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Own your store. Keep your margins.

Shopify takes a cut of every order and rents you every feature. We build feature-filled stores on solid, open-source foundations, flexibly priced to beat what you pay today.
Book a fit call30 minutes • Free • Let's see if moving pays
A storefront product listing: interior pendant lights in a grid, each with a name, description and colour options
Custom Storefronts
Platform fee per order
£0
On Medusa. You pay your payment provider, nobody else.
A product page: a mustard boucle bean bag beside its fabric swatches and size options
Versatile PDPs
UK checkout
StripeAdyenWorldpayPayPal
Medusa admin dashboard: a product's pricing tableMedusa admin dashboard
Billing
Priced in pounds. UK VAT built in.
Features include
  • AI ready
  • Tailor by region
  • Unlimited admins
  • Fully customizable checkout
  • Smart search
  • POS integration
Licence
MIT open source. The code is yours.

On Shopify, you pay for the platform, the apps and a cut of every sale.

Shopify Payments takes 1.5-2% plus 25p on UK cards. Use another provider and Shopify adds up to 2% on top of theirs. Add app subscriptions, many billed in dollars, and your platform bill grows with your success.

Per-order fees

ShopifyShopify Payments charges 1.5-2% + 25p on UK cards. Use another provider and Shopify adds up to 2% on top of theirs.

Custom BuildNo platform fee. You pay your payment provider, whether Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay or PayPal, and nothing else.

Monthly bill

ShopifyA plan plus a range of app subscriptions, many of them billed in US Dollars.

Custom BuildHosting sized to your store, from a lean server to Medusa Cloud. No per-feature apps.

Features

ShopifyRented from the app store: another subscription and more slowdown for your store.

Custom BuildFirst class integration, built into your store once, then owned outright.

Checkout and logic

ShopifyCustomisation highly restricted by your plan and theme.

Custom BuildEvery step of pricing, checkout and fulfilment is customisable.

Leaving

ShopifyMeans rebuilding from scratch.

Custom BuildOpen-source code in your own repository. Any developer can pick it up.

What Shopify costs you

Monthly online revenue
Your Shopify plan

Include the monthly subscriptions you pay for on Shopify. Prices are approximate pound conversions of each app's entry plan.

Per month
£300
Per year
£3,600

£200 transaction fees + £25 subscription + £75 apps, per month

Shopify's extra fee when you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, by plan: Basic 2%, Grow 1%, Advanced 0.6%. Stores on Shopify Payments pay card rates instead (2.0%, 1.7% and 1.5% + 25p on UK cards), which bundle in processing, so we compare the two properly on the fit call. Subscription prices are each plan's monthly-billed price; annual billing is cheaper. Base fees are excluded, since you pay those on either platform. Check current rates at shopify.com/uk/pricing. Typical app spend is an estimate for stores at your revenue (usually 3-9 paid apps), based on 2026 Storeleads data. It rises with revenue, not plan tier. Picking your own apps switches it off.

When Shopify makes sense

If you turn over less than £2,500 a month online, or you need a store live right away with no developer involved, Shopify is hard to beat. Medusa pays off when fees, apps and workarounds start to cost more than owning the platform.

The fit call lets us work out which side of that line you're on, using your own numbers.

We work with you through each stage of the build to ensure your store is the best it can be.

  1. Fit call and audit

    1 weekWe discuss your business, then assess how we can fit your requirements. You get a written cost comparison and a clear go or no-go.

  2. Blueprint

    1 weekCreate the Specs: what we migrate, how we implement your solution, which integrations you need. The price is fixed from here.

  3. Build in functional slices

    ~6 weeksCatalogue, cart, checkout, accounts: each ships end to end and is tested before the next begins. You review a working staging store every week.

  4. Migrate and run in parallel

    2 weeksProducts, customers and order history move across. Old URLs redirect, to maintain search rankings. Shopify stays live until you're satisfied.

  5. Switch over and hand over

    LaunchThe domain switches at a quiet time. The repository, hosting and documentation are in your name from day one.

Everything a serious, performant store needs.

A storefront that's yours

  • Next.js, fast on mobile data
  • No templates here - a custom design
  • CMS for pages, campaigns and lookbooks

Medusa admin

  • Catalogue, variants and inventory
  • Orders, returns and exchanges
  • Promotions, gift cards, customer groups

Third-party payments, built in

  • Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay or PayPal
  • Never penalised: no extra platform fee for using them
  • Refunds from the admin

Couriers you already use

  • Royal Mail, DPD, Evri and DHL integrations
  • Live rates, labels and tracking
  • Click-and-collect and pickup points

You own your store

  • Code and accounts in your repo
  • Admin training for your team
  • Everything documented

Brands already using Medusa

  • Eight Sleep
  • Heineken
  • IPN
  • Redington
  • Mitsubishi Motors
  • Mandai Wildlife Reserve
  • SPAR
  • Material Bank
  • Makro
  • NIO

Our most recent project

Emerging Art - A consignment art store

Completely custom store using Medusa as the commerce framework. Custom commissions and shipping models created for a unique business. Designed from scratch as a gallery that stands apart. Infrastructure kept as efficient as possible for the use case, defined as code.

Medusa v2Next.jsTerraformHetzner VPS
96
Mobile performance score
8
Weeks to launch
£0
Per order platform fees + app subscriptions

Medusa is open source under the MIT licence, with an active community and a funded company behind its development.

Cheaper than Shopify from the day you launch.

No big upfront bill to earn back. We spread the build into your monthly costs and set the total below what you pay Shopify today, so you save from the first month.
Your monthly bill today, on Shopify£830
Your monthly bill from launch, on Medusa£640
You keep the difference

Bars are illustrative. Your real figures come from the audit of your Shopify invoices and order data.

  1. We add up what you pay now

    Plan, every app subscription and Shopify's cut of each order, taken from your actual invoices.

  2. We set your new monthly below it

    Hosting, care and the build, spread over 12 months, agreed up front at less than that total.

  3. Then it drops again

    Once the build is paid off, you're left with hosting and care, and a store you own outright.

Fixed prices, in pounds. No surprises.

Migration auditKnow the numbers before you commit.
£200 once-off
  • Cost comparison from your real order data
  • App and feature inventory
  • Go or no-go recommendation in writing
Shopify to MedusaCore offerThe full move, done for you.
from£3,800 fixed per phase
  • Everything in the audit
  • Storefront, commerce core and CMS
  • UK payments and shipping
  • Data migration with SEO redirects
  • Parallel run, launch and handover
  • Pay per phase, or monthly below your Shopify bill
Care and growthAfter launch, if you want us close.
£180 per month
  • Hosting, updates and backups managed
  • 6 hours of support and feature work a month, with expandable hours
  • Cancel with 30 days' notice
Your running costs afterwardsMedusa itself is free. You pay for hosting, around £15 a month for a typical store, or Medusa Cloud from $99 a month.