Wix "free" doesn't sell anything
Wix has a free plan — and it's fine for a simple brochure site. But the moment you want to take a payment, that plan does nothing for you. You need Wix Light at £11/mo (which still shows Wix advertising on your shop) or Wix Core at £22/mo to run a real UK online shop.
That's before you pay a currency converter app, before you install anything for reviews or abandoned-cart email, and before you find out the hard way that Wix Payments in the UK doesn't yet do Klarna or Clearpay natively — the two buy-now-pay-later options UK shoppers most expect.
Freewebstore is free forever. GBP-first. A real UK shop, a real checkout, no Wix advertising on your storefront, no wix.com URL.
Open My Free ShopWhat Wix UK actually charges to sell online
Wix Free: no ecommerce. Wix ads on your site. wix.com/username URL.
Wix Light: £11/mo. Basic ecommerce with a 2.5% platform fee on sales. Wix ads still shown.
Wix Core: £22/mo. Full ecommerce, ads removed. £264/yr on the subscription alone.
Wix Business: £30/mo. Adds subscriptions, multi-currency, advanced analytics. £360/yr.
Wix Business Elite: £137/mo. £1,644/yr.
Freewebstore Community: £0/mo. Forever. No ads on your store. Custom domain from day one.
Freewebstore Startup: £15/mo. Free .co.uk domain for the first year. Loyalty points, discount codes, gift cards. 0.5% sale fee.
Where Wix hits UK sellers hardest
The Wix Payments corner
To avoid a 2.5% Wix Light platform fee you need Wix Payments — but Wix Payments in the UK doesn't yet support Klarna or Clearpay natively. Using Stripe or PayPal instead means the Wix fee stays. Freewebstore uses whatever gateway you like (Stripe, PayPal, Ryft, Klarna, Clearpay) with no equivalent surcharge on any plan.
Wix themes don't leave Wix
Wix's editor produces sites that can't be cleanly exported to another platform. If you decide to move — because prices went up or a feature you need lives behind Business Elite — you rebuild from scratch. Freewebstore themes are HTML/CSS you own; your products and customers export as CSV any time.
UK VAT, Royal Mail, KashFlow
Freewebstore ships with 20% VAT config, Royal Mail Tracked/Special Delivery options, Click & Drop label printing, and one-click export to KashFlow. Wix does UK VAT well — but its UK shipping integrations and UK accounting connectors are thinner, and typically involve third-party apps.
The Wix upgrade tax
Wix's tier structure is designed to nudge you up. Here's how it plays out for a growing UK seller.
To sell at all: upgrade from Free to Light (£11/mo) — or lose the sale.
To remove Wix branding: upgrade from Light to Core (£22/mo).
To add subscriptions or multi-currency: upgrade from Core to Business (£30/mo).
To skip the Wix Payments corner: add a Klarna app — usually another paid subscription.
To do proper abandoned-cart email: add Wix Ascend or a Klaviyo integration — another paid app.
Every step is another line item and another cancellation to remember. Freewebstore ships those features on Community, Startup or Pro without asking you to upgrade for each one.
What Freewebstore includes on the same money
£15/mo Freewebstore Startup includes: unlimited products, unlimited traffic, custom .co.uk domain free for year one, no Wix-style branding, discount codes and promotions, loyalty points, gift cards, MailChimp integration, product reviews.
£49/mo Freewebstore Pro adds: unlimited Smart Import for large migrations, permanent free domain, abandoned-cart recovery, live Royal Mail and courier rates, 5 staff accounts.
Compare Wix Core (£22/mo, no loyalty, no gift cards, no cart recovery) or Wix Business (£30/mo, still no native Klarna at UK checkout) and the maths tilts sharply.
UK-billed. UK-supported. Since 2007.
Move from Wix to Freewebstore in an afternoon
1. Sign up (no card). Create a free Freewebstore account. Pick one of 100+ mobile-responsive UK themes. Drop in your logo. About a minute.
2. Export your Wix products. In Wix Dashboard: Products → More Actions → Export Products → CSV. Drop it into Freewebstore.
3. Smart Import maps the columns. AI reads your Wix export and matches product titles, variants, images and stock automatically. Free for up to 1,000 products, unlimited on Pro.
4. Rebuild the marketing pages. Copy your Wix About / Contact / Delivery pages into Freewebstore's Custom Pages tool. Faster than it sounds — most sellers finish in under an hour.
5. Point your domain, cancel Wix. Update your .co.uk DNS to Freewebstore. Free SSL applied automatically. Cancel Wix at the end of the billing cycle.
What stays, what changes
Stays the same: your .co.uk domain, your customers, your product catalogue and stock, your Google rankings (canonical URLs preserved via 301 redirects if you want them), Stripe and PayPal connections.
Changes: your monthly bill (drops to £0 or £15), no more wix.com/username URL, no more Wix ads on your storefront, Klarna and Clearpay available at UK checkout, Royal Mail and Evri live rates built in.
Won't carry across: your Wix theme itself (Wix themes are Wix-locked) — but our theme library covers similar ground and you can restyle in an hour.
