Looking for a Shopify alternative?
Shopify rents you a shop on their platform — monthly fee, app subscriptions, transaction fees. The G7Cloud AI Website Builder ships a real shop you own: your code, your database, Stripe checkout on your own keys, at a fixed £19/mo.
Free plan forever · no card · 30-day money-back on paid plans
First, credit where it's due
Who Shopify are
Shopify is the leading hosted e-commerce platform, powering millions of shops from single-product stores to global brands. It offers a mature admin, a theme marketplace, Shopify Payments and POS for in-person sales, and an app store with thousands of extensions. Basic starts at £25/mo as of July 2026, with transaction fees on top unless you use Shopify Payments. For pure retail operations at scale, it is a formidable product.
So this page is not a hatchet job. It's a straight look at where the Shopify model costs you money or ownership, where G7Cloud's fixed-price, own-your-code model works better — and, further down, where Shopify is still the better fit.
The case for switching
Why people leave Shopify for G7Cloud
Model differences, not marketing differences. Every claim below is about how the two platforms actually work and bill.
You never own the shop
A Shopify store is a subscription to their platform — stop paying and the shop is gone; there is no way to export the running store as code you can host elsewhere. The G7Cloud AI Website Builder generates a real full-stack application: your own Postgres database, your own admin panel, code you can browse and export. It is yours.
Fees on top of fees
Shopify Basic is £25/mo as of July 2026, plus transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments, plus the app subscriptions most stores end up needing. A G7Cloud shop takes payment through Stripe using your own keys — we add no transaction fee of our own — and the platform price is a fixed £19/mo on Business.
A complete shop out of the box
The AI-built shop is not a toy: product variants, stock control, collections, discount codes, order management, image uploads and Stripe checkout are all included, with an admin panel the owner logs into. You describe the shop; the AI builds it; you click to edit anything.
Email, domain and site on one bill
Your shop, your marketing pages, your mailboxes (with webmail and spam filtering) and your DNS all live on one G7Cloud plan. On Shopify, email hosting is a third-party arrangement and the platform bill is only part of the picture.
AI edits instead of app hunting
Want a change on Shopify? Find an app, pay its subscription, or hire a Liquid developer. On G7Cloud you tell the AI Website Builder what you want — it edits the actual code, with per-turn checkpoints so you can undo anything.
The honest bit
Where Shopify is still the better fit
No platform wins everything. If the points below describe you, Shopify may genuinely serve you better — and we'd rather tell you now than after a migration.
The app ecosystem
Shopify’s app store has thousands of integrations — reviews, loyalty schemes, dropshipping, marketplaces, ERP connectors. A G7Cloud shop covers the core retail loop (catalogue, stock, discounts, orders, Stripe checkout), and the AI can build custom features into your code, but there is no plug-in marketplace. If your operation leans on many third-party apps, Shopify is the better fit.
POS and multichannel selling
Shopify Payments, POS hardware for in-person sales, and built-in channels for social and marketplace selling are Shopify strengths we do not replicate. G7Cloud shops sell on the web through Stripe.
Proven extreme scale
Shopify handles some of the biggest flash sales on the internet. A G7Cloud shop runs in a dedicated container on UK infrastructure — right for the vast majority of small and mid-size shops, but if you are planning national-TV-advert traffic, Shopify’s scale story is longer than ours.
G7Cloud vs Shopify, side by side
Model-level comparison — how each platform is built and billed.
Shopify Basic is £25/mo plus transaction fees (unless you use Shopify Payments), as of July 2026 — before app subscriptions. G7Cloud Business is a fixed £19/mo with no added transaction fees.
Real prices, one ladder
What switching actually costs
Fixed GBP prices. No usage billing, no per-seat fees, no renewal increases. Every plan includes the AI Website Builder, free SSL and ScaleShield protection.
Business
Up to 3 sites plus full-stack AI apps — shop, bookings, CMS.
- 3 hosted sites — any type, incl. WooCommerce & Magento
- Full-stack AI apps — online shop, bookings, CMS & more
- Real database + admin panel on AI-built sites
- Stripe checkout on your AI-built shop (your own keys)
- AI Website Builder — 5 projects, publish 3
- 150K AI tokens per day
- Managed PostgreSQL & Redis add-ons
- Site cloning, phpMyAdmin, WP-CLI
- Everything in Starter included
Full feature breakdown on the pricing page. 30-day money-back guarantee on every paid plan.
Moving from Shopify
We move you. Free. You approve every step.
Shopify lets you export your products as a CSV — and our team helps you bring the catalogue across, set up Stripe checkout on your own keys, and point your domain and email at the new shop. You build and preview the whole store before anything switches. Assisted and free on paid plans.
- Assisted by our team — we do it with you, not to you
- Preview everything on a temporary URL before anything switches
- Your old site stays live until you approve the cutover
- 30-day money-back guarantee if it does not work out
Shopify alternative — questions answered
Start free — no card
Build a real, database-backed site with the AI Website Builder on the Free plan, or host your existing site on managed UK infrastructure from £9/mo. Fixed prices, and you own the code.