Talstok vs Shopify, for shops with a till
Shopify started as an online shop builder and added selling in person. Talstok starts from the counter and the stock, with the online shop on the same records.
Which to choose
Shopify suits you if
your website is the business: you want themes, a design editor and apps for email, reviews and loyalty, or you need card readers or several stock locations.
Talstok suits you if
the counter and the stock come first, you buy and sell second-hand or keep a price list of repair jobs, and you want online card payments paid into your own Stripe account.
Prices side by side
Shopify’s three main plans beside Talstok’s starting price, with the card fees each plan pays.
| Plan | Paid yearly | Paid monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Talstok | No yearly plan | From £20 |
| Shopify Basic | £19 | £25 |
| Shopify Grow | £49 | £65 |
| Shopify Advanced | £259 | £344 |
| Plan | Online | In person |
|---|---|---|
| Talstok | 1.5% + 20p | Your machine |
| Shopify Basic | 2% + 25p | 1.7% |
| Shopify Grow | 1.7% + 25p | 1.6% |
| Shopify Advanced | 1.5% + 25p | 1.5% |
| Plan | Added to each sale |
|---|---|
| Shopify Basic | 2% |
| Shopify Grow | 1% |
| Shopify Advanced | 0.6% |
Talstok costs from £20 a month for each shop that takes real money, billed monthly. Plans for each kind of shop, with add-ons on top, are being decided. The pricing page will say what each includes once they are. Online, Talstok takes payments through Stripe only, at Stripe’s published rate. At the counter you can use any card machine, at its provider’s rate. Shopify’s card fees are Shopify Payments’. Shopify Plus, from £1,800 a month on a one to three year term, is left out, and so is Shopify’s offer of £1 a month for the first three months. Read on 5 October 2026: shopify.com/uk/pricing and shopify.com/uk/pos/pricing.
What a small shop really pays Shopify
Software only, before card fees, for a shop selling online and at a counter. On the growing bill, the plan is about a fifth of the total.
| Line | Lean | Growing |
|---|---|---|
| Plan: Basic, or Grow | £19.00 | £49.00 |
| Till: POS Lite, or POS Pro for one location | £0 | £69.00 |
| Paid theme, $320 spread over three years | £0 | £6.72 |
| Reviews: Judge.me | £0 | £11.34 |
| Email: Klaviyo, 1,500 contacts | £0 | £34.03 |
| Subscriptions: Seal | £0 | £7.52 |
| Bundles: Fast Bundle | £0 | £14.37 |
| SEO: Booster | £0 | £29.49 |
| Loyalty: Smile | £0 | £11.34 |
| Domain | £1.00 | £1.00 |
| Total | £20 | about £234 |
On monthly billing the growing bill is about £250. Card fees come on top: for a shop taking £10,000 a month by card (£6,000 online in 150 orders, £4,000 at the counter in 200 sales), £225.50 a month on Basic and £203.50 on Grow. With Talstok, the same shop pays Stripe about £120 for its online sales, plus its card machine’s fee at the counter. The growing column buys email marketing, reviews, loyalty and subscriptions, which Talstok does not have. App prices are in dollars on each app’s page in the Shopify App Store, converted at $1 = £0.7562, worked out from the European Central Bank’s euro rates on 5 October 2026. Line by line: the true cost of an online shop.
Where Shopify is ahead
Website design
Free and paid themes, a theme editor and thousands of apps. Talstok’s page builder is coming, and not built yet.
Card readers and printed receipts
Shopify’s own card readers connect to its till, and it prints receipts. Talstok records payments taken on your own machine, and emails receipts.
Several stock locations
Stock kept for each location, with transfers between them. In Talstok, each shop has one stock count.
Apps for email, reviews and loyalty
Judge.me, Klaviyo and Smile each have a free tier, and paid plans as you grow.
Selling offline
Shopify POS has an offline checkout for cash and other manual payments. Once offline payments are switched on, it takes cards on its supported readers too (Shopify’s help centre, read 5 October 2026). Talstok’s till needs an internet connection, and working offline is not built.
Sign up online today
Anyone can open a Shopify shop online, with a large company and years of shops behind it. Talstok’s shops join by email for now.
Where Talstok differs
The till, the stock and the online shop work from the same records. Second-hand buying is built in; on Shopify it comes from apps.
- From £20 a month for each shop that takes real money. A test shop is free.
- Online card payments go into your own Stripe account, at Stripe’s own rate.
- Grades, buy prices and items kept one by one, without an app.
- Each part can be switched on or off for your shop, and parts left off stay out of your menus. Paying only for the parts you use is coming.
Questions
What are the best Shopify alternatives for a small UK shop?
It depends on what you sell and where. For a shop selling online and at a counter, the lean monthly software bill on 5 October 2026 was about £15 on WooCommerce (after the first year’s hosting deal), £17 on Wix, £18 on Squarespace, £20 on Shopify and £21 on Square Online with Square POS.
Talstok has a till, stock control and an online shop on the same records, with second-hand buying and a price list of repair jobs built in. It costs from £20 a month for each shop that takes real money, and what each plan includes is being decided.
Card fees come on top everywhere. For a shop taking £10,000 a month by card, they cost more than the lean software bill on every platform.
How much is Shopify POS in the UK?
Selling in person is included on every Shopify plan. POS Pro, for staff roles, returns at any location and retail reports, was £69 a month per location on Shopify’s UK pricing page on 5 October 2026; another Shopify page gave £52 a month on a 12-month term.
Is Talstok cheaper than Shopify?
On the plan alone, it depends how you pay: Shopify Basic was £19 a month paid yearly, or £25 paid monthly, on 5 October 2026, against Talstok’s price from £20 a month, billed monthly. What each Talstok plan includes is being decided.
On Shopify, POS Pro and apps add to the plan: the growing shop in our research paid about £234 a month for Shopify software. Some of that buys email marketing, reviews and loyalty, which Talstok does not have. Card fees are separate on both.
What does Shopify charge per sale?
With Shopify Payments on Basic: 2% + 25p online and 1.7% in person, less on Grow and Advanced. With another payment provider, Shopify adds 2% of each sale on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. On £6,000 a month online, that 2% is £120.
Can I move from Shopify to Talstok?
Products can be imported by pasting the text of a CSV file into Talstok’s import screen, in its own columns: handle, title, variant, stock code, price, stock, description, category and barcode. There is no direct Shopify import.
Other comparisons
See it with your own products
A test shop is free. Nothing in it is real: no money moves, and it never emails a customer. You pay only once a shop takes real money.