Pay monthly e-commerce websites: an online shop that earns its keep.
A pay monthly e-commerce website is a full online shop - products, basket, card payments, orders - designed, built, hosted and looked after for one flat monthly fee instead of a large upfront build. Ours is £99 to start, then £29.99 a month plus £19.99 for the shop: £49.98 all-in, on the same plan as everything we make. No commission on your sales, ever.
What an online shop has to get right
Six things that decide whether a shop sells, long before anyone argues about colours. Every build of ours is checked against all six before it goes live - and the first sale usually lands at a time nobody is at the counter.
Nobody buys what they can't see properly. Clean, consistent photos on every product - and a site design that stays out of their way - do more for an online shop than any feature list.
Guest checkout, card payment in a few taps, no surprise costs at the last step. Most abandoned baskets die at a clumsy checkout - on a phone, at night, one thumb.
Secure payment, dispatch times, returns, delivery costs - stated plainly and early. A first-time visitor is deciding whether you’re real before deciding whether they want the product.
"In stock" that's true, delivery promises you can keep, and a shipping price known before the checkout. Every surprise here becomes a complaint, a refund or a one-star review.
Each product on its own findable page with a proper title and description - so "the thing you sell + your town" searches can land directly on the product, not just your homepage.
Prices, stock, seasonal lines, offers. An online shop is never finished - which is why ours come with the looking-after built in, not billed by the hour.
What's included
Not a template with your logo on - a shop built around your products, your offer and how your customers actually buy, the same way we design everything else.
Stripe-powered card payment on your own site - Apple Pay and Google Pay included - with the money settling to your own bank account. We set it up and test it with real orders before launch.
A back office where orders arrive and products get added without a manual. We set it up, load your first products with you, and teach you to run it - most owners are comfortable within an afternoon.
Not sure yet? Start with a brochure site on the standard plan and add the shop later - it's the same monthly model with the shop add-on switched on when you're ready to sell.
Fast UK hosting, SSL, backups and software updates are part of the monthly fee - an online shop taking card payments is exactly the kind of site that must never quietly rot.
Design tweaks, new sections, changed content - covered by the plan, same as every site we build. You run the day-to-day products and orders; we keep the shop itself sharp.
Proof over promises: The Perfume Factory is a full shop build of ours - bundle builder, scent finder, checkout and all. The wider retail approach is on our shops & retail page, the shop itself sits on the same UK hosting on our own servers as every site we look after, and the pricing page lists every cost on one screen.
What a pay monthly online shop costs, side by side
The honest comparison, because "cheap" depends entirely on what's counted. Shopify prices are from its UK pricing page as of 1 September 2026; the other rows are typical ranges.
| Route | Monthly | On top | Design & build | Upkeep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay monthly shop with us | £49.98 / month | Stripe card fees only. No commission. | Designed and built for you | Hosting, security, updates and unlimited edits included |
| Shopify Basic (DIY) | £25 / month | 2% + 25p per card payment, plus paid themes and apps | You build it from a template | Platform hosted; the shop itself is yours to maintain |
| Marketplace only (Etsy, eBay, Amazon) | £0 - £25 / month | Commission on every sale, typically 6% - 15% | Their page, their branding | Theirs - and so is the customer |
| Traditional agency build | £0 / month after the build | £3,000 - £10,000+ upfront, then hosting and hourly changes | Designed and built for you | Billed by the hour |
£49.98 is the £29.99 plan plus the £19.99 shop add-on, after a one-off £99 setup. Distance changes nothing: we build shops for businesses well beyond the coast, Stoke-on-Trent included, over WhatsApp and email. Card processing is Stripe's own per-transaction fee, settled straight to your bank - we never take a cut of a sale.
Sell one thing a month or a hundred: the fee is the same, the margin is yours, and the customer list is yours too. That is the difference between a shop and a stall in someone else's market. Every cost is on the pricing page; the one you will not find anywhere is commission.
How it works
Products, prices, who buys them and where the photos are up to. If you're at a market stall or a shop counter today, that's a fine starting point - it's exactly where our favourite build started.
A first design of the shop built around your actual products - the offer up front, the route to checkout obvious. You approve it before anything else happens.
We load the launch range, connect Stripe to your bank account, set delivery and returns up honestly, and run real test orders end to end - card, confirmation email, the lot.
The shop goes live and joins the standard service: hosting, security, backups, updates and edits in the monthly fee. You handle orders; we keep the machine running.
Online shop questions, answered straight
What is a pay monthly ecommerce website, and what do I get for the money?
A pay monthly ecommerce website is an online shop you pay for as a flat monthly fee rather than a one-off build cost - design, hosting and upkeep all in the same payment. On our plan that's £99 setup, then £49.98 a month: the standard £29.99 plan (bespoke design, UK hosting on our own servers, SSL, a .co.uk domain registered in your name from day one, business email, unlimited content edits, support, and local SEO foundations including your Google Business Profile set-up) plus the £19.99 online shop add-on - products, basket, Stripe card payments with Apple Pay and Google Pay, delivery or click-and-collect, and order management. Most sites are live within a week of receiving content, and you can cancel any time with 30 days' notice and no exit fee.
How much does an e-commerce website cost?
The wider UK market runs from roughly £30-a-month DIY builder plans to £5,000+ agency builds, plus running costs - our website cost guide has the honest numbers. Ours is plain: £99 setup, the standard £29.99 a month, plus £19.99 a month for the online shop add-on - just under £50 a month all-in for a designed, hosted, maintained shop. Card processing has its own small per-transaction fee (that's Stripe's, not ours - every online shop pays one, whoever builds it).
Is a pay monthly e-commerce website cheaper than Shopify?
Not on the headline number, and we'd rather say so than hide it: Shopify Basic is £25 a month on monthly billing, and it's a good platform. The difference is what the money buys. Shopify's fee gets you the software; you (or someone you pay) then design the shop, build it, load it, keep it current and take 2% plus 25p on every card payment on top. Our £49.98 a month is the shop designed and built for you, hosted, kept secure and updated, with unlimited edits and no commission - only Stripe's card fee, which every shop pays whoever builds it. If you enjoy building and have the evenings for it, Shopify is a fair choice. If you'd rather sell than build, ours usually works out cheaper by the time you count the hours. Already on Shopify or WooCommerce and thinking of moving? We handle that as a website redesign: the shop rebuilt on the plan, content moved across and your existing rankings kept with proper 301 redirects.
Do I own the shop, or am I renting it?
You own it. Your domain is registered in your name from day one, not ours, and the products, photos, customer list and Stripe account are yours throughout. After 12 months on the plan the site build itself is yours to keep; if you leave earlier, we transfer the domain to wherever you're going for a £15 admin charge and hand over your content. It's all in the terms in plain English - the pay-monthly model is a way of paying for a shop, not a way of keeping hold of it.
Can I start with a normal website and add the shop later?
Yes, and for a lot of businesses it's the right order - get found and trusted first, sell online second. The shop is a monthly add-on on the same plan, switched on when you're ready, and you can drop it again from your client portal if selling online turns out not to suit the business. No rebuild either way.
How do I actually get paid?
Card payments run through Stripe - one of the biggest payment providers in the world, the same one under plenty of household-name checkouts - connected to your own bank account. Money from orders settles to you directly on a rolling basis; we never sit between you and your takings. Setting the account up is part of the build, and it's less paperwork than opening a business bank account.
Is it worth selling on my own site instead of eBay, Etsy or Amazon?
Same answer we give hotels about Booking.com and takeaways about the delivery apps: the marketplaces bring you strangers and charge commission on every sale, forever - and the customer stays theirs, not yours. Your own shop costs the same flat fee however much you sell, and every repeat customer is commission you stopped paying. Most small sellers do best running both: marketplaces for reach, your own shop for margin, repeat buyers and the customers who searched your name.
Who keeps the products and stock up to date?
Day to day, you - adding a product or changing a price is genuinely a few minutes in the back office, and we teach you until it's boring. Behind that, the plan's unlimited edits cover the site itself: new sections, seasonal reworks, design changes. If you'd rather send us a spreadsheet of product changes and have us do the lot, that works too - plenty of clients run it that way.
Have you actually built shops like this?
Yes - the one to look at is The Perfume Factory: a Blackpool events business selling £5 perfumes from market stalls, now with an online shop built around its bundle deal, a two-tap scent finder and same-day dispatch messaging. The brief was to turn stall customers into repeat online buyers, and the whole build is on the work page to judge for yourself.
Do you only do e-commerce web design in Blackpool?
We're a Blackpool studio - Blackpool Enterprise Centre on Lytham Road, since 2016 - and most of the shops we build are for businesses in Blackpool, across the Fylde Coast and around Lancashire. But nothing about an online shop needs us in the room: the brief, the design approvals, the product loading and the training all run over WhatsApp and email, and the shop is hosted on our own UK servers wherever you are. A shop in Stoke, Sheffield or Southampton gets the same build at the same £49.98 a month as one on Lytham Road; we just won't pretend to be local to you when we're not.