The Shopify UK bill isn't what it looks like
Shopify's UK pricing page leads with £25 a month. That's the number that shows up in adverts. It's not the number that shows up on your bank statement.
By the time a real UK store is trading, that £25 becomes closer to £100 a month once you've added an app for reviews (Judge.me), an app for abandoned-cart email (Klaviyo), an app for upsells (ReConvert) and an app for anything more sophisticated than the default UK shipping rates — because Shopify's out-of-the-box shipping app leans towards USPS, FedEx and UPS rather than Royal Mail.
Then there's the FX. The Shopify App Store bills in US dollars. Your card issuer applies a non-sterling fee on every subscription every month.
Freewebstore is free forever. GBP-billed. No app subscriptions in the way of features you'd expect from a proper UK ecommerce platform in 2026.
Open My Free ShopWhat Shopify UK charges vs what Freewebstore charges
Shopify Basic: £25/mo (annual) or £32/mo (monthly). That's £300–£384 a year on the subscription alone.
Shopify Grow: £65/mo. £780 a year.
Shopify Advanced: £344/mo. £4,128 a year.
Freewebstore Community: £0/mo. Forever. No card at sign-up. 2.5% platform fee on sales — that's it.
Freewebstore Startup: £15/mo (or annual discount). 0.5% platform fee. Free .co.uk domain for the first year.
Freewebstore Pro: £49/mo. Same 0.5% fee, permanent free domain, Smart Import unlimited, abandoned-cart recovery, live shipping rates.
What British sellers actually need — and where Shopify makes it hard
Klarna, Clearpay & the 2% surcharge
UK shoppers expect Klarna and Clearpay at checkout. On Shopify Basic, any gateway that isn't Shopify Payments carries a 2% platform surcharge on every sale — on top of the gateway's own fees. Freewebstore has no such surcharge on any plan. Add Stripe, PayPal, Ryft, Klarna and Clearpay side-by-side and pay only what the gateway itself charges.
Royal Mail Click & Drop
Freewebstore ships with Royal Mail Tracked 24, Tracked 48 and Special Delivery as first-class shipping options, plus Evri, DPD, Yodel and Parcelforce. Click & Drop integration prints labels straight from your control panel. Shopify's UK courier setup usually means installing a paid third-party app.
UK VAT, MTD & KashFlow
Standard 20%, reduced 5% or zero-rated per product. Orders export with VAT breakdowns for KashFlow, Xero or QuickBooks. When you cross the £90,000 threshold and register with HMRC, Freewebstore handles the maths. Shopify handles VAT too — but Shopify's KashFlow integration doesn't exist; you'll be exporting CSVs by hand.
The Shopify apps you thought were included
Shopify's pitch is "there's an app for that." What it doesn't say on the plans page is that most of those apps are separate monthly subscriptions, billed in USD, that stack on top of the £25/mo Basic bill.
A typical UK Shopify Basic store adds:
— Judge.me for product reviews (~£12/mo)
— Klaviyo for abandoned-cart email (~£16/mo at 500 contacts, more as your list grows)
— ReConvert for post-purchase upsells (~£24/mo)
— SEO Manager for on-page SEO (~£16/mo)
— Smile.io or similar for loyalty (~£40/mo once past the free tier)
That's an extra ~£108/mo in app subscriptions before you've bought a theme, added a currency converter or paid Shopify's 2% third-party-gateway surcharge.
What Freewebstore bundles for £0
Product reviews, abandoned-cart recovery, AI product copy and AI-driven SEO metadata generation are all built in to Freewebstore Community — the free plan.
Loyalty points, discount codes, gift cards and multi-channel selling (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google Shopping, Pinterest) come in on Startup at £15/mo — still cheaper than adding any two Shopify apps.
Live Royal Mail and courier rates, Smart Import for unlimited product uploads and custom domain email come in on Pro at £49/mo — still cheaper than Shopify Grow at £65 before any of its apps.
The maths only goes one way. And it goes there in pounds sterling, without an FX fee.
Move your Shopify shop to Freewebstore in an afternoon
1. Sign up (no card). Create a free Freewebstore account. Pick a theme. About a minute.
2. Export your Shopify products. In your Shopify admin, Products → Export → CSV. Drop the file into Freewebstore.
3. Smart Import maps the columns. AI reads your Shopify export and matches product titles, variants, images and stock automatically. Free for up to 1,000 products, unlimited on Pro. Order and customer history come across on any paid plan.
4. Point your domain, cancel Shopify. Update your .co.uk or .com DNS to Freewebstore. Free SSL is applied automatically. Cancel Shopify at the end of your billing cycle. Your customers, your URL, your stock — same as before, minus the monthly bill.
What stays, what changes
Stays the same: your domain, your customers, your product catalogue, your stock levels, your Google rankings (canonical URLs preserved), Stripe and PayPal connections.
Changes: your monthly bill (drops to £0 or £15 depending on plan), your payment gateway options (add Ryft, Klarna and Clearpay without a surcharge), your shipping options (Royal Mail, Evri, DPD built in), your theme (100+ available, all free).
Doesn't need to change but can: your email marketing tool. Freewebstore integrates with MailChimp natively, and cart-recovery emails are built in on Startup.
