Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento dominate the UK e-commerce platform conversation, but BigCommerce, Wix and Squarespace each serve real gaps for specific types of seller — and picking the wrong one among this trio can be just as costly as picking the wrong one among the big three.
Why these three deserve separate consideration
BigCommerce, Wix and Squarespace sit in different competitive positions from each other despite often being grouped together as 'alternatives' to Shopify. BigCommerce competes directly with Shopify Plus for growing and mid-market retailers, with a notably different approach to transaction fees and built-in functionality. Wix and Squarespace, by contrast, are primarily website builders that have added credible e-commerce functionality, making them a genuinely strong fit for a specific type of seller: one for whom brand storytelling and content sit as close to the heart of the business as the product catalogue itself.
Treating all three as interchangeable 'budget' options is a mistake — BigCommerce is frequently the more capable platform for a catalogue-heavy retailer, while Wix and Squarespace suit a smaller, design-led catalogue far better than they suit a large one.
BigCommerce: built-in functionality without app sprawl
BigCommerce's core differentiator is how much functionality ships natively rather than requiring third-party apps — multi-currency, advanced product filtering, and B2B functionality like customer-specific pricing are available on higher plans without the same reliance on paid add-ons that Shopify stores often accumulate. This can mean a lower total cost of ownership for a catalogue with complex variant or B2B requirements, since app subscription costs on other platforms often exceed the platform fee difference.
Crucially, BigCommerce doesn't charge its own transaction fee on top of your payment processor's fee regardless of which gateway you use, unlike Shopify's additional fee for gateways other than Shopify Payments — a meaningful saving for UK sellers who want to use a specific payment provider like Stripe directly rather than the platform's own payments product.
Wix eCommerce: strong for design-led, smaller catalogues
Wix has invested heavily in its e-commerce functionality in recent years, and its drag-and-drop editor remains the most approachable for founders with no development background who want granular visual control over every page. It suits sellers with a smaller catalogue (roughly under a few hundred SKUs) where brand storytelling, unique page layouts and content sit at the centre of the customer experience, such as artisan goods, design-led homeware or personal-brand-driven stores.
- Best suited to catalogues under a few hundred SKUs with strong content and design needs.
- App ecosystem is smaller and less mature than Shopify's, particularly for advanced logistics or B2B needs.
- Migrating away from Wix later is harder than most competitors, due to a more closed underlying structure.
Squarespace Commerce: content-first brands
Squarespace's strength has always been beautiful, template-driven design with minimal customisation effort, and its commerce functionality — while much improved — remains most credible for content-heavy or portfolio-driven brands: photographers, artists, and small design-led product lines where the storytelling and visual presentation carry as much weight as the transactional experience. Its inventory and order management functionality is comparatively basic next to BigCommerce or Shopify, which becomes a real constraint once you're managing more than a modest number of SKUs or need multi-location stock.
For a UK seller whose product is genuinely design- or content-led — think a small ceramics studio or an independent print shop — Squarespace's ease of producing a polished-looking site quickly can outweigh its more limited commerce depth, provided the founder is honest about the catalogue size and complexity ceiling before committing.
Migration and lock-in considerations
All three platforms vary meaningfully in how easily you can leave them later. BigCommerce, being closer in architecture to Shopify, generally allows cleaner data export and a more standard migration path if you outgrow it. Wix and Squarespace both use more proprietary underlying structures, and migrating a mature store off either platform — particularly preserving SEO value from existing URLs and content — is typically more labour-intensive than migrating off BigCommerce or Shopify.
Making the decision for a UK store
As a rough guide: choose BigCommerce if you expect meaningful catalogue growth, B2B functionality, or want lower reliance on paid apps; choose Wix if your catalogue is design-led and modest in size and you value being able to control every layout detail without a developer; choose Squarespace if your brand is genuinely content- and portfolio-first and your commerce needs are simple. In all three cases, build a real product catalogue and test the actual checkout flow on a UK address with a UK payment method before committing — platform marketing pages routinely understate the practical friction of features like shipping rate configuration or VAT display, which only becomes obvious once you're testing with genuine UK order data.
Taking This Further
It's rarely useful to treat bigCommerce, wix and squarespace for UK online stores: when the 'Big three' aren't the right fit as a standalone decision — the strongest results tend to come from lining it up with the rest of your operation. This connects directly with UK E-Commerce Agencies vs Building an In-House Marketing Team: What's Right for You, which walks through the practical detail.
For related reading: For a closer look at this, see our guide to Web Accessibility and WCAG Compliance for UK Online Stores: What You're Legally and Practically Required to Do. We cover this in more detail in PIM Explained: Do UK Online Retailers Need Product Information Management Software?, which is worth reading alongside this piece.