brand new to selling online
If you have little to no programming experience and…
- yours is a business about to launch or
- you already have a small business (£250,000 a year or less turnover),
…we would recommend choosing one of the options listed in section 1.
Companies with a turnover of more than £250,000 from online sales
If your business is established and you do some or all of your business online, there may be savings to be made by:
- switching to a different payment processor with your existing ecommerce platform if they’ll let you and they won’t charge you for it or
- switching to a different ecommerce platform which lets you choose which payment processor you want to use (these are the options listed in section 2).
There may be some disruption in switching ecommerce platforms but you can save thousands of pounds a year by switching – see the table in the FAQ section at the end to see how much.
Companies with a turnover of more than £1,000,000 from all sources
For substantial companies with a seven-figure turnover where many of your systems are already monitored and controlled by computer apps like stock replenishment programmes and online accounting platforms, you might save a lot of time and money in the long-run by getting a developer to work on a bespoke system for you. We have listed a couple of options under section 3.
If you’re tempted to jump forward a few stages and go for the developer option even though your turnover is not £1m or more, please resist the temptation. Prove instead that the market is there first and then make the investment.
1. 6 DIY platforms with in-built payment options – ideal for beginners
For brand new businesses or businesses taking their first step into selling online where there’s not a big budget for the investment and where there’s no skilled programmers in the company, we’d recommend investigating the following seven platforms.
Shopify
| Platform name | Shopify |
| Platform link | https://www.shopify.co.uk/ |
| UK Users | 54,084 |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | $29.00 |
| Highest monthly | $299.00 |
| Credit card % | 2.20% + 16p |
| Debit card % | 2.20% + 16p |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | Yes |
| Number of apps | 973 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Shopify’s history stretches all the way back to 2004 however its 5,000 employees based mainly in Canada continue to innovate with their online (and offline) selling and payment processing services.
Shopify does allow you to use other merchant service providers as well as their own but, if you choose another company, there is an additional fee which may make switching uncompetitive. If you intend to grow your online business rapidly in the coming months and years, this could make switching to a different ecommerce platform provider to save on fees inevitable however that switching will come at a cost.
The fees for the service start at $29 and they go right up to $299. There is limited additional functionality on the higher tariffs – the real benefit is the reduction in transaction charges from the 2.2% + 16p shown above down to 1.6% + 16p. This reduction represents a saving of £600 for every £100,000 processed.
Shopify offers a free 14-day trial (no credit card needed) during which you can familiarise yourself with the system and how it works.
In terms of design and functionality, shops created on Shopify look amazing and they work really well on mobile phones. There are an extensive number of pre-built store themes available for free as well as an extensive store of pre-built themes for which you must pay – pricing points seem to start at around $150.
The range of store management services is extensive – the company provides you with sales dashboards, insights into the sales you’re making, and tools to help you fulfil order quickly and accurately.
Shopify offers clients help on ensuring that their website is seen by the widest possible audience with their selection of marketing tools with a built-in blogging platform, SEO tools to ensure that Google ranks the site and each product page on it as highly as possible, and social media marketing management including Facebook Ads and Instagram promotion.
The platform integrates well with Google Shopping, Google’s online price comparison service, and there is an email marketing tool on the platform allowing you to create emails using ready-made designs.
As one of the big names in ecommerce platform provision, Shopify has received over 10,000 reviews online scoring a creditable 4.36 out of 5:
| Shopify | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 3,557 | 4.3 | 3264 | 4.5 | 246 | 8.6 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 227 | 1.7 | 3268 | 4.49 | 10562 | 4.364715 |
Wix Stores
| Platform name | Wix Stores |
| Platform link | https://www.wix.com/app-market/wix-stores |
| UK Users | 50,701 |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £13.00 |
| Highest monthly | £26.00 |
| Credit card % | 1.90% + 20p |
| Debit card % | 1.90% + 20p |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 250 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | No |
Wix is one of the world’s leading providers of drag and drop websites – ideal for company owners wanting an online presence but who lack the skills to be able to program in HMTL5 and CSS. The ecommerce platform uses the same intuitive tools for clients building their first or their fiftieth website.
There is a wide range of pre-built store templates on the Wix site for you to choose from including themes suitable for businesses selling arts & crafts, beauty & wellness products, books, electronics, fashion & clothing, food & drink, home & décor products, jewellery & accessories, kids & baby products, pets & animals products, and sports & outdoors apparel and clothing.
Prices for websites begin at £13 per month (including website hosting) and transaction fees are competitive at 1.9% of order value plus 20p – Wix’s payment processing service is run by Square. Wix also offers Google Analytics, a free domain, and £75 worth of Google Ads vouchers on sign up.
Wix Stores has also recently introduced support for dropshippers and companies offering print on demand services. They’ll even help you find dropshipping companies from a number of apps including a direct integration to the Mecca of all dropshippers – AliExpress.
Wix has a well-developed online store of its own offering clients apps to improve results from marketing, sell more online, and communicate better with visitors and subscribers. Most are free of charge however there are some which make a monthly charge. We like the marketing tools in particular with a variety of apps offering pop-ups, add retargeting, social media integration, automated pay-per-click ads, and visitor analytics.
Wix is still mainly a website development platform as well as a ecommerce platform provider and this cross-over will be reflected in the 10,000+ reviews online on the five sites we surveyed:
| Wix Stores | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 3,557 | 4.3 | 3264 | 4.5 | 246 | 8.6 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 227 | 1.7 | 3268 | 4.49 | 10562 | 4.364715 |
Squarespace
| Platform name | Squarespace |
| Platform link | https://www.squarespace.com/ecommerce-website |
| UK Users | 30,345 |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £13.00 |
| Highest monthly | £37.00 |
| Credit card % | 3.00% |
| Debit card % | 3.00% |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | Yes |
| Number of apps | 19 |
| Phone support | No |
| 24/7 Help | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Squarespace is perhaps Wix’s most fierce competitor in competing to offer business owners the ability to build their own site and online store without the need to know programming language or to bolt it onto another platform like WordPress.
Both score very highly among their users – Wix edges it however with a satisfaction rating of 4.36 compared to Squarespace’s 4.28.
Like Wix, the Squarespace platform is intuitive and simple to use for both designing a website and an online store. Despite the relative ease of building a website and an online store with a drag and drop interface, many business owners are then confronted with the reality that, although the system allows them to pretty much design in any way they want, they have no idea how they want their site to look.
Squarespace’s offering of templates is extensive and generous with pre-built, customisable websites covering the following sectors – art, consulting, design, education, fashion, fitness, food, gaming, health & beauty, interior design, jewellery, magazines, marketing, music, non-profit, personal & CV, photography, politics, restaurants, technology, and travel.
Tariffs range from £13 per month to £37 a month. Most of the functionality a newer business will need will be covered by the £24 tariff – the more expensive tariffs offer:
- more powerful analytics tools,
- the ability to offer gift cards,
- Instagram product and payment placements,
- abandoned cart recovery
- the sale of subscriptions, and
- advanced discounting options.
Compared with Wix, the app store is rather sparse although we were pleased to see integrations with Quickbooks and Freshbooks (both online accounting tools), Outfy (a social media marketing platform), and GoDataFeed (allowing you to manage Instagram, Facebook, and Google product feeds). Most apps appear to attract a per-use or monthly charge – some have free trials whereas others don’t.
We also like the integrated email marketing service with the platform – designing an email to send to customers and subscribers seems as effortless and intuitive as the drag and drop interface used to build your website and your online store. The cost of sending emails varies between £4 per month (maximum of 500 sends) to £38 per month (maximum of 250,000 sends a month). All tariffs offer automated emailing expect for the £4 tariff.
Squarespace and Square, the payments company, are owned by the same parent corporation and they offer a wide range of face-to-face card processing tools if you need them.
With over 5,000 reviews and an average score of 4.28 out of 5, this platform, despite its issues, is well worth considering:
| Squarespace | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 849 | 4.4 | 1814 | 4.6 | 179 | 8.3 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 437 | 1.9 | 1814 | 4.5 | 5093 | 4.283556 |
Weebly eCommerce
| Platform name | Weebly eCommerce |
| Platform link | https://www.weebly.com/uk/features/ecommerce-website |
| UK Users | 6,269 |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £9.00 |
| Highest monthly | £28.00 |
| Credit card % | 2.90% + 24p |
| Debit card % | 2.90% + 24p |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | No |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 383 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | Yes |
With more than 65,000 subscribers and, like Squarespace, owned by Square (since 2018), Weebly has also positioned itself as a one-stop supplier for business owners wanting to take card payments on- and offline as well as those wanting to open and build an online store. In addition to Square’s payment service, the company also offers clients the ability to take payment via rivals PayPal and Stripe.
There is no word from the company that they intend to merge Weebly and Squarespace under one brand just yet. In fact, the company seem to be running both services as separate platforms with slightly different offerings and, by most measurements, Weebly is the slightly cheaper option.
The £9 a month tariff is perfectly adequate for most really small online stores but the more expensive options are better suited to businesses intent on growing revenue through the Internet. The more expensive tariffs offer stock management, gift cards, item reviews, shipping calculators, pop-up notifications, and more.
The pre-built templates store seems a lot barer than Squarespace’s with only 15 templates covering sport, fashion, food, interior design, sportswear, fitness services, and fashion. If you’re not naturally a visually creative person and you don’t see a template you want to edit, you may struggle to create a website and store design for your company.
Squarespace seems to be very aware of the importance of email to online retail stores – they offer a range of customisable emails for you to communicate with your customers and prospects including an abandoned cart email function.
Their analytics option also seems very well developed and they have an extensive knowledge base for clients wanting to optimise their stores for Google. You can select different carriers as well for the delivery of your product as well as track what you have in stock at any one time. If you sell dozens or hundreds of products, reviews from customers online suggest that their bulk uploading feature is easy-to-use and very quick.
Weebly eCommerce finishes in eighth place in our survey with a score of 4.27 across over 3,000 reviews – results per site are below:
| Weebly eCommerce | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 403 | 4.2 | 1307 | 4.3 | 106 | 7.8 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 0 | 0 | 1307 | 4.31 | 3123 | 4.277704 |
Shopwired
| Platform name | Shopwired |
| Platform link | https://www.shopwired.co.uk/ |
| UK Users | N/A |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £29.95 |
| Highest monthly | £149.95 |
| Credit card % | 2.00% + 20p |
| Debit card % | 2.00% + 20p |
| Mobile App | No |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 53 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Based in Birmingham, Shopwired offers a 14-day free trial to new subscribers with “no obligation, no credit card, no commitment, no contract”.
There are just 20 themes on its template page but it does offer a bespoke design service to clients whose price is either £3,495 plus VAT (lead time of 8-10 weeks) or £3,995 plus VAT (lead time of 4-6 weeks with “2 designs for your product, category & text pages” and “(a)ll ShopWired Extensions installed free of charge” which Shopwired values at £1,080). Their designers created the sites for well-known UK e-tailers “Simply Electric” and “Glasses 2 You”.
They also offer a free switching service helping you to transfer your data and catalogue across from Shopify, BigCommerce, ekmPowershop, BluePark, Magento, and selected other Providers
Their app store is small but growing offering:
- marketing tools (Mailchimp, Facebook and Instagram integration, product reviews, and Google feeds)
- sales conversion tools (search keywords, reward points, product extras, gift cards, multi-buy offers, and product Q&As, reviews, Amazon Pay and log-in, Google Trusted Stores, and abandoned basket emails)
- store management apps (stock alerts, warehouse notes, gross profit report, product feeds)
- integrations (accounting software and courier companies)
- trade/B2B features (trade accounts and pricing, minimum order quantities, prices concealed unless logged in), and
- “extras” (VAT, eBay integration, postcode shipping, SEO control, Stripe subscriptions, and multi-currencies).
Branding itself as the “UK’s favourite ecommerce platform for selling successfully online”, it has the highest Trustpilot score – an impressive 4.9 out of 5 based upon 132 reviews. Unfortunately, there were no reviews on the other four site and, on Google Reviews, it scores a fair-to-middling 3.5 out of 5.
The reviews on Google are either 1 star out of 5 or 5 stars out of 5. You can’t please all the people all the time however and, on balance, it’s probably a fairer reflection of the quality of the company to put more weight on its Trustpilot reviews.
| Shopwired | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 132 | 4.9 | 0 | 0 | 132 | 4.9 |
Prestashop
| Platform name | Prestashop |
| Platform link | https://www.prestashop.com/en |
| UK Users | N/A |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £6.00 |
| Highest monthly | £12.00 |
| Credit card % | 1.2% + 30p |
| Debit card % | 1.2% + 30p |
| Mobile App | No |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 53 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Prestashop is either available as a free download but you may need a developer to build the site for you (the site offers three options) as well as a hosting service. Alternatively, for between £6 and £12 a month, you can choose the 1&1 Ionos-hosted service instead.
There are over 3,100 design templates to download from the Prestashop site – by far and away, the largest selection from any of the packages reviewed on the site. There are many templates to choose from with the paid-for options costing up to £279.99.
The app store is even larger with over 3,000 modules available to choose from. There are a few free apps in the store but most of them are very specialist with a maximum price of £639.99 for a module enabling you to rent products and services and receive payment online.
Prestashop is a very impressive system in our experience although it’s not marketed as well as competitor platforms – there are over 300,000 users around the world of the product but the number of user reviews online is small. On the just over 400 reviews it’s recieved, it averaged 4.27 out of 5:
| Prestashop | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 102 | 4.3 | 150 | 4.3 | 20 | 7.9 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 0 | 0 | 150 | 4.27 | 422 | 4.272749 |
2. 5 DIY platforms requiring a 3rd party payment processor – ideal if you want more control
For businesses with an online turnover of more than £250,000, you may be paying thousands of pounds more than you need to in credit and debit card transaction fees by using either your current ecommerce platform and/or your current merchant services account provider to process payments.
The following options may also be suitable for businesses whose turnover is £250,000 or more offline and online because of the likely savings on transaction fees.
WooCommerce Checkout
| Platform name | WooCommerce Checkout |
| Platform link | https://woocommerce.com/ |
| UK Users | 112,174 |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £0.00 |
| Highest monthly | £0.00 |
| Credit card % | 2.90% + 24p |
| Debit card % | 2.90% + 24p |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | N/A |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | Yes |
| Number of apps | 417 |
| Phone support | No |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | No |
Originally an open source platform which launched in 2011, WooCommerce has become Britain’s biggest online provider of ecommerce services to small businesses with over 110,000 customers.
The software itself is free however you will have to pay a company to host the site for you however this can be from as little as £3.95 a month – be sure to shop around. The amount you pay for hosting will be determined by the number of visitors you receive a month, the number of domain names you host, and the amount of data transferred to and from customers using your site.
WooCommerce is not a separate platform in the way that many of the other companies listed in this article are – you’ll almost certainly need to plug it in to an existing WordPress site.
The WooCommerce front-end is very easy for users with little or no experience able to build attractive, functional, quick-loading stores which work well and look great.
You can select which payment provider you use to process customers’ debit and credit cards but, for most first-time users in the USA, they will choose the highly-integrated WooCommerce Payments system.
However, this is not yet available in the UK so you’ll be required to choose a payment processor from the app store where your options include Square, PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon Pay. And on the app store, there are 417 different apps covering everything from store management to marketing to subscription handling.
There is a great deal of flexibility in the design options available – a simple set of tools for basic designing is free with more advanced packages offering greater choices and flexibility start from $59.
You can sell direct on Amazon, Etsy, and eBay via WooCommerce as well as run your own affiliate programs where other websites do your marketing for you in return for a commission on each sale made.
The breakdown of reviews for WooCommerce Checkout are:
| WooCommerce Checkout | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 696 | 4.3 | 210 | 4.5 | 112 | 9.1 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 9 | 3.7 | 210 | 4.54 | 1237 | 4.392967 |
BigCommerce
| Platform name | BigCommerce |
| Platform link | https://www.bigcommerce.com/ |
| UK Users | N/A |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £29.95 |
| Highest monthly | £299.95 |
| Credit card % | 2.90% + 24p |
| Debit card % | 2.90% + 24p |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 783 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes |
With over 600 employees, BigCommerce is a significant provider of ecommerce platforms to business in North America but it’s not quite made the same impact here yet despite its users’ high opinion of the service. Across the five sites whose reviews we read during our research for this article, BigCommerce’s client base is enthusiastic about the company and its services.
There are two BigCommerce brands – BigCommerce for larger companies and BigCommerce Essentials for smaller companies.
BigCommerce Essentials allows clients to choose their own payment processor – it integrates with over 250 merchant services providers worldwide. You can see why in the FAQ that’s worthwhile – you could end up paying £2,000+ a year more for every £100,000 turned over if you don’t choose your processor carefully.
BigCommerce charge no transaction fees for sales through their platform so you’ll only ever pay in processing fees what it is that your merchant services provider actually charges you. You can even set up a Klarna button if you like. BigCommerce also keeps customers’ card details securely held within its system for recurring billing, subscriptions, and to shorten the ordering process for returning customers.
It’s easy to create attractive, functional, and responsive websites on the platform. For clients without an artistic bent who want to shorten the process as much as possible, the company provides customisable templates for the following sectors – automotive, B2B, beauty, beverages, education and publishing, electronics, fashion and jewellery, food and beverage, health, home and garden, nutrition, speciality food, sports and outdoors, toys and games, and wine.
This is one of the few ecommerce platforms we’ve seen this on but there is an app store for experts – you can select from lists of designers, web developers, marketing agencies, IT providers, and more to improve your online store and how it functions.
The general app store is well appointed with just under 800 different integrations – categories include useful site tools, shipping & fulfilment, sales channel optimisation, product sourcing, payments & security, mobile, merchandising, marketing, ERP, data transfer/migration services, CRM & customer service, catalog & order management, B2B/wholesale, analytics & reporting, and accounting & tax
BigCommerce finished just outside the top 5 of the 13 most popular and innovative ecommerce platforms when user reviews are averaged out:
| BigCommerce | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 320 | 4.2 | 164 | 4.3 | 514 | 8.7 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 0 | 0 | 164 | 4.32 | 1162 | 4.297401 |
Ecwid
| Platform name | Ecwid* |
| Platform link | https://www.ecwid.com/ |
| UK Users | 74,150 |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £15.00 |
| Highest monthly | £99.00 |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | N/A |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | Yes |
| Number of apps | 56 |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Ecwid is one of the UK’s most popular ecommerce shopping platforms both by the number of websites it powers and by its clients very high ratings of the service – 4.64 out of 5. That’s over 90% and we all know from reading online reviews that it’s very difficult to achieve and maintain that level of satisfaction among a userbase as regularly approached to switch supplier as online business owners are.
Ecwid is a very impressive package. To be honest, it’s not the cheapest but the difference in hosting plans compared with some of the other companies in this market is marginal and we can see the value delivered in that difference.
Ecwid offers the ability to sell on Etsy, Amazon, and eBay but you will need the £35 a month subscription to do this. Although the cheaper-priced monthly subscriptions are good, we would recommend that you probably go for the £35 option if you’re particularly motivated to build your online store because, with this option, you also receive automated marketing emails, abandoned cart emails, product filters, product variations, and more.
On the £99 option, the company provides you with “your own, branded iOS and Android shopping app” however, given how difficult it is to place apps at the top of search results in comparison to web pages, you may fail to benefit from any value from it.
Ecwid powers a businesses online selling platform from a central source whether the goods and services are being sold on a website, on a third-party platform, on social media, or in-store. Control over the platform is managed via the app and via the company’s website. As with the other platforms we’ve reviewed, there is an easy-to-use what-you-see-is-what-you-get drag and drop editor to create minimalist, responsive websites.
Ecwid does not offer payment services of its own but it does offer integration with over 40 payment gateways in 175 countries including the popular and ubiquitous Stripe. There are no charges for using a third-party payment gateway with Ecwid.
The platform links into the Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and Snapchat platforms smoothly as well as offering Facebook Messenger chat live to your store.
On the five internet rating platforms we surveyed for opinion, Ecwid scored are follows:
| Ecwid | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 173 | 4.8 | 441 | 4.6 | 4 | 6 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 618 | 4.645631 |
3dCart
| Platform name | 3dCart |
| Platform link | https://www.3dcart.com/ |
| UK Users | N/A |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £15.38 |
| Highest monthly | £185.35 |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 100+ |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes |
One of the oldest ecommerce providers, 3dcart was established in 1997 and it divides its focus equally between online and offline sales platforms.
There’s a heavy emphasis on the design and SEO capabilities offered by the platform.
There are 102 design themes on the site starting from free up to $199 with templates for the following sectors – toys & games, sports, photography, jewellery, health & beauty, garden, furniture, food & drink, flowers, electronics, bags & backpacks, auto parts, art, and apparel.
It has the drag and drop editor you would expect but, on the completion of a responsive design, a separate Google AMP page is created for faster loading and the more important page elements load first – these are two important ranking signals when Google decides how high your website and the pages on it will be listed.
The company also emphasises on its site that the shopping cart software which powers clients’ website is based upon giving users the quickest, clearest experience possible and clients (like you) full control over every aspect of presentation, pricing, and customer protection information. Separate solutions (within the monthly charge) are also offer from B2B ecommerce and for the sale of recurring subscriptions.
Prices for the service start of £15.38 a month and include a Facebook store, domain name registration, around-the-clock tech support, a built-in blogging function, and access to 30 different UK payment platforms including PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Klarna. There are over 100 different apps available on the company’s app store providing an impressive range of additional functionality to your account.
3dCart finished second bottom in our chart of the top ecommerce platforms yet it still got just over four out of five:
| 3dCart | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 27 | 4.2 | 101 | 4.4 | 9 | 6.3 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 87 | 3.3 | 101 | 4.45 | 325 | 4.069846 |
Volusion
| Platform name | Volusion |
| Platform link | https://www.volusion.com/v1/ |
| UK Users | N/A |
| Set-up charge | £0.00 |
| Lowest monthly | £23.47 |
| Highest monthly | £241.98 |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | Yes |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | No |
| Phone support | Yes |
| 24/7 Help | Yes |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Boasting 180,000 clients, Volusion is one of the larger international competitors in the ecommerce platform marketplace although its customer satisfaction ratings are the worst by some distance out of the 13 companies we researched and tested when writing this article.
The quality of the template designs on offer is high – at time of writing, there are 45 themes eleven of which are free. To buy a premium design, the flat rate on the site seems to be $180.
The app page appears to be a work in progress – during our time researching the company, there were zero. There may be a glitch on the system however.
There is a sort of app service called the “quick wins” section offering users 17 different services from the set-up of Google Analytics for $25 right up to $450 for a basic SEO audit. If you chose a few of them to get you started, the bill could easily run into $1,000s. We weren’t keen on the charge of $400 for the set-up of a Facebook pixel – that’s premium pricing for a fairly run-of-the-mill service.
The company offers payment processing at a rate of 2.15% (plus monthly fees) but only to companies based in North America.
Volusion finished in last place of the twelve platforms whose reviews we collected from different online site just scoring over 3:
| Volusion | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 55 | 3.3 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 4.1 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 11 | 2 | 37 | 3.78 | 136 | 3.022132 |
We can’t say that we’re surprised. This company has so much potential and the in-house knowledge they have on design and SEO is impressive. It just seems very easy to run up a substantial bill with them and, although the services are very good, we find it difficult to say that they’re worth the premium you’ll pay for them.
3. 2 larger e-commerce platforms requiring a developer for bigger businesses
For more complex businesses with a turnover of £1,000,000, you may benefit from using one of the following two established platforms and either developing it inhouse (if you or your staff have coding and programming skills) or outsourcing your site’s development to a third-party.
The benefits of working with platforms like these is that they can be much easier integrated into other programs and apps you use to run your business like online bookkeeping software, stock replenishment systems, and so on.
Magento
| Platform name | Magento |
| Platform link | https://magento.com/ |
| UK Users | 15,247 |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | N/A |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | Yes |
| Number of apps | 5986 |
| Phone support | No |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Magento from Adobe, used by over 15,000 companies in the UK for their ecommerce platform, is a highly-customisable online shopping system for firms intent on rapid Internet sales growth.
Your Magento site is actually developed by a third-party development company (many of which are licensed by Adobe and which are promoted on their website). For companies with a turnover of less than £5m, their Rapid Deployment Packages are likely the most suitable. You should budget on spending between £25,000 and £50,000 on the development of your site based upon an average developer cost per hour of around £110.
There is a very health ecosystem of apps for the platform – nearly 6,000 at last count most of which can be incorporated by your developer onto your site. Apps range from free up to $28,700 for an app which integrates with any enterprise resource planning software your company may be running.
Despite its specialist and more technical nature, Magento has attracted over 1,500 reviews online with an average score of 4.13 out of 5, possibly reflecting some of the users’ frustrations:
| Magento | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 339 | 3.9 | 495 | 4.3 | 164 | 7.2 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 10 | 4 | 495 | 4.31 | 1503 | 4.134697 |
OpenCart
| Platform name | OpenCart |
| Platform link | https://www.opencart.com/ |
| UK Users | 12,946 |
| Mobile App | Yes |
| Free trial? | N/A |
| Sell off website? | Yes |
| Sell face to face? | No |
| Number of apps | 13,000 |
| Phone support | No |
| 24/7 Help | No |
| Chat Support | Yes |
Slightly behind Magento in its numbers of users in the UK is OpenCart. OpenCart is an open source online c-commerce and store management platform blending a MySQL database with HTML.
The general consensus among web reviewers and developers is that OpenCart is far easier to use when building a web store although it lacks many of Magento’s more sophisticated and complicated features. You may not need a developer after all however there is a learning curve so whatever you save in doing it yourself has to be offset by the cost of not spending your time doing something which brings in revenue to your company.
There are tens of thousands of apps available and quite a few templates, however, to our eyes, the design templates look about ten years old with the faded gradients that were fashionable at the start of the 2010s featuring quite prominently.
Still a niche site with, according to some users, issues to still work out, the score of 4.19 out of 5 is impressive however this sample is across a client base of much smaller numbers than the other platforms we’re comparing it against:
| OpenCart | G2 Reviews | G2 Score | Capterra Reviews | Cap Score | TrustRadius Reviews | Trust Score |
| 69 | 4.1 | 125 | 4.3 | 19 | 7.6 | |
| Trustpilot Reviews | TP Score | GetApp Reviews | Get Score | Total reviews | Total | |
| 8 | 2.3 | 125 | 4.32 | 346 | 4.193642 |
Ecommerce platform FAQ
Which are the cheapest credit card payment providers in the UK?
We’ve already seen how some of the ecommerce platforms on offer do not offer you a way of taking card payments – you have to work with a third-party merchant services provider instead.
Some of the platforms which do offer integrated online payments offer you the option of using a different merchant service account. For example, you can specify any payment processor you want with Shopify however, if you don’t use theirs, then you’ll be charged an extra fee by the ecommerce platform on top of your merchant services fee.
So, what are third party gateways charging?
To help you decide which is right for you, we examined the case of an online retailer with £100,000 a year turnover – two thousand separate payments of £50 half of which are on debit card and half of which are on credit card. Below, you’ll see what you’d pay with some of the UK’s leading payment processors (before any additional ecommerce platform fees if applicable).
| Merchant service provider | Set-up fees | Annual fees | Processing fees | Total | Percentage of turnover |
| PaymentSense | £0.00 | £99.60 | £1,330.00 | £1,429.60 | 1.43% |
| Barclaycard | £150.00 | £180.00 | £1,250.00 | £1,580.00 | 1.58% |
| TakePayments | £0.00 | £240.00 | £1,501.00 | £1,741.00 | 1.74% |
| PayZone | £0.00 | £240.00 | £1,580.00 | £1,820.00 | 1.82% |
| WorldPay | £0.00 | £239.40 | £1,750.00 | £1,989.40 | 1.99% |
| myPOS | £0.00 | £0.00 | £2,250.00 | £2,250.00 | 2.25% |
| Payline | £0.00 | £376.08 | £2,114.00 | £2,490.08 | 2.49% |
| SumUp | £0.00 | £0.00 | £2,500.00 | £2,500.00 | 2.50% |
| Square | £0.00 | £0.00 | £2,500.00 | £2,500.00 | 2.50% |
| HSBC | £250.00 | £240.00 | £2,050.00 | £2,540.00 | 2.54% |
| Retail Merchant Services | £0.00 | £120.00 | £2,688.00 | £2,808.00 | 2.81% |
| izettle | £0.00 | £348.00 | £2,500.00 | £2,848.00 | 2.85% |
| Elavon | £25.00 | £240.00 | £3,030.00 | £3,295.00 | 3.30% |
| Paypal | £0.00 | £0.00 | £3,460.00 | £3,460.00 | 3.46% |
The most expensive deal costs more than £2,000 a year more in fees than the cheapest one so it’s a good idea to get quotes from multiple providers before you make a choice.
Please be aware that some of the platforms we’ve listed may do special deals with the online payment processors listed on this table. These deals change all the time so it’s always worth checking what’s around.
Each of the payment processors listed above offers real-world/offline payment processing too – this might be important if you run (or plan to run) a shop where you can take payments there and then from your customers.
Which are the most effective ways to get people to my store?
Many of the platforms listed in this article provide superb and effective ways to enable people to find your online store in the first place. You should seek to back up these efforts with the regular production of blogs and articles of interest to your potential customers as well as attempting to build a following on social media platforms.
When someone has visited your store, you should attempt to get contact information from them on every occasions, especially if they’re not ready to buy something from you just yet. By collecting their contact information and having gained their consent to do so, you can then email them regularly with the latest news about your company and special offers.
Do ecommerce platforms support dropshipping?
Some do but many don’t – if you intend to dropship every order or just some of them, you should check to see if the platform you’re considering using has the ability to process dropshipped orders.
Will I need to register for VAT?
If your UK-based turnover is higher than £85,000, you must, by law, register for VAT. You can start the process by clicking here.
What happens if a customer disputes an order?
If a customer disputes an order, you should do everything you can to satisfy them, no matter how unreasonable and unfair you perceive the customer as being. This may save the customer asking for a refund and leaving a negative review of your business online.
If your customer approaches their debit or credit card for a refund after you have refused a refund, the transaction will almost certainly be reversed.
Is it difficult to migrate to a different platform?
Moving from one different payment platform to another on an existing ecommerce platform is straightforward as long as your platform supports it.
Moving from one ecommerce platform to another is considerably more difficult and you may need to enlist the help of an IT consultant (at your cost) to do so. You should only consider moving from one platform to another where there is a clear economic or operational advantage. Please bear in mind that the longer you have been on a particular ecommerce platform and the more integrated it is with your other business systems, the longer and more complex the process will be.
Choosing the right e-commerce platform for you
Making the investment in an ecommerce platform for your new and existing business is worthwhile. For many businesses now, the Internet is a major source of revenue presenting a major growth opportunity as their sites become better known among their target audiences.
If you want help finding the right ecommerce platform for your company and its current state of development, fill in the form at the top of the page. Let us know about your business, what you do, and who you sell your products and services to. We’ll come back within 24-48 hours with 3-4 suggestions with the pros and cons for each alternative together with pricing.
Our service is free of charge and there’s no obligation to go ahead with any of the plans we present to you.