Ecwid free is a demo. You need a real shop.
Ecwid's free plan is fine if you want to see what ecommerce feels like. It's not fine for a real UK business. Five products, no custom domain, an ecwid.com/username URL your customers won't trust, and a design that's built to embed inside someone else's website rather than be a shop in its own right.
The moment your ambition is anything larger — ten products, a proper brand, a domain you can share confidently — you're on Ecwid Venture at £14/mo or Business at £29/mo. And even on Business you only get to 2,500 products before Ecwid pushes you up to Unlimited at £82/mo.
Freewebstore Community is genuinely free. Unlimited products from day one. Your own .co.uk or .com domain. A proper standalone shop with SEO, blog, custom pages — not a widget bolted onto someone else's site.
Open My Free ShopWhat Ecwid UK charges vs what Freewebstore charges
Ecwid Free: 5 products only. No custom domain. Ecwid subdomain URL.
Ecwid Venture: £14/mo. 100 products. Custom domain. £168/yr.
Ecwid Business: £29/mo. 2,500 products. Abandoned-cart, staff accounts. £348/yr.
Ecwid Unlimited: £82/mo. Removes product cap. £984/yr.
Freewebstore Community: £0/mo forever. Unlimited products. Your custom domain from day one.
Freewebstore Startup: £15/mo. Free .co.uk domain for year one. Discount codes, loyalty points, gift cards. 0.5% sale fee.
Freewebstore Pro: £49/mo. Live shipping rates, abandoned-cart recovery, Smart Import unlimited, 5 staff accounts.
What UK sellers get on Freewebstore — without paying up
Unlimited products, always
List 5, 500 or 5,000 — all on the free Community plan. Ecwid caps free at 5, Venture at 100, Business at 2,500. Every product cap on Ecwid is a growth tax; Freewebstore has none.
A real UK domain from day one
Point your own .co.uk or .com at Freewebstore on the free plan — free SSL included. Startup gets a free .co.uk for the first year. Ecwid keeps you on an ecwid.com subdomain until you upgrade to Venture.
Standalone shop, not a widget
Freewebstore is a full standalone store with SEO, blog, custom pages and control. Ecwid's core design is a widget you embed on someone else's site. Standalone shops rank better in Google and give you a real content site to market.
Every Ecwid feature is a paywall
Ecwid's model is to give you a working shop then meter every real feature.
Automatic tax rates: upgrade to Venture.
Staff accounts: upgrade to Business.
Abandoned-cart recovery: upgrade to Business.
Advanced reports: upgrade to Business.
2,500+ products: upgrade to Unlimited (£82/mo).
By the time you have a real UK shop that ships and markets properly, you're on Business at £29/mo — £348 a year on the subscription alone before you've paid the payment gateway a penny.
What Freewebstore bundles at each tier
Community (free): unlimited products, custom domain, real checkout, AI product copy, AI SEO, product reviews, MailChimp integration, multi-channel selling (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google Shopping, Pinterest).
Startup (£15/mo): everything in Community plus free .co.uk domain year one, discount codes, loyalty points, gift cards, 2 staff accounts, human ticket support.
Pro (£49/mo): everything in Startup plus permanent free domain, abandoned-cart recovery, live Royal Mail rates, unlimited Smart Import, 5 staff accounts, email marketing integrations.
Startup at £15/mo does more than Ecwid Business at £29/mo — and with no product cap.
UK-specific advantages Ecwid can't match
UK payment gateways: Stripe, PayPal, Ryft (UK-based), Klarna and Clearpay for buy-now-pay-later. No platform-fee surcharge on any gateway on any plan.
UK shipping: Royal Mail Tracked 24, Tracked 48, Special Delivery, plus Evri, DPD, Yodel and Parcelforce as first-class configurable options. Royal Mail Click & Drop integration prints labels straight from the control panel.
UK tax: 20% VAT / 5% reduced / zero-rated per product, with clean CSV exports to KashFlow, Xero and QuickBooks. Once you register for VAT after crossing the £90,000 threshold, Freewebstore applies and records VAT correctly for MTD.
UK data: Freewebstore Ltd is registered in England (Company Number 06713528). Data hosted in EU/UK regions. UK-based support. Ecwid data flows through Lightspeed's Canadian infrastructure.
Move from Ecwid to Freewebstore in an afternoon
1. Sign up (no card). Create a free Freewebstore account. Pick one of 100+ mobile-responsive UK themes.
2. Export from Ecwid. In Ecwid Control Panel: Catalogue → Products → Export → CSV.
3. Smart Import maps the columns. Drop the file into Freewebstore. AI matches titles, variants, images and stock automatically. Free for up to 1,000 products, unlimited on Pro.
4. Rebuild your marketing pages. Copy About / Contact / Delivery / Returns into Freewebstore Custom Pages. Under an hour for most sellers.
5. Point your domain, cancel Ecwid. Update DNS to Freewebstore — free SSL applied. Cancel Ecwid. Add all the products you were about to hit the cap with.
