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    What are the three Top Shopify Alternatives UK?

    Last Updated | January 16, 2024

    Table of Contents

    Shopify Alternatives UK: What is the significance of Shopify in the United Kingdom?

    Shopify is one of the most successful e-commerce stores currently present. It has a large consumer base and provides several features required for a successful e-commerce store.  Shopify has enjoyed its success across the world partly because of the ease in its ecommerce website development. There are some successful Shopify UK stores examples which you can read to have an idea that you can surely run a successful Shopify store in the UK. In fact, Shopify is steadily increasing its customer base in the UK, and people seem to be happy about this. Their positive Shopify UK reviews reinforce this statement. If you want to migrate your online stores to Shopify, it is preferable to use the top Shopify migration company UK to ensure the maintenance of standards during this procedure.

    Shopify development

    Overview: What can I use instead of Shopify in UK?

    Shopify has almost become synonymous with e-commerce. It’s one of the most trending e-commerce platforms on the market, with over one million businesses in more than 175 countries.

    However, just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s always the best solution for you. We’ll review the best Shopify alternatives of each e-commerce solution and learn why some business owners have migrated away from Shopify.

    Note: If you don’t want to completely migrate your website away from Shopify, you can integrate two stores using the best Shopify integration services UK and increase your customer base.

    Shopify integration

    WooCommerce reviews UK:

    WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. It was launched on September 27, 2011; the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customize and for the market position of the base product as freeware WooCommerce pricing & Fees UK:

    In order for you to cover the basic features, it will cost about $10/month. You’ll need to make the free WooCommerce plugin functional. If you move beyond to more will cost an additional $200 or so per year. For large-scale WooCommerce websites, total annual costs could be above $1,000

    WooCommerce Cost Cost Estimate: Basic Site Cost Estimate: Mid-Range Site Cost Estimate: Advanced Site
    Hosting

     

    $6.95/month $8.95/month $12.95/month
    Domain Name

     

    $15/year $15/year 15/year
    Themes Free Woo-commerce themes Free Woo-commerce themes $35-129 professional theme
    Extensions Transaction fees dependent on sales volume Transaction fees dependent on sales volume Transaction fees are dependent on sales volume, plus $100-400/year for scalable features
    Plugins Free $25-100/year $100-150/year
    Security $10/year $150/year $150-450/year
    Developer fees Free Free $1000-6000
    Approximate Annual Total $110 $300+ $1500+

    WooCommerce VAT UK:

    Setting up taxes and tax rates is one of the first tasks you want to perform when setting up a store. Value-added taxes can be a complex matter, but WooCommerce aims to make the setup as straightforward as possible.

    • Enable tax options.
    • Calculate tax on your product.
    • Select the Shipping tax class.
    • Add additional tax classes if needed.
    • Display the prices with the products.
    • Display the total taxes in the cart.
    • Set up the tax rates

    Shopify migration

    WooCommerce payment gateway UK:

    Payment gateways allow for the transaction processes on your e-commerce platform. WooCommerce provides several payment gateways which allow for smooth transaction processes and increased security.

    • WooCommerce payments.
    • Stripe.
    • Authorize.net.
    • PayPal standard.
    • Square.

    WooCommerce shipping plugin UK:

    WooCommerce Shipping plugins help you extend your online store’s functions by allowing you to create different shipping options for your WooCommerce store. This plugin will make your delivery process comparatively easier and effective, letting you focus on your business needs instead. Also, you can easily integrate your WooCommerce store with popular shipping services. The features provided will provide logistical support and shipment tracking. There are several plugins that can be utilized to make your logistics easier.

    Read Also Print on demand UK Shopify

    WooCommerce ShipStation Gateway

    WooCommerce ShipStation gateway is a popular service that helps e-commerce store owners manage, import, and export orders. This plugin is free and helps you integrate ShipStation services within your WooCommerce store.

    WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Plugin

    WooCommerce Table Rate shipping plugin is a free plugin that offers features through which you can easily create different shipping rules. The intuitive user interface of this plugin makes handling table rates easy. It integrates with WooCommerce shipping zones and helps define shipping rates by total weight.

    Read Also Best Alternative to Shopify

    Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce

    Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce provides a shipment tracking facility that improves the overall experience for the customers. This plugin helps you include tracking information from over 150 shipping carriers into the WooCommerce order completion emails.

    WooCommerce Weight Based Shipping Plugin

    WooCommerce Weight Based Shipping Plugin is really useful if you want to calculate shipping rates based on the weight of the order. It allows you to create multiple rules based on different store strategies and conditions.

    WooCommerce shipping zones UK

    You need to understand the concept of shipping zones for your products in the UK. Since United Kingdom’s administrative geography is complex and multi-layered, the proper UK shipping zones configuration might turn out to be challenging. Shipping the products to Highlands or the Channel Islands is most often much more expensive than to the UK mainland. To make it even more tangled, the availability of the UK carriers’ services usually varies depending on the delivery’s destination.

    Set up shipping zones:

    There are 4 major shipping ones in the UK.

    1. UK mainland.
    2. Scottish Highlands and Islands.
    3. Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Isles of Sicily.
    4. The Channel Islands.

    Set up these shipping zones by their postal codes so shipping can be made more manageable.

    WooCommerce hosting UK:

    There are several WordPress hosting providers which offer WooCommerce plugins and those that do offer different services with speed and security.

    WooCommerce Hosting Monthly Prices Monthly visitors
    SiteGround £2.95 10,000
    DreamHost £16.95 100,000
    Kinsta £30 20,000
    Inmotion Hosting £6.99 20,000
    Pressable £45 200,000
    EasyWP £3.88 50,000

     

    WooCommerce dropshipping UK:

    WooCommerce Dropshipping is developed to make Dropshipping easy and hassle-free. WooCommerce Dropshipping is an efficient store management tool for dropshipping stores.

    AliExpress Dropshipping with free Google Chrome Extension:

    With the help of this dynamic Chrome extension, you can easily find, compare and select the best products and shipping methods for your store. Simply search for your products, add to queue, and import products in bulk from the AliExpress platform. This plugin is billed at £36.

    WpAmazonShop:

    WpAmazonShop is an affiliate and dropshipping plugin designed exclusively for use with Amazon. The plugin allows you to easily browse through the millions of products on Amazon’s database using your WordPress dashboard, making it one of the most effective WooCommerce dropshipping plugins. It also lets you select and import different Amazon products into your WooCommerce store with a few clicks. Your affiliate ID is ported directly into product URLs. Pricing starts from £43 for a single site license.

    Print on demand WooCommerce UK?

    Print-on-demand is a business model that involves placing graphic designs, photography, and/or art on a standardized series of merchandise such as T-shirts, hoodies, tea mugs, posters, and lots of other clothing and household goods, in order to sell online. This idea is really taking off because it specifically gives the user what they desire. You design the products you would like to sell in the UK and publish them to your online store. Only after the product has sold does the production process begin. The product is then shipped directly to the customer.

    Note: Shopify already has made itself the pioneer of print-on-demand services. If you want to set up a POD store in the UK on Shopify, use Shopify website development UK, or if you want to get an idea of what the process is, you can read Print-on-demand UK Shopify.

    BigCommerce UK review:

    What Are The Best BigCommerce UK features?

    BigCommerce is a SaaS-based e-commerce platform. It is an e-commerce software delivered as a cloud-based system that can be accessed through all types of web browsers. As a SaaS platform, BigCommerce maintains servers and database storage, runs security patches and upgrades, and responds to issues. This ultimately removes the burden from businesses so they can focus on goals that move their businesses forward.

    BigCommerce Website Customization

    BigCommerce is a highly customizable platform. The BigCommerce framework allows customers to make use of fast-loading templates to their preferred business needs. These pre-built responsive templates help you easily and quickly to build an online store that resonates with your customers. Furthermore, BigCommerce includes its Akamai Image Manager within its themes at no extra cost to you. The image manager automatically optimizes each image for browsers and devices to ensure a beautiful display and decreases loading times. BigCommerce also lets you test the website before publishing to ensure everything is just how you want it.

    BigCommerce SEO Optimization

    BigCommerce includes built-in SEO features to help businesses increase organic exposure. The analytics dashboard provides the customers with insight and visibility. BigCommerce recognizes the analytics suites as a key differentiator and, as such, focuses on the highly searched keywords.

    BigCommerce Payment & Inventory Management

    BigCommerce supports a variety of third-party payment services. Specifically, they accept payments from major providers, including PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Pay with Amazon, and more. This feature allows businesses to make the decision of which service is the right fit for them based on features that align with their target users. BigCommerce will not penalize companies that use non-standard payment gateways and also helps you manage inventory and orders from a single location. You can also use third-party fulfillment applications to scale your business as you grow.

    BigCommerce Application Integrations

    BigCommerce integrates with external applications and plugins, which maintains a marketplace of tested and approved third-party apps. The active app developer community and a well-stocked app marketplace help businesses find custom elements or desired features that can improve their sites.

    Note: If you want your platform to excel in mobile responsiveness, then it would be better to opt for a Shopify app developer UK to design your Shopify store as mobile phones account for 50% of online store interactions.

    BigCommerce pricing UK?

    BigCommerce provides 3 different price plans for its users. You can try BigCommerce for free for 15 days and then pick up a plan.

    • The standard plan, which is charged at £ 80/month.
    • Plus plan which is charged at £ 58.20/month.
    • Pro plan, which is charged at £ 218.30/month.

    BigCommerce eBay UK integration?

    eBay and BigCommerce Integration helps you integrate your BigCommerce store with eBay, one of the most used e-commerce online platforms. Hence, you can grow your e-commerce business and increase your sales. This extension accomplishes this feat by providing features such as order processing, product handling, and product management.

    • Automated Inventory Updates: Automated Inventory updates is available for better management.
    • PriceSynchronization of product prices between BigCommerce store and eBay marketplace.
    • Product listing: Enable bulk product upload with synchronized product edits.
    • Orders: Orders from eBay automatically get listed on your BigCommerce store panel

    BigCommerce amazon integration UK?

    If you integrate your BigCommerce store with Amazon, you will have a certain increase in your sales. It is because once you integrate these two stores, your target market will increase, which will increase your awareness and sales simultaneously. Several features further complement the business model of your e-commerce store.

    Sync your BigCommerce Amazon inventory:

    Once you integrate your BigCommerce store with Amazon, the inventory across all your BigCommerce and Amazon stores will be synced together in real-time. It will allow you to make sales, and the store will instantly update stock levels everywhere which also ensures that you don’t oversell.

    Manage BigCommerce Amazon orders:

    The integration will authorizeyou to automatically import customer orders from all your BigCommerce sites, Amazon stores, and online marketplaces into one easy-to-use platform. This will allow you to view, edit, print, ship and take complete control of your BigCommerce and Amazon order management.

    Ship to BigCommerce and Amazon customers:

    Another feature that will be provided will allow quick and accurate shipping of high volumes of customer orders from Amazon and BigCommerce. This will make it easy to ship to customers anywhere in the world.

    Note: If you are switching from Shopify to any other platform because your business is not doing well, it would be safer to first hire Shopify experts UK to see if the problem was at your end, it is because shifting a platform is a critical task that can have severe consequences if not considered professionally.

    How to hire BigCommerce developers UK?

    BigCommerce fees UK?

    BigCommerce provides 3 payment plans as well. You can make use of the 15-day free trial to use the plan and then decide accordingly.

    Plan Price per month(paid monthly) Price per month(paid annually)
    Standard £22.89 £22.89
    Plus £61.11 £54.99
    Pro £229.26 £206.33

     

    Note: If you deem that you can get a better-designed store, you can always use a Shopify website design agency UK to design your store and make it resonate with your UK customer base.

    BigCommerce CBD UK?

    The sales of CBD ad Hemp oils have drastically increased over the past five years. BigCommerce allows the sales of CBD.  You can sell products such as CBD oils, supplements, sprays, balms, capsules, and others as well. In recent years the advertised health benefits, partially because of the close affiliation with the cannabis plant, consumer interest around CBD products has been on a steady rise since 2016. CBD is completely legal in the UK.

    BigCommerce UK vat?

    If you are importing consignments into the UK, VAT is charged at the point-of-sales instead of at the point of importation for goods not exceeding £135 in value. Now, the seller must pay import VAT on clearance. It is also possible that the seller opts and has their customer pay at customs.

    Magneto Reviews UK:

    Magneto hosting UK:

    There are several host service providers in the UK. Business owner should choose their hosts according to their requirements.

    • Krystal starts at £29.99/ month.
    • Pick-a-web offers 3 service plans for UK Magneto store owners.
    1. Starter, which is perfect for small businesses priced at £8.99/month or £7.49/month if paid annually.
    2. Pro is their best seller and is priced at £12.99/month or £10.99/month paid annually.
    3. Business, which provides services for plans that target business growth. It is priced at £20.49/month or £16.99/month paid annually.

    Magneto pricing UK

    Magneto Community Cost:

    Magneto Community Edition works on an open-source basis. The Magneto cost, in terms of the Community Edition, is £0 – it’s a free digital download. You will, however, need to manage the Magneto store costs as you’ll need to use a website designer to make it for you.

    Magneto Enterprise Cost:

    The Magneto Enterprise Edition has all of the features of the Community edition and then some more complex and evolved functionality. It’s developed for complex online stores with large numbers of products, which need features such as advanced marketing tools and complex SEO, full-page caching, and easily accessible support. There are also additional security checks and balances in place. Magneto Enterprise cost is between £17,000 and £25,000.

    Note: If Magento is proving to be costly for you, it is preferable that you set up your store on Shopify using a Shopify website design agency UK and get started with your e-commerce business.

    Magneto agency UK

    There are several agencies that service needs for Magneto development in the UK. You should be mindful of choosing which company to select for services as every company has a different working structure.

    • VAIMO
    • IWEB
    • UPMENT
    • CTI digital.
    • LAVASOFT
    • SCOMMERCE MAGE

    Magneto 2 hosting UK

    Magneto 2 hosting solutions provide updates to enhance your platform’s performance and security. This is why it is important to find a hosting provider that matches your business’ needs and minimizes server downtime.

    The most important features of a hosting provider that you should consider are:

    Compatibility: check that the provider is compatible with Magneto. Security: whether the hosting solution has major security measures like dedicated firewalls, SSL certificates, IP whitelisting, and 2-factor authentication. Speed: check the loading speed and if the server can handle overloads.

    Some service providers are listed below:

    • Cloudways
    • Hostinger
    • A2 Hosting
    • Nexcess
    • Magemojo

    How to hire Magneto developer UK?

    1. Write a decent brief explaining what you require.
    2. Set a budget. This should include the development, hosting, and other charges.
    3. Investigate both freelancers and agencies. Find what they offer and if their services match with what you require.
    4. Look at reviews, ratings, and testimonials. This will ensure that the developers you are using are certified and expert developers.
    5. Experience their communication skills. If you see that they are struggling to communicate with you, this means that the requirements are unclear, so eventually, the project will fail.
    6. Practice with a pilot project.
    7. Keep checking in with the team.

    Note: If you think that the expenses of Magento are high, you can make your store on Shopify and use the services of a Shopify website development UK company to develop your website at better rates.

    Magneto support UK

    Magneto requires support services 24/7 in order to ensure that your business operations are not compromised. You can employ Magneto support services in the UK to have you store operational support with continuous improvements. You can use services provided by Fluidcommerce, BingDigital, and Pushon, which are Magneto companies based in the UK.

    Magneto partners UK

    There are companies partnering with Magneto, such as Maginus, SixbySix, and Accenture. These companies are partnered with Magneto officially.

    Magneto costs UK

    The costs of Magneto, not just in UK, are quite steep. On average, it will cost at least £2000 pounds. For Magento enterprise solutions, it will cost at least £16,000. For Magneto, enterprise solutions on the cloud will cost around £29,000.

    FAQs:

    Is there a free alternative to Shopify in England, Scotland, and Ireland?

    SquareSpace Commerce

    One of the alternatives to Shopify is Squarespace Commerce. Squarespace is a website builder with all the capabilities required for an e-Commerce store.

    From the point of view of online stores, Squarespace is better than Shopify. Its SEO capabilities and overall functionalities are considerably superior. However, e-Commerce was a recent add-on for Squarespace, so its app store is still sub-par in comparison to Shopify.

    Wix

    Wix is a very popular website builder and is a good alternative to services like WordPress for small and medium businesses. As one of the e-commerce alternatives to Shopify, Wix makes things quite easy for individuals and companies looking to set up an online store. Wix offers two different options when setting up a site.

    The first option is a guided assistant that will ask different questions. Based on the answers provided, it will suggest different templates and apps create a unique site. Alternatively, more experienced webmasters might prefer the flexibility of doing everything themselves.

    Ecwid

    The Ecwid Forever Free plan comes with an Instant Store builder, which allows you to get your products online without an existing website or coding knowledge. Ecwid can be easily embedded in any CMS to give you eCommerce superpowers with an easy upgrade and downgrade options as you grow.

    What is Shopify’s biggest competitor in UK, Scotland, and Ireland?

    The biggest competitor of Shopify in the UK, Scotland, and Ireland is Wix marketplace. There are almost 3.5 million stores that are powered by Wix, and this figure continues to grow.


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    About

    Folio3, a Software Powerhouse established in 2005, is one of the leading eCommerce solution providers for SMBs and Fortune 500. The Company has expertise in diverse industries such as Animal Care, Retail, Automotive, Food and Agriculture, and Health care. From ecommerce store design and development to full-scale ERP deployment and integration, Folio3 has done it all.