Omni Tend vs Shopify

Shopify and Omni Tend compared for a UK shop with a till: prices, contracts, selling by the metre or kilo, rotas, and where each company is based. Checked 23 October 2026.

Shopify is a hosted web shop from Shopify Inc. of Ottawa, Canada, with a point-of-sale app for selling in person. If your business is mostly online and sells things by the each, it is very good at that, and its app store will have something for almost everything else.

Omni Tend is the other way round: a till first, built in Suffolk for independent pubs, shops and food trucks, with the web shop, stock, purchasing, rotas and daily checks on the same login and the same bill.

Feature	Omni Tend	Shopify
Where the company is	Suffolk, UK	Ottawa, Canada (Shopify Inc.); UK shops contract with its Irish company in Dublin
Monthly price, one till and a web shop	£59 a month (Standard: up to 5 tills and the web shop; £29 for one till without it)	£25 a month for the shop and casual selling; £134 with staff roles and stock counts on the till (Grow £65 plus POS Pro £69 a location)
Contract	Monthly direct debit	Monthly on Basic, Grow and Advanced (Plus has a term); POS Pro is billed yearly per location
Card processing	Stripe reader, or keep your own terminal	1.7% in person and 2% + 25p online on Basic, with Shopify Payments
Till (ePOS)		Yes, the Shopify POS app; POS Pro for counts, staff roles and returns anywhere
Web shop	Yes, on your own domain, from the same stock
Sell by the metre, kilo or pint	Yes: metres, kilos, pints from a keg or cask	Not natively; whole units only, with paid apps for weight and length
Stock and purchase orders	Yes, with purchase orders from what sold	Yes, with purchase orders in the admin on every plan
Rotas and holidays	Yes, with holidays and blocked periods	Apps only (a rota app from US$14.99 a month)
Training records	Yes, signed off with a PIN
Daily checks and tasks	Yes, with photos and a log
Kitchen printing and phone orders	Yes, and phone orders	No kitchen printing
Who answers when something breaks	The people who built it, in the UK	24/7 chat, worldwide

The Shopify column was checked against their own published pages on 23 October 2026; prices and plans change, so check before you decide. Sources: Shopify UK pricing, Shopify POS pricing, Purchase orders, Shopify App Store, Shopify UK terms, section 13

Pick Shopify if

Most of your sales are online and you want a very large app and theme ecosystem.
Everything you sell is a whole unit, counted as 1, 2, 3.
You want a global platform with 24-hour chat support and are happy to add apps for the rest.

Pick Omni Tend if

You sell by the metre, the kilo or the pint, and want the stock to be right without an app.
The till is the heart of the business and the web shop runs from the same stock.
Rotas, holidays, training and daily checks should be part of the system rather than separate subscriptions.
You would rather ring the people who built it, in the UK.

Questions people ask

Does Shopify sell by the metre or by weight?

Not out of the box. Shopify counts stock in whole units; selling fabric by the metre or produce by the kilo takes a paid app from its App Store, and the apps we looked at on 23 October 2026 were priced in US dollars, from $9 to $29 a month. In Omni Tend fabric is bought as a bolt and sold by the metre, with the stock in metres.

Does Shopify have rotas and holidays?

No. Staff scheduling is not a Shopify feature; it is a third-party app. Omni Tend includes rotas from templates, holiday requests with blocked periods and training records on every plan.

Where is Shopify based?

Shopify Inc. is a Canadian company at 151 O'Connor Street, Ottawa, and its UK terms say a UK shop contracts with Shopify International Limited in Dublin (read 23 October 2026). Omni Tend is built, hosted and supported in the UK.