- Highs: Excellent British support. Free site reviews included. Account manager on higher plans. Many features in the package.
- Lows: Not that cheap. Themes could be more flexible. Turnover limit on each plan. No direct POS integration.
- Best for: Small UK businesses that need extra support to make and run an online store.
How EKM works
EKM is an all-in-one ecommerce platform with everything a business needs to run an online store. One out of five British online shops are powered by EKM, making it one of the country’s most popular ecommerce solutions.
The EKM plans include a website builder (no coding required), web hosting, design templates, inventory and order management, marketing features, integrated payment system, UK-based customer support and a wealth of ecommerce features. You also get periodical site reviews by an EKM staff member to improve your site.
With no contractual commitment and a free trial, it’s easy to sign up to EKM on the website to test the software.
| Plan | Cost*/mo | Turnover limit | Money-back guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | £32.49 | £50k/year | n/a |
| Standard | £64.99 | £150k/year | 6 months |
| Advanced | £194.99 | £1m/year | 6 months |
| Pro | £549.99 | n/a | 6 months |
*Excluding VAT.
| Plan | Cost* /mo |
Turnover limit |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | £32.49 | £50k/year |
| Standard | £64.99 | £150k/year |
| Advanced | £194.99 | £1m/year |
| Pro | £549.99 | n/a |
*Excluding VAT.
Every plan has a limit on online sales turnover per year, which is up to £50k on the Basic plan, up to £150k on Standard and up to £1m on Advanced. There’s no cap on your annual turnover on the Pro plan. Making more money than the limit on your tier will move you up to the higher ecommerce plan.
Except for on the Basic subscription, EKM offers a 6-month’s money-back guarantee. This means you can get a refund of your subscription fees if you’re unsatisfied with the EKM service after 6 months. There is also a 28-day free trial for all new users.
EKM includes an integrated payment system powered by Klarna. The card rates for these are fixed according to the tier and apply to all cards (Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and American Express). You pay 2.49% per card transaction on Basic, 2.19% on Standard and 1.99% on Advanced. On Pro, you can get lower rates. There are no fees for chargebacks or refunds through the Klarna checkout.
| EKM/Klarna payments | Fee per transaction |
|---|---|
| Basic plan, all cards | 2.49% |
| Standard plan, all cards | 2.19% |
| Advanced plan, all cards | 1.99% |
| Pro plan | Custom rates |
| Chargebacks | Free |
| Refunds | Free |
| EKM/Klarna payments |
Fee per transaction |
|---|---|
| Basic plan, all cards | 2.49% |
| Standard plan, all cards | 2.19% |
| Advanced plan, all cards | 1.99% |
| Pro plan | Custom rates |
| Chargebacks | Free |
| Refunds | Free |
PayPal payments can also be added easily to your online checkout. On the Standard and Advanced plans, PayPal charges 1.8% + £0.20 per transaction with an EU- or UK-issued debit or credit card. Subscribers to Basic pay 2.1% + £0.20 per transaction through PayPal. Transactions made by non-EU/-UK cards cost 3.6% + 20p on all the plans.
| PayPal payments | Fee per transaction |
|---|---|
| Basic tier: UK- & EU-issued cards | 2.1% + 20p |
| Standard, Advanced tiers: UK- & EU-issued cards | 1.8% + 20p |
| Non-EU/UK card payments | 3.6% + 20p |
| Card payments on Pro tier | Custom rates |
| PayPal transactions | 2.9% + 30p |
| PayPal payments |
Fee per transaction |
|---|---|
| Basic tier: UK- & EU-issued cards | 2.1% + 20p |
| Standard, Advanced tiers: UK- & EU-issued cards | 1.8% + 20p |
| Non-EU/UK card payments | 3.6% + 20p |
| Card payments on Pro tier | Custom rates |
| PayPal transactions | 2.9% + 30p |
EKM proudly states they don’t add transaction fees, but this just means that EKM doesn’t add any transaction costs on top of those from your chosen checkout system. Some ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, do this to encourage businesses to choose its own payment system rather than an external payment gateway.
If you don’t want to make the online store yourself, EKM can design and create a complete online store for £1,999.99 + VAT or more (one-off cost).
Payment system
Every EKM subscription includes a built-in payment system. This is powered by Klarna, famous for its “buy now, pay later” instalment options and extremely smooth checkout flow. Through EKM, your customers can get the option to pay immediately or after receiving your products, with a 14-day window to settle the payment with Klarna.
You actually get paid straight away when the customer places the order, while Klarna handles the customer if payment after delivery is chosen. Following each transaction, it takes about 3 working days for online payments to reach your bank account.You can also activate PayPal acceptance immediately, which would require a PayPal Business account.
Apart from being automatically available, the EKM payment system benefits from the option to accept multiple currencies, and full PCI compliance (e.g. EKM handles payment security so you don’t have to).
If you want to use a different payment system, you can connect a chosen online gateway to the website, including Worldpay, Stripe, LayBuy, Skrill, Opayo, Global Payments and 13 other online gateways. These all have different fees, sometimes contractual commitment, but they may offer better rates for your business than the EKM/Klarna system.
Image: EKM
Example of an EKM store checkout.
Ecommerce features
EKM’s ecommerce features are well-balanced even on the Basic plan. There’s a good chance it covers everything you need to run and market the online shop, but what does it include exactly?
Online shop design: Create a store logo with the EKM logo builder, add visual calls-to-action (‘Get it by’ timer, ‘Free Delivery’ labels, etc.), build banners and images in an EKM Image Builder and add card logos to any page. There’s no limit to the number of pages (e.g. ‘About’, ‘Contact Us’) added to the website.
Products: Bulk-import products, add categories, images (editable within EKM), discounts, search filters and promotional stickers. After adding stock counts, email notifications can notify you of low stock levels to prompt reordering. The on-site product search helps customers find exactly what they need. A feature lets you display related products on each product page, which is great for tempting customers to buy more.
Image: EKM
Product settings in EKM.
Order management: Manage orders from the web Dashboard or EKM app when away from the computer. Takeaway and micro-businesses might appreciate the option to set restrictions on when people can order from your store, if selling 24/7 is not ideal. Link EKM’s system with your eBay and Amazon profiles to manage all orders from the EKM Dashboard.
Customer informations is also recorded – you can even view customers’ location and IP address.
Marketing: EKM has an impressive range of marketing tools. You can set up mailing lists or e.g. emails to say when products are back in stock. EKM can list your items directly in Google’s search results (Google Shopping Ads). For an additional monthly fee, someone from EKM will manage these listings for you to maximise performance.
Image: EKM
EKM is a Google Premier Partner that can get your products listed directly in Google.
Then you have loyalty points, abandoned cart emails to get customers back on your website, blogging tools with SEO settings, customer reviews, live chat addressed to your customers and integration with all major social media platforms.
Staff management: Add several EKM accounts (the number of accounts depend on your plan) for colleagues so they can manage orders directly. You can assign permissions to different users to limit access to certain settings.
Image: App Store
The EKM app lets you manage the online store remotely.
Reporting and analytics: Get a real-time overview of your ‘shop health’ and sales in the EKM app or web dashboard. See bestselling products, most valuable customers and order statistics. With a search field on your site, you can analyse what customers have been looking for.
Certain features are limited on Basic and Standard, as seen in the table below. Generally speaking, Basic has everything you need for an online shop, but Standard takes it further with more features designed to increase sales. You can only list 500 product on Basic, which is limiting for some businesses right off the bat.
| EKM plan | Basic | Standard | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Products | Up to 500 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| User accounts | 1 | 5 | 15 |
| Product urgency features | None | Delivery cut-off times, sales countdowns etc. | Delivery cut-off times, sales countdowns etc. |
| Discounts | Same for all customers | Same for all customers | Special discounts for customers with account |
| Reporting | Shop health | Full analytics | Full analytics |
| EKM Basic |
EKM Standard |
EKM Advanced |
|---|---|---|
| Products | ||
| Up to 500 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| User accounts | ||
| 1 | 5 | 15 |
| Product urgency features | ||
| None | Delivery cut-off times, sales countdowns etc. | Delivery cut-off times, sales countdowns etc. |
| Discounts | ||
| Same for all customers | Same for all customers | Special discounts for customers with account |
| Reporting | ||
| Shop health | Full analytics | Full analytics |
Many of the ecommerce features are added as separate apps through the EKM Features section in the web dashboard. Miscellaneous functions are available here, such as an age verification step and EU cookie bar for website visitors.
Integrations for advanced stock management, EPOS integrations, shipping software, analytics and more can be connected to the online store, but there is no direct POS integration with EKM.
A seemingly random feature is the free phone number included on all plans. If you haven’t got a telephone number for your business already, you can activate an 0333 number free of charge, without a contract.
Website templates
All of EKM’s templates come free with a subscription. There are 76 themes that can be customised to suit your store’s colour schemes, fonts and required page sections. No coding is required to edit the website’s pages.
The themes are mobile-responsive, meaning they look good and are easy to navigate on small screens. A large chunk of online shopping happens from a smartphone and Google systematically ranks mobile-friendly sites higher, so this is very important.
Examples of EKM themes.
Some customers have reported feeling limited by the editing options for the templates, so if you have a very specific idea of how the website should look, you might not get it perfect. Those who don’t need anything too artsy or complicated can be happy with the themes, though.
That being said, advanced users can create, customise and edit the online store through HTML or CSS code. This allows you to hire a web developer (or use EKM’s own) to build a unique store, upload it and tweak designs that EKM’s settings can’t address.
Domain and hosting
Website hosting is the server space required to keep your website live at all times. If you didn’t use an all-in-one ecommerce platform, you would likely have to pay a monthly or annual fee to a hosting provider. With EKM – since it is an all-in-one platform – you don’t have to pay extra for hosting as it is included on all plans.
There’s a difference in speed between Basic’s and Standard’s server and the server on Advanced which is apparently “high-performance”. In any case, the bandwidth is unlimited, meaning the online store can handle large volumes of traffic.
Image: EKM
EKM settings for domain names.
You also get a free SSL certificate (the lock icon in your URL bar) that ensures your site is safe for taking payments.
On any plan, you can get a domain name that’s free in the first year, then incurs an annual renewal fee. Alternatively, you can use an existing domain of yours. While building the site, a ‘test shop’ allows you to check changes before publishing them to the live website.
Customer service and reviews
Perhaps the best thing about EKM is the customer service. Many will find it an advantage that the support team is based in the UK and understands the British market very well.
Users can call, email and chat-message the EKM support team on weekdays between 8am-6pm and weekends between 9am-5.30pm. Subscribers of Standard get priority responses, while Advanced users have 24/7 emergency support.
Everyone gets assigned an account manager who will arrange a 30-minute introductory phone call to help you get started with the online store. On Standard, the account manager will help you design and build the online store – and advise on marketing and sales – for six months. The Advanced plan takes you to another level with a full-time, proactive account manager who’ll help your business reach its full potential for the lifetime of your account.
If customer reviews are anything to go by, EKM is also considerably friendlier than the typical, global ecommerce providers. The account managers are proactive, friendly, genuinely invested in the user and typically resolves issues promptly.
A remarkable service of EKM is its periodical site reviews of your online store, called Evolution Mode.
Once a year on the Basic plan, a team member of Evolution Mode reviews your shop and shows improvements needed to increase sales. On the Standard plan, that team member will personally implement those changes for you. On Advanced, these changes are done for you on a monthly basis.
EKM is considerably friendlier than the typical, global ecommerce providers. Account managers are proactive, friendly, genuinely invested in the user and typically resolves issues promptly.
On the Pro plan, you get a whole team of marketing, design and account managers to run the online shop for you. With that in mind, Pro’s high monthly cost is worth it compared to hiring one of more colleagues to handle the online store.
Our verdict
We’ve reviewed a lot of ecommerce platforms and can say that EKM has a refreshingly personal approach to its users. If you value support and crave advice for how to improve your online store, EKM is better than any alternatives at that price level in the UK.
There are other platforms with more design options and features (like Wix and Shopify), but some merchants find them frustrating if they run into problems and can’t get hold of support. You are largely left to your own devices with these alternatives, whereas EKM has committed more resources to helping its users.
Multi-channel businesses with a brick-and-mortar store cannot integrate with EPOS without third-party connector software, so it’s not the most convenient for those who want the smoothest POS-ecommerce combo.
In the end, the quality of an ecommerce solution lies in its ability to facilitate success. EKM has curated a strong set of features optimised to sell more and appeal to your customers (design-wise), while keeping the freedom to customise advanced websites at a higher cost.
