Best Ecommerce Platforms UK 2026: Costs, VAT & Delivery

If you’re trying to work out the best ecommerce platforms for a UK business, the short answer is: Shopify for speed and simplicity, WooCommerce if you want full control and lower long-term fees, and EKM or ShopWired if you want UK-based support without touching code. Which one wins depends on your order volume, your VAT position, and whether you sell into the EU. This guide walks through real transaction fees, payment gateways, VAT after Brexit, delivery with Royal Mail and Evri, and what each option actually costs once your sales grow.

Best Ecommerce Platforms for UK Sellers at a Glance

Prices change often, so check each provider’s own pricing page before you commit. The rest of this guide explains why these numbers matter more than they look.

Hosted vs Self-Hosted: The Honest Trade-Off

This is the decision that shapes everything else, so it’s worth being straight about it rather than picking a side.

Hosted platforms (Shopify, EKM, ShopWired, Wix, BigCommerce) handle your servers, security patches, and uptime. You pay a monthly fee and, on some plans, a small transaction fee if you don’t use their built-in payment processor. You get a working store faster and you’re not responsible when something breaks at 2am on Black Friday.

Self-hosted platforms (mainly WooCommerce, running on WordPress) give you the software for free, but you supply your own hosting, security, backups, and technical fixes. That’s real freedom: no forced app fees, no revenue cut, and you can move your store to any host you like. It’s also real work. If a plugin update breaks your checkout, that’s your problem to solve or pay someone to solve.

Neither is objectively better. A one-person business selling 20 orders a month usually does better on a hosted platform, because time saved not fighting with server settings is worth more than the fees saved. A business doing 2,000+ orders a month with in-house technical help often saves real money moving to WooCommerce, because Shopify’s percentage-based costs (apps, transaction fees) scale with revenue in a way that self-hosted costs don’t.

Shopify vs WooCommerce UK: What They Actually Cost

This is the comparison most UK sellers search for, so here it is with real 2026 figures rather than rounded guesses.

Shopify UK pricing currently runs across five tiers: Basic at £19 a month, Grow at £49, Advanced at £259, and Plus from roughly £1,800 a month on a three year term, all billed annually (monthly billing costs more). There’s also a Starter plan at £5 a month for social selling only, with no full online store. Card processing through Shopify Payments runs from 2.0% + 25p on Basic down to 1.5% + 25p on Advanced. If you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own extra fee on top, ranging from 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus.

WooCommerce itself is free, but a working store isn’t. Budget for WordPress hosting (roughly £10 to £40 a month for a UK host with decent uptime), an SSL certificate (often included free), a theme (free to around £150 one-off), and a payment gateway with its own card fees, typically from around 1.4% + 20p for UK domestic cards through providers like Stripe or SumUp. There’s no Shopify-style transaction fee on top, because WooCommerce doesn’t touch your payments. A realistic first-year total for a modest WooCommerce store sits somewhere between £300 and £1,500, before you add paid plugins for things like advanced shipping rules or abandoned cart recovery.

The practical difference: Shopify costs more as you scale but needs almost no technical maintenance. WooCommerce costs less at low-to-mid volume but the savings depend on you (or a developer) keeping plugins updated and the site secure. Neither platform is “cheaper” in every scenario, so run your own numbers against your expected order volume before deciding.

Transaction Fees and Payment Gateway Options

Every UK ecommerce platform lets you choose how customers pay, and the gateway you pick affects your fees far more than the platform’s monthly price does. Common options for UK stores include Shopify Payments, Stripe, PayPal, SumUp, and Opayo (formerly Sage Pay), each with different rates for UK cards versus international cards.

The rule of thumb: sticking with a platform’s own built-in payment system (like Shopify Payments) usually avoids extra platform fees, while using an external gateway can trigger an additional cut on hosted platforms. On WooCommerce there’s no such penalty either way, since the platform doesn’t process payments itself.

We’ve covered gateway fees, settlement times, and which providers suit low-volume versus high-volume UK sellers in a separate breakdown, so head there for the full comparison rather than us repeating it here.

VAT for UK Ecommerce Sellers (Including Post-Brexit EU Sales)

VAT trips up more new sellers than any other part of running an ecommerce website, so it’s worth getting the basics firmly fixed.

When you need to register

You must register for VAT once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period, according to GOV.UK and HMRC guidance. This isn’t based on the tax year; it’s checked at the end of every month against the previous 12 months. You have 30 days from the end of the month you crossed the threshold to notify HMRC, and registration takes effect from the first day of the second month after that. Many sellers register voluntarily below £90,000 if most of their customers are VAT-registered businesses who can reclaim the VAT anyway.

Selling to EU customers after Brexit

Since 1 January 2021, UK businesses are outside the EU’s VAT system, so the old EU-wide distance selling thresholds no longer apply to you. Two schemes matter here:

• IOSS (Import One Stop Shop): for goods worth £135 (roughly €150) or less sent to EU consumers. You can register through an EU-based intermediary, charge the customer’s local EU VAT rate at checkout, and file one monthly return instead of registering separately in every country. This is the option most small UK sellers use for low-value parcels.
• Standard import VAT: if you don’t use IOSS, or your order is over the threshold, VAT and any customs duty gets collected from the customer by the courier or postal operator when the parcel arrives. This can mean an unwelcome extra charge on delivery, which puts some EU shoppers off buying from UK sites altogether.

Note that the EU’s Union OSS scheme, which some guides mention, is not available to Great Britain-based sellers; it’s reserved for intra-EU sales and, in limited cases, Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework. If your accountant or platform mentions OSS for a mainland UK business, double-check they mean the Non-Union OSS (for digital services) or IOSS (for goods), not the standard Union scheme.

Sales from the UK to the EU are generally zero-rated for UK VAT, since they count as exports, but you’ll still need a UK EORI number to clear customs, and possibly an EU EORI number depending on your shipping setup. Rules in this area shift fairly often, so it’s worth checking GOV.UK’s current guidance or asking an accountant before you commit to a scheme.

Delivery Integrations: Royal Mail and Evri

Whichever ecommerce platform comparison UK sellers look at, delivery is usually the weakest link, so check this before you sign up rather than after.

Royal Mail connects to most platforms through its free Click & Drop tool, which syncs orders from Shopify, WooCommerce, and other platforms, prints postage labels, and pushes tracking numbers back to the customer automatically. Direct API access (Pro Shipping) is only available once you’re sending roughly 25,000 parcels a year; below that, Click & Drop or a third-party app like Shiptheory is the practical route.

Evri doesn’t offer the same native plugin depth as Royal Mail on every platform. On WooCommerce, dedicated shipping plugins can pull live Evri rates and print labels directly. On Shopify, Evri usually needs to be connected through a multi-carrier app (several UK sellers use EasyPost or PluginHive’s shipping app as the bridge) rather than a first-party Evri integration.

For most small UK stores doing under a few hundred parcels a week, a free or low-cost multi-carrier app that supports both Royal Mail and Evri (plus DPD, if you need it) is the sensible starting point. Larger merchants sending thousands of parcels a day sometimes build direct carrier integrations to cut per-label fees charged by aggregator apps, but that’s a developer project, not a weekend job.

Total Cost at Different Order Volumes

Numbers speak louder than plan names, so here’s a rough, honest estimate of monthly running costs at three different order volumes. These figures assume a mid-range physical product store using Shopify Payments or Stripe, and exclude one-off design or development costs.

At low volume, the gap between platforms is small enough that ease of use matters more than a few pounds a month. At high volume, WooCommerce’s lack of a platform-level transaction fee starts to show, though you’re trading that saving for more hands-on maintenance. Treat these as ballpark figures rather than a quote; your actual costs depend on average order value, chosen gateway, and how many paid apps or plugins you add.

Best Webshop Platform by Business Type

There’s no single best webshop platform for every UK seller, so here’s how it tends to break down in practice.

• First-time sellers testing an idea: Shopify Basic or Wix. Fast to launch, low upfront risk, and you can close the store easily if it doesn’t work out.
• Sellers who already run WordPress or want long-term control: WooCommerce. More setup effort, but no forced revenue cut and full ownership of your data.
• UK-only stores that want a local support number: EKM or ShopWired. Both are built and supported from the UK, which some sellers value highly when something goes wrong at short notice.
• Established brands doing £500k or more a year: Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Enterprise, for checkout customisation, B2B tools, and dedicated account support.
• Service businesses adding a small shop to an existing site: Wix or Squarespace, since the ecommerce features sit on top of a website you likely already need.

Other Ecommerce Platform Comparison UK Options Worth a Look

Beyond the two names everyone mentions, a handful of platforms are worth a shortlist spot depending on what you sell:

• BigCommerce: no extra platform transaction fee on any payment gateway, which suits stores using a gateway other than the platform’s own. Plans start from around £25 a month.
• Wix: strongest for very small stores or businesses whose website is mostly informational with a small shop attached. Card processing through Wix Payments runs around 2.9% + 30p.
• Squarespace Commerce: similar positioning to Wix, popular with creative and design-led brands who care about template quality.
• Magento (Adobe Commerce): powerful and flexible, but realistically a developer-led platform for larger UK retailers, not a small business starting point.

FAQs

What is the best ecommerce platform for a small UK business? 

For most small UK businesses starting out, Shopify Basic offers the fastest route to a working store with the least technical hassle, at £19 a month plus card processing fees. If you’re comfortable with more setup work in exchange for lower long-term fees, WooCommerce is a strong alternative, particularly if you already use WordPress.

Is WooCommerce or Shopify cheaper for UK sellers? 

At low order volumes (under 100 a month), the two are broadly similar once you account for hosting and plugin costs on WooCommerce. Past a few hundred orders a month, WooCommerce tends to work out cheaper because it doesn’t charge a platform-level transaction fee, though you’ll spend more time (or money) on maintenance.

Do I need to charge VAT on sales to EU customers after Brexit? 

Generally no UK VAT, since exports to the EU are zero-rated, but the customer’s own country’s import VAT applies instead. You can either register for IOSS to charge that VAT at checkout for orders under £135, or let the courier collect it from the customer on delivery.

What’s the UK VAT registration threshold in 2026? 

£90,000 of taxable turnover in any rolling 12-month period, according to GOV.UK. You must notify HMRC within 30 days of crossing it, and registration takes effect from the first day of the second month afterwards.

Can I use Royal Mail and Evri on the same ecommerce platform? 

Yes. Most platforms support both through either native tools (Royal Mail’s free Click & Drop) or a multi-carrier shipping app that connects to Evri as well. WooCommerce has dedicated plugins for both; Shopify usually needs an app to bridge Evri specifically.

Which platform has the lowest transaction fees? 

WooCommerce has no platform-level transaction fee at all, since it doesn’t process payments itself; you only pay your chosen gateway’s rate. Among hosted platforms, BigCommerce doesn’t charge an extra fee on top of your gateway’s rate, while Shopify’s own fee drops as you move up its plans.

Is Shopify or a UK platform like EKM better for support? 

EKM and ShopWired are built and staffed in the UK, so phone support tends to be more personal and available in UK hours. Shopify has 24/7 chat and phone support too, but it’s a much larger, global operation, so some sellers prefer the smaller UK providers for that reason.

Do I need a business bank account to sell online in the UK? 

It’s not a legal requirement for sole traders, but most payment gateways and platforms strongly prefer, and some require, a separate business account before they’ll approve you. It also makes bookkeeping and VAT calculations far simpler once you’re trading regularly.

How long does it take to set up an ecommerce website in the UK? 

A basic Shopify or Wix store can be live within a day or two if your products and images are ready. A custom WooCommerce build, or anything needing bespoke design work, typically takes two to six weeks depending on complexity.

What happens if I go over the VAT threshold without registering? 

HMRC can charge penalties of up to 15% of the VAT you owed, backdated to when you should have registered, according to GOV.UK guidance. It’s worth checking your rolling 12-month turnover monthly once you’re getting close to £90,000, rather than waiting for a year-end surprise.