No products in the basket.
What Shopify and Wix Do Not Tell You – Discover the hidden costs and headaches of Shopify and Wix – and why GBFM is a simpler alternative for UK sellers.
Shopify and Wix love to tell you that setting up an online shop is as easy as making toast. Just drag, drop, and boom — you’re an entrepreneur. Except the reality is more like: drag, drop, cry, Google “why doesn’t my checkout work,” and repeat. Let’s go through what Shopify and Wix do not tell you…
At the Great British Farmers Market (GBFM), we don’t do smoke, mirrors, or half-finished toast. We keep it simple, honest, and designed for actual humans who just want to sell their jam, not debug JavaScript at midnight.
“Start for just £19 a month!” they say. Lovely. Except then you realise:
The free themes look like they were built in 2008.
Reviews, subscriptions, shipping calculators? Each needs an extra app. Each with a monthly bill.
Transaction fees that nibble away at every sale like a mouse in a biscuit tin.
Before you know it, your “cheap” online shop costs more than your weekly shop.
At GBFM? None of that. We don’t charge you a penny unless you make a sale. If you don’t sell, you don’t pay. End of. It’s almost boringly simple.
👉 Tired of mystery fees? Shop with GBFM
Here’s the kicker: Shopify and Wix don’t do your marketing. You can have the prettiest online shop in the world, but if no one knows it exists, you might as well be selling lemonade in the middle of the Sahara.
Ads, SEO, email lists, social media — suddenly you’re expected to be a full-time marketer and a full-time maker.
At GBFM, we handle the heavy lifting. We market the whole marketplace, so when someone comes looking for bread or cheese, they might just stumble across your chutney too. You don’t have to shout into the void — we’re already building the crowd.
Yes, Shopify and Wix love to show off their “drag-and-drop” magic. But here’s what that really means:
Integrations that mysteriously break just before payday.
Buttons that don’t quite sit where you want them.
Endless updates you didn’t ask for.
A dashboard that makes your eyes glaze over.
Unless you secretly enjoy late nights Googling “Why won’t my shop work?”, it’s not exactly fun. GBFM is built so you don’t need a computer science degree — or a strong drink — just to list a product.
Another thing they won’t mention: Shopify and Wix are global. Sounds great until you realise “global” really means “mostly American.” Their features, apps, and support are US-focused. So UK sellers end up bodging together payment gateways or explaining to baffled customers why shipping takes forever.
GBFM is proudly UK-first. Every seller is based here, every product is made or grown here, and customers know they’re supporting real people, not faceless shops lost in a sea of imports.
We don’t pretend to be flashy. We don’t throw glitter at problems. Instead, we’re:
In short: you get to focus on your craft, not on which plugin just broke.
What Shopify and Wix do not tell you is that while their platforms might work for big players with deep pockets, for small UK producers they can feel like a never-ending game of “spot the hidden cost.”
GBFM exists to flip that story. We’re upfront, fair, and built for the makers, growers, and dreamers who just want to get their products out there without the faff.
👉 Fancy an easier ride? Browse the market
And if you’d just like to cheer us on, you can buy us a coffee on Ko-fi – it keeps us fuelled while building a fairer marketplace.
