The platform vendors all say theirs is the right choice. So does every agency that earns from the build. Here is what independent advice actually looks like.
UK manufacturers and retailers selecting an ecommerce platform are navigating a market where every voice has a commercial interest in the outcome. Platform vendors want your licence fee. Agencies want your build contract. Neither starts from the question that actually matters: what does this platform need to do for your specific customers, your pricing structure, your ERP and your operational team? Right Partners answers that question first — and only then evaluates platforms against it.
Right Partners holds no platform partnerships and receives no referral fees from Shopify, Adobe, Magento or any other vendor. Our platform recommendation is the one that fits your commercial specification — not the one that earns us the most.
Why most UK businesses choose the wrong ecommerce platform — and only discover it 18 months later
Platform selection failures are almost never caused by choosing a bad platform. They are caused by choosing the right platform for the wrong specification.
The demo becomes the specification
The standard platform selection process goes: attend demos, compare feature matrices, pick the one that looks most impressive. This is how businesses end up on the wrong platform. A platform that demos well is not the same as a platform that handles your specific pricing complexity, your ERP integration requirements and your operational workflows. Right Partners builds the commercial specification before any demo is arranged — so the demos are evaluated against your actual requirements, not the vendor's curated highlights.
Total cost of ownership is never modelled honestly at the outset
The licence or SaaS fee is visible. The ERP integration cost, the custom development cost, the extension and plugin costs, the hosting and infrastructure costs, the internal team costs and the ongoing maintenance costs are almost never modelled honestly before the platform decision is made. Enterprise B2B platforms regularly cost £150,000 or more in year one once all of these are included. Right Partners models the full total cost of ownership — across a three-year horizon — before any platform recommendation is made.
The agency recommends the platform it knows best
Most agencies have a platform preference — usually the one they have the most developers for, the strongest partnership tier with, or the highest delivery margin on. That preference is rarely disclosed. Right Partners has no platform preference, no certified partnership tiers and no delivery revenue. When we recommend a platform, it is because the commercial specification points to it — not because our team is Shopify-certified or because we earn a referral fee from Adobe.
What genuinely independent platform selection looks like
Right Partners runs the full platform selection process — from commercial specification through vendor evaluation to final recommendation — with no commercial interest in which platform is chosen.
The specification defines what the platform must support: your customer account structure, your pricing and discount architecture, your ERP and systems integration requirements, your catalogue complexity, your ordering workflows and your operational team's capability. That specification is written before any vendor is contacted and becomes the evaluation framework for the entire process. A platform that cannot meet the specification is eliminated regardless of how well it demos.
Right Partners builds a weighted scorecard based on the commercial specification — not a generic feature checklist. Each requirement is weighted according to its commercial importance. Platform vendors and their agency partners are evaluated against the scorecard through structured RFI, RFP and demonstration processes. The scoring is transparent and the weighting is set before any vendor presentation — so no platform can win on demo quality alone.
Right Partners models the full three-year total cost of ownership for each shortlisted platform — including licence fees, implementation costs, ERP integration, hosting and infrastructure, custom development, extension and plugin costs, internal team requirements and estimated ongoing maintenance. The headline licence fee is rarely the largest cost. The honest TCO model is often the most valuable output of the entire selection process.
The final recommendation includes the platform selection, the rationale against each specification requirement, the TCO comparison, the recommended delivery partner and the governance model for the implementation. Right Partners remains available throughout the implementation to ensure the platform selection rationale is not eroded by scope changes, cost pressure or agency preference during the build.
Common questions from UK businesses approaching platform selection
The answer depends entirely on the commercial specification. Adobe Commerce has stronger native B2B capability — account-specific pricing, company account management, approval workflows, requisition lists and deeper ERP integration frameworks. It scores higher than Shopify Plus for pure B2B complexity, ranking as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for nine consecutive years with particular strength in combined B2B and B2C operations. Shopify Plus has improved its B2B capability significantly and is appropriate for manufacturers with simpler pricing structures, lower catalogue complexity and a preference for faster deployment and lower ongoing maintenance overhead. The wrong answer is the one chosen before the specification is written. Right Partners writes the specification first and then evaluates both platforms against it.
Further reading for UK businesses approaching a platform decision
Before you attend another demo or issue an RFP, talk to Right Partners
Whether you are a UK manufacturer or retailer beginning a platform selection, evaluating a shortlist, trying to understand why your current platform is underperforming, or recovering from a selection that did not deliver what the vendor promised — book a free 60-minute conversation. No platform preference. No agency agenda. An honest assessment of whether your approach to platform selection is likely to produce the right outcome.
Book a free 60-minute consultationNo obligation. No platform preference. A conversation about your specific platform selection challenge.