Getting started with Shopify
Shopify’s onboarding is the most polished in this category. You sign up, answer a few questions about what you sell and where, and land in an admin with a theme already applied and a working — if empty — storefront. A checklist in the dashboard walks you through adding a product, setting up payments, choosing a delivery method and connecting a domain, and it survives you closing the tab and coming back tomorrow.
The admin dashboard
The admin is organised around the jobs you actually do daily: products, orders, customers, analytics and marketing. Navigation is identical on desktop and in the mobile app, and the search bar at the top reliably finds settings rather than just products. In our test store we went from empty account to a live, payment-ready shop with five products in a single afternoon without opening the documentation once.
Themes and customisation
The Theme Store holds roughly 270 themes — around two dozen free ones built and maintained by Shopify, and the rest from third-party partners. Every theme is responsive, speed-tested and built on Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 framework, which is what makes the section-based editor as flexible as it is: you add, reorder and remove blocks on any page template rather than editing code.
Paid themes are a one-off licence rather than a subscription. Shopify prices them in US dollars, typically between $120 and $400, with most professional themes landing around $200–$350. Beyond the editor, themes are written in Shopify’s Liquid template language, so a developer can change anything — but you or someone you hire will need to learn it.
Migrating an existing shop
Shopify provides import tools and a large network of certified Partners for moving in from WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Wix or Squarespace. Products, customers and order history usually transfer cleanly; theme design and any custom integrations have to be rebuilt. For a large catalogue, budget for a Partner to run the migration as a project rather than treating it as an afternoon’s CSV work.
Key features
Checkout and payments
Shopify Checkout is the platform’s single biggest advantage. Shop Pay lets returning customers buy in one tap using details already stored with Shopify rather than with your shop, and Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal are all live from day one. More than 100 additional gateways are available for regional preferences.
Shopify Payments is the built-in processor, and in the UK it charges 2% + 25p per standard online transaction on Basic, 1.7% + 25p on Grow and 1.5% + 25p on Advanced. Crucially, using it also removes the platform fee Shopify applies when you process through a third party — 2%, 1% and 0.6% on those same plans. For almost every UK merchant, Shopify Payments is the cheaper route by a wide margin.
The App Store
With around 13,000 apps, the App Store is both the platform’s greatest strength and the main reason bills creep up. There is a well-reviewed solution for nearly every workflow: email marketing, reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, print-on-demand, dropshipping, B2B wholesale, multi-currency, returns, bundles and more.
The catch is that several things you would reasonably expect to be built in — serious email marketing, robust product reviews, multi-warehouse stock rules — are paid apps. It is not unusual for a mid-sized shop to spend £80–£250 a month on apps on top of the plan, and that spend rarely goes down once it is embedded in your processes.
Selling across channels and in person
One stock pool feeds your online shop, Shopify POS tills, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping, with prices and stock levels syncing automatically. Every plan from Basic upwards includes 10 inventory locations, so a shop with a warehouse and two branches is covered without an upgrade. For any retailer selling both online and over a counter, this single inventory is genuinely hard to replicate elsewhere.
Selling internationally
Shopify Markets handles cross-border selling: local currencies and payment methods, translated storefronts, country-specific domains or subfolders, and duty and import tax estimates shown at checkout. For a UK shop selling into the EU post-Brexit, having duties calculated before the customer pays removes one of the most common causes of refused deliveries and chargebacks.
Analytics and reporting
Even on Basic you get sales by channel, conversion rate at each funnel step, customer lifetime value, traffic sources and product-level performance. Custom reports and dashboards are reserved for Advanced and above, which is one of the more defensible reasons to move up a tier. Data-heavy merchants often layer a dedicated analytics tool on top regardless.
Pricing: how much does Shopify cost?
Shopify runs three main UK plans plus Plus for enterprise, and each has two prices: a lower rate if you commit to a year and pay upfront, and a higher rate if you pay monthly. The figures below are the annual rate, with the monthly-billing equivalent underneath. Remember that card processing is charged separately on top of whichever plan you choose.
| Plan | Price | Best for | Key features |
|---|
| Basic | £19/mo£25 billed monthly | Solo sellers and new shops | 10 inventory locations, 2% + 25p card rate, 2% third-party gateway fee, basic reports |
| Grow | £49/mo£65 billed monthly | Small teams and growing shops | 5 staff accounts, 1.7% + 25p card rate, 1% third-party gateway fee, standard reports |
| Advanced | £259/mo£344 billed monthly | Scaling and cross-border brands | 15 staff accounts, 1.5% + 25p card rate, 0.6% third-party gateway fee, custom reports |
| Plus | From £1,800/moannual contract | Enterprise and high-volume brands | 200 inventory locations, unlimited staff, B2B, customisable checkout, 0.2% gateway fee |
Prices and introductory offers change regularly — check Shopify’s current UK pricing and offer.
Ease of use
For a non-technical owner, Shopify is about as gentle as a serious eCommerce platform gets. The admin is logically organised, the help centre is thorough and well-written, and there is an enormous free library of community tutorials and videos. Most people can launch a working shop in a weekend: products in, images uploaded, payments connected, delivery rules set, theme chosen.
The learning curve arrives later, and it arrives through apps. Once you have a reviews app, an email app, a subscriptions app and a loyalty app all touching the same customer records and the same theme, you inherit compatibility quirks that nobody warned you about. It is manageable — but plan on auditing your app list every few months rather than letting it grow unchecked.
Three days free, then £1/month for three months — long enough to build a real shop before you commit to a plan.
Start your Shopify trialPerformance, security and support
Shopify runs on global infrastructure with a long-standing 99.99% uptime record, and it absorbs Black Friday peaks across millions of shops at once without merchants doing anything. Checkout is served from edge locations worldwide and every plan includes a CDN. You never touch a server, a cache or an update.
Security is genuinely best-in-class for this price bracket: PCI DSS Level 1 compliance, automatic SSL on every domain, fraud analysis on each order and round-the-clock infrastructure monitoring. For anyone taking card payments at volume, having that handled by the platform rather than by you is worth real money in both risk and time.
Support runs 24/7 via live chat and email, with phone support on higher tiers. In our testing, chat replies arrived inside five minutes and agents answered platform questions accurately rather than reading from a script. For anything involving code, the Shopify Community forums and the certified Partner network fill the gap that in-house support cannot cover.
Our scoring breakdown
The bottom line
Shopify is the default recommendation for most online shops because it does the hard, revenue-critical parts of eCommerce better than anyone: a checkout that converts, infrastructure that holds up under load, one stock pool across every channel, and an app ecosystem that covers virtually any workflow you will ever need. The trade-offs are real but predictable — app spend, the platform fee if you avoid Shopify Payments, and a big step up in price at Advanced.
If you are launching a shop, outgrowing a platform, or scaling a brand that sells online and in person, Shopify is rarely the wrong answer. Take the three-day trial and the £1/month period, build something real on it, and only commit once you have priced your own app stack rather than the headline plan alone.
Shopify vs the competition
How it stacks up against the other brands we rate most highly. Scores are each brand’s overall rating from our own review of that platform.
Builder
Score
From
Best for
Score
9.8
From£19/moBasic, annual billing
Best forSelling seriously online and in person, with the best checkout in the category
Score
8.9
From£1/mointro, then from £16/mo
Best forCheapest bundled extras — domain, email and a personal consultant included
Score
9.8
From£9/moLight, annual ex VAT
Best forDesign freedom on a site where the shop is only part of the story
Score
9.3
Best forUK-based hosting for a self-built shop, with transparent renewal pricing
Who should use Shopify?
Direct-to-consumer brands
You want a fast, conversion-focused storefront and the highest-converting checkout available, without managing any of the plumbing behind it.
We’d start on Basic — £19/mo
Retailers selling online and in person
You need one stock pool behind a website, a till and social channels, with staff accounts for a small team.
We’d start on Grow — £49/mo
Scaling and cross-border brands
Volume is high enough that the lower card rate and custom reporting pay for the tier, and you are selling into the EU or further afield.
We’d start on Advanced — £259/mo
First-time sellers testing an idea
You want to find out whether anyone will actually buy before committing real money to a platform.
We’d start on Basic — £1/mo for the first 3 months
If your site is content-led with a small shop attached, you only sell a handful of products and want the lowest possible running cost, or you need total control of your hosting stack, weigh Shopify against the builders and hosts in the comparison table above — each of them scores higher than Shopify on one of those points.
Ready to launch your shop with Shopify?
Start with three days free and £1/month for three months — build a real shop, test the checkout, and only commit when you are ready.
Visit ShopifyFrequently asked questions
Is Shopify free?
No. There is no permanent free plan. New UK accounts currently get three days free followed by three months at £1/month, after which Basic costs £19/month on annual billing or £25/month if you pay monthly. Card processing fees apply on top of the subscription on every plan.
Do I have to use Shopify Payments?
No — you can connect more than 100 third-party gateways. But Shopify then charges a platform fee on every order: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced, on top of whatever your own processor charges. Shopify Payments removes that fee entirely and its own UK rates are competitive (2% + 25p down to 1.5% + 25p by plan), so for most merchants it is the cheaper option by a clear margin.
What does a Shopify shop really cost per month in the UK?
Start with the plan (£19–£259/month on annual billing), add card fees of roughly 1.5–2% + 25p per order, add a one-off theme licence if you buy one ($120–$400), then add apps. On our own estimates a small shop realistically lands around £60–£150 a month all in, and a mid-sized one £250–£600. Apps are the variable that catches people out, not the plan.
Can I move my existing shop to Shopify?
Yes. Shopify has import tools and a network of certified migration Partners covering WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Wix, Squarespace and most other platforms. Products, customers and order history usually transfer cleanly; theme design and custom integrations need rebuilding. For a large catalogue, treat it as a project with a Partner rather than a DIY afternoon.
Is Shopify good for dropshipping?
It is the most widely used platform for it, with mature integrations into DSers, Printful, Printify, Spocket and AliExpress. Apps handle product imports, routing orders to suppliers and stock syncing automatically. Bear in mind that UK dropshippers still need to get VAT and import duty right on goods arriving from outside the UK — the platform will not do that thinking for you.
How does Shopify compare to Wix, IONOS or WooCommerce?
Shopify is the specialist: choose it when selling is the point of the site. Wix gives you more design and content freedom on a site where the shop is secondary. IONOS is the cheapest way to get a small shop online with a domain, email and support bundled in. WooCommerce on WordPress is the most flexible and cheapest in licence terms, but you take on hosting, security and updates yourself. For a merchant who wants to spend their time selling rather than maintaining a stack, Shopify is the easiest path.
