Switching from EKM
The best EKM alternatives for UK shops.
EKM's published offer is now one managed-service plan at £327 + VAT a month — their team runs the store for you. If what you wanted was a UK platform you run yourself at a self-serve price, that product no longer exists at EKM. Here's the honest shortlist, prices checked 7 August 2026. We build Orbit Commerce, so read our first entry with that in mind.
What actually changed.
Understanding the change makes the shortlist obvious — you're not replacing EKM, you're replacing what EKM used to be.
For most of two decades, EKM's tiered monthly plans were the default UK answer to "I want a British ecommerce platform." When we checked ekm.com in July 2026, those tiers were no longer for sale. The single published plan is £327 + VAT a month, half price for the first three months, with EKM's team building and running the store and a dedicated ecommerce manager assigned to you. As a done-for-you service, that can be fair value — plenty of businesses pay an agency more for less. But it is roughly ten times the old entry price, and it is not self-serve.
So the real question isn't "which platform is most like EKM today" — it's "which platform sells what EKM used to sell": a UK-built store you run yourself, priced for a small business, with the growth features in the plan. That is the list below. For a straight two-way comparison, see Orbit vs EKM.
1. Orbit Commerce — the like-for-like replacement.
We build Orbit, so we're first on our own list — judge it by the numbers, which don't care who wrote them down.
Orbit is built and run in the UK, priced in pounds, and self-serve from the first click: Solo £25, Team £85 and Pro £249 a month (£19, £64 and £187 billed yearly). Every plan has unlimited products, 100GB to 1TB of storage, a drag-and-drop page builder, and no platform fee on your sales — the published card rate (2%, 1.7% or 1.5% + 25p online, stepping down by plan) is the whole story.
The growth features EKM merchants ask about first are in the plan, not an app store: subscriptions with failed-payment recovery (Team and up), gift cards, discounts, abandoned-cart recovery and SEO tools. Amazon, eBay and Etsy are free plugins — listings, stock sync, and marketplace orders arriving as native orders. Support is email and live chat on every plan, from the UK team that builds the platform. The trial is 14 days, full platform, no card required.
Where Orbit is strongest
- Flat pricing: no turnover caps, no product caps, no storage measured in megabytes.
- Growth features included — subscriptions, gift cards, cart recovery — not bought as apps.
- Free Amazon, eBay and Etsy plugins with stock sync and native orders.
- CSV/Excel importer that creates URL redirects, so a migration keeps your rankings.
- UK-based support and bills in pounds, like the platform you’re leaving.
Where it isn't (told straight)
- Nobody here runs your shop for you. If done-for-you is what you actually need, EKM’s managed plan or an agency retainer is the truthful answer.
- B2B/trade features sit on the enterprise tier, not the cheap plans.
- Phone support isn’t offered — support is email and live chat on every plan.
The rest of the UK field.
The other UK-native platforms, with their published prices and the limits worth knowing before you commit.
| Platform | Published price | Standout | Worth checking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orbit Commercethat's us | From £25/mo (£19 yearly) | Unlimited products every plan, 100GB+ storage, page builder, free Amazon/eBay/Etsy plugins | B2B suite is enterprise-tier only |
| Bluepark | From £29.99 + VAT/mo | UK phone support every plan, deep trade features from £44.99 | 500–2,000 product caps, storage in MB–GB, no annual discount published |
| ShopWired | From £34.95 + VAT/mo | UK phone support, 35+ gateways, native eBay | Plans capped by annual turnover (£50k/£200k/£500k) |
Bluepark (running since 2004) offers UK phone support on every plan and genuinely deep trade features from its £44.99 Business plan — but its main plans cap you at 500 to 2,000 products with 500MB to 2GB of storage, and design changes lean on HTML. ShopWired has a real feature list, phone support and a long-standing native eBay integration — but every plan carries an annual turnover cap, so passing £50,000 a year moves your bill from £34.95 to £79.95 + VAT whether or not you need anything new. Full breakdowns: Orbit vs Bluepark and Orbit vs ShopWired, or the three-way table in EKM vs ShopWired vs Bluepark.
The global platforms can of course run a UK shop too — but dollar pricing, app-store costs for features UK platforms include, and support on other timezones are exactly what choosing EKM avoided. If British mattered to you then, it probably still does.
Moving off EKM, step by step.
Switching sounds scarier than it is. Here's what actually moves, and what protects your rankings.
Export your products, customers and orders from EKM. Orbit's importer takes CSV or Excel with as many rows as you have — products land with variants and images mapped, customers keep their details, and order history comes across for your records. URL redirects are created as part of the import, so the links that rank on Google today keep resolving afterwards. Run it from your dashboard during the free trial, check the result, and point your domain when you're happy.
Prefer to walk it through with a person first? Book a free migration call and bring your catalogue.
Questions, answered.
Straight answers from the team building it. If we don't know, we'll tell you.
EKM pricing and features checked 7 August 2026 against ekm.com and other published sources, and reviewed regularly. EKM is a trademark of its respective owner; all figures exclude VAT unless stated. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
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