If you've decided you want a UK company running your shop's platform — UK support hours, prices in pounds, VAT handled like it matters — the shortlist has been the same three names for a decade: EKM, ShopWired and Bluepark. This is the current state of that comparison, from each company's own pricing pages checked on 21 July 2026, with one significant piece of news most round-ups haven't caught up with. Disclosure before we start: we build Orbit, a fourth UK platform, and we've put ourselves in the table at the end — clearly labelled, judged on the same numbers.
The news first: EKM has left the self-serve market
For years EKM's tiered plans were the default UK answer. As of our July 2026 check, they're gone. EKM now sells a single managed-service plan at £327 + VAT a month (50% off your first three months, and "pricing may vary based on business size"), in which EKM's team builds the store, runs it, and assigns you a dedicated ecommerce manager. There are no platform transaction fees, and their in-house EKMPay processing starts at 1.4% + 20p plus VAT — a genuinely low headline rate.
Judged as what it now is — a done-for-you service — that can be fair value against hiring an agency on a retainer. Judged as what most people searching "EKM" are looking for — a £30-to-£80 self-serve platform — it simply isn't in the market any more. If that's the shelf you're shopping on, the real comparison is now ShopWired vs Bluepark, with EKM as the "we'd rather pay someone to do it all" option.
ShopWired: the feature-rich one, capped by your success
ShopWired's pitch is breadth: unlimited products on every plan, subscriptions, trade/B2B accounts, abandoned-basket recovery, multi-currency display, and 0% platform fees across more than 40 external payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, Opayo, Worldpay and the rest of the UK roll-call). Their own ShopWired Payments starts at 1.9% + 20p on Essentials and 1.5% + 20p on Advanced and up. Migration is a stated 7-day service, and the trial is 14 days without a card.
The structure to understand before you sign: plans are capped by annual turnover. Essentials (£34.95 + VAT/month) covers you to £50,000 a year, Advanced (£79.95) to £200,000, Premium (£149.95) to £500,000, and Enterprise starts at £299.95. Growth moves you up the ladder whether or not you need anything new — the platform bill is effectively a small percentage of your ceiling. Essentials also charges £5–£10 monthly add-ons for unlimited users and trade accounts that higher tiers include, and the theme catalogue is a tidy but small 20.
Bluepark: the small, steady one, capped by your catalogue
Bluepark has been trading since 2004, hosts around 4,500 stores, and runs everything — development, hosting, support — from the UK with a team small enough to know their merchants by name. Pricing is refreshingly shaped: Retail at £29.99 + VAT, Business at £44.99, Enterprise at £64.99, monthly, with no transaction fees on any plan and no turnover caps at all ("we don't base our plans around how much money you make" is their own phrasing, and it's a genuinely rare position). Unlimited staff accounts on every plan. Payments run through third-party gateways — Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Klarna — at those gateways' own rates, so Stripe's 1.5% + 20p is the effective floor.
The caps here are physical instead: 500 products and 500MB of storage on Retail, 2,000 and 1GB on Business, unlimited products but just 2GB (expandable at £10/GB) on Enterprise. Good product photography eats 500MB alarmingly fast. Marketing features (reviews, loyalty points, bulk newsletters) and the B2B suite sit on Business and above, and there's no app store — integrations are built in or not available. For a compact, stable catalogue run by people who value a phone number answered in the UK, it's a quietly excellent deal. For a media-heavy or fast-expanding range, the ceilings are real.
Head to head
| EKM | ShopWired | Bluepark | Orbit (that's us) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Managed service | Self-serve tiers | Self-serve tiers | Self-serve tiers |
| Price | £327/mo + VAT | £34.95–£299.95/mo + VAT | £29.99–£64.99/mo + VAT | £25–£249/mo (£19–£187 yearly) |
| Platform fee on sales | None | 0% on external gateways | None | None |
| Card processing | EKMPay from 1.4% + 20p + VAT | From 1.9%/1.5% + 20p own gateway; 40+ external | Via Stripe/PayPal etc. | Published per plan: 2%/1.7%/1.5% + 25p |
| The cap | Budget | Turnover (£50k/£200k/£500k) | Products & storage (500/2,000; 0.5–2GB) | Storage by plan (100GB–1TB); products unlimited |
| Staff accounts | Managed for you | Unlimited (£5/mo add-on on Essentials) | Unlimited, all plans | 1/10/40 by plan |
| B2B / trade | Via service | Included (add-on on Essentials) | Business plan and up | Enterprise plan |
| Trial | 14 days (card required after) | 14 days, no card | 14 days, no card | 14 days, no card |
Where Orbit fits, said plainly
Orbit sits on the same shelf ShopWired and Bluepark occupy — UK-first, self-serve, prices in pounds — with a different shape to the caps. Plans are £25 (Solo), £85 (Team) and £249 (Pro), with unlimited products everywhere, storage from 100GB (two hundred times Bluepark's entry allowance) to 1TB, and the growth features — subscriptions with failed-payment recovery, gift cards, abandoned-cart recovery, a full page builder — in the plan rather than tier-gated. No turnover caps; selling more doesn't change your bill beyond card fees. The honest trade-offs in the other direction: we're the youngest platform of the four, B2B trade accounts sit on our Enterprise tier while ShopWired includes them lower down, and nobody here will build the store for you the way EKM now does. If your shortlist is UK-only, run our true-cost comparison across all four and let the arithmetic decide.
Common questions on the UK platforms
Is EKM still worth it in 2026?
As a managed service at £327 + VAT a month — possibly, if you'd otherwise pay an agency retainer and want one accountable company. As a self-serve platform — it no longer offers one, so the question has changed underneath you.
ShopWired or Bluepark for a small UK shop?
Count your products and forecast your turnover. Under 500 products and steady sales: Bluepark is cheaper and includes unlimited staff. Big catalogue or fast growth: ShopWired's unlimited products win, but price in the turnover-cap upgrades — £50k a year arrives sooner than most owners expect.
Do any UK platforms charge transaction fees?
None of the four here adds its own percentage on external gateways — that's the shared anti-Shopify pitch. You still pay the gateway's own processing rate everywhere.
Why pick a UK-native platform at all?
Pounds-denominated bills that don't move with exchange rates, VAT invoicing done properly, support in your timezone, and features tuned for UK selling — Royal Mail integrations, UK payment gateways, UK legal templates. The trade-off is smaller app ecosystems than the US giants; decide which you'll miss more.