If you are outgrowing spreadsheets across Amazon, eBay and Shopify, Cin7 Core publishes a fixed monthly price starting at $349 (about £263), while Brightpearl and Linnworks are both quote-only. The real decision is not the headline price. It is whether you can live with a self-serve setup and USD billing, or need a bespoke UK quote that bundles a much bigger implementation fee.
Key pointers
- Cin7 Core is the only one of the three with a public price list, and it is in US dollars, not pounds.
- Brightpearl and Linnworks require a sales call before you see any number at all.
- Budget for implementation separately from the subscription. It is commonly the bigger line item in year one.
- Cin7 Core's entry tier caps you at 6,000 sales orders a year, about 500 a month. Check your real order volume before you pick a tier.
- Brightpearl includes unlimited users on every plan. Cin7 Core charges for extra users above its tier allowance; Linnworks folds user access into its order-volume quote instead.
- If you already run Sage, Brightpearl is the only one of the three with a native Sage Intacct connector.
- Ask each vendor directly what currency and VAT treatment applies to your invoice before you sign anything.
What Moving Off Spreadsheets Means for a Growing UK Retailer
Selling on Amazon, eBay and Shopify at the same time creates one problem that spreadsheets cannot solve reliably: the same unit of stock can sell on two channels within minutes of each other, and by the time you update the third channel by hand, you have oversold. Dedicated inventory and order management software exists to close that gap, syncing stock levels across every channel automatically and routing each order to the right pick-and-pack process.
Cin7 Core, Brightpearl and Linnworks all do this job, but they are built for slightly different retailers. Cin7 Core is the more self-service option of the three, with a published price and a structured onboarding course you largely work through yourself. Brightpearl and Linnworks both sell through a discovery call and a custom quote, which usually means a bigger implementation project but also a plan built around your actual order volume and channel mix rather than a generic tier.
A retailer with a clean product catalogue, one warehouse and a handful of integrations can reasonably expect a faster, cheaper rollout than one running multiple warehouses, complex bundles or Sage accounting already in place. Match the platform to that reality rather than to the badge with the most familiar name. Keeping your current spreadsheet-and-app setup a little longer is also a legitimate choice if your order volume has not yet crossed a few hundred orders a month across all channels combined, since implementation cost and disruption both scale with complexity, not just with vendor choice.
Pricing and Cost Model
Figures below are as published or reported on 29 September 2026. Cin7 Core's prices are in US dollars and exclude tax; the GBP figures are an indicative conversion at the FXStreet mid-market GBP/USD rate of 1.3250 on 29 September 2026, not Cin7's actual UK invoice price. Ask Cin7 directly what currency, VAT treatment and card-conversion fee will apply to your account. Brightpearl and Linnworks publish no price list at all, so their figures below are independent, third-party estimates, not vendor list prices, and are marked as such.
| Platform and tier | Published or reported monthly cost | One-off implementation cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cin7 Core Standard | $349/month (about £263) | Mandatory onboarding included in the subscription flow; a separate "Focused Onboarding" package is reported at around $2,000 (about £1,509) | 5 users, 2 integrations, 6,000 orders/year, prices exclude tax |
| Cin7 Core Pro | $599/month (about £452) | As above, or a partner-led implementation for more complex needs, priced separately by the partner | 10 users, 4 integrations, 24,000 orders/year |
| Cin7 Core Advanced | $1,199/month (about £905) | As above | 15 users, 6 integrations, 120,000 orders/year |
| Linnworks | Quote-only, no published figure | Independently reported at $2,000 to $15,000 (about £1,509 to £11,321) one-off, depending on complexity | Priced on monthly order volume, not revenue; historic (2019) overage rates were £0.14/order on the Standard plan and £0.12/order on Advanced, before the move to custom quotes |
| Brightpearl | Quote-only, no published figure; independent reporting says pricing scales with revenue | No published or reliably reported one-off figure; independent comparison reporting puts typical implementation at 90 to 120 days | Unlimited users on every plan at no extra cost; owned by Sage since 2022 |
For a retailer weighing "real monthly cost including implementation," the honest way to budget is to spread the one-off implementation fee over your first 12 months alongside the subscription. On Cin7 Core Pro, that is roughly $599 plus a twelfth of $2,000, or about $766 a month (about £578) in year one, falling to $599 a month (about £452) after that. Linnworks and Brightpearl cannot be budgeted this precisely without a quote, but the same principle applies: ask each vendor for the implementation fee as a fixed number before you sign, and divide it across your first year to see the real monthly cost, not just the licence line.
Vendor and Option Comparison
| Criterion | Cin7 Core | Brightpearl | Linnworks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Yes, three fixed tiers, in USD | No, quote-only | No, quote-only |
| Priced on | Fixed tier (users, integrations, order volume) | Reported to scale with revenue | Monthly order volume |
| Users included | 5 to 15 depending on tier, extra users cost more | Unlimited on every plan | Included within the quote |
| Native accounting links | Xero and QuickBooks | Xero, QuickBooks (Online and Desktop) and Sage, including a native Sage Intacct connector | None native; Xero via third-party connectors such as Tradebox, Sage 50 via Tradebox |
| Marketplace and channel reach | Native Amazon integration plus other e-commerce connectors, tier-limited | Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay | 100+ channels including Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy and TikTok Shop |
| Reported implementation time | Self-serve onboarding is structured over several weeks; partner-led projects take longer | Around 90 to 120 days per independent reporting | As little as 40 days per Linnworks' own reporting; a real timeline depends on setup complexity |
| Best fit | A retailer that wants a fixed, published price and is happy to do more of the setup itself | A retailer already on Sage, or one that wants unlimited users and deep retail operations automation in one platform | A retailer whose main pain point is syncing stock and orders across a large number of marketplaces |
| Who should not choose it | A retailer that needs a guaranteed GBP price with no sales call | A retailer that wants to see a price before talking to sales | A retailer that wants native, first-party accounting integration out of the box |
None of the three is a universal winner. Cin7 Core suits a retailer that values price transparency and self-service setup over a deep Sage link. Brightpearl suits a retailer already invested in Sage accounting who wants unlimited seats. Linnworks suits a retailer whose real bottleneck is marketplace breadth rather than accounting depth.
Migration and Rollout Checklist
- Confirm your actual order volume across Amazon, eBay and Shopify for the last three months, since every platform's cost and tier depend on it.
- Get a written implementation quote from Brightpearl and Linnworks before comparing them to Cin7 Core's published price, so you are comparing like with like.
- Ask each vendor to confirm the invoicing currency, VAT treatment and any card-payment conversion fee that will apply to your account.
- Clean your product catalogue before migration: remove duplicates, standardise SKUs and confirm which items are bundles or kits.
- Set a single cut-off point for your opening stock count, ideally a stocktake the evening before go-live, so the new system's quantities match your physical stock exactly.
- Test every marketplace connection (Amazon, eBay, Shopify) in a sandbox or trial account before going live, checking that stock updates sync within minutes, not hours.
- Confirm which of your current integrations count towards a tier's included integration limit and which will need to be purchased as extras.
- Warn your team before the cutover: pause manual stock adjustments during the migration window to avoid quantities drifting out of sync.
- Agree a rollback plan with your implementation partner or vendor in case the opening stock count does not match on day one.
- Book a formal acceptance check with whoever ran your implementation, confirming every channel syncs correctly and every user has the right permissions, before you sign off the project as complete.
Editorial analysis
The three platforms sit at different points on the same trade-off. A published price buys you certainty and speed at the cost of doing more configuration yourself, which is Cin7 Core's position. A quote-only model buys you a plan shaped around your actual business, at the cost of a longer sales process and, on the evidence available, a bigger implementation bill, which is the position both Brightpearl and Linnworks occupy. Neither approach is wrong. The mistake most growing retailers make is comparing a headline subscription price against a rival's quote-only implementation cost as though they were the same kind of number. They are not. Ask every vendor for both figures, in writing, before you compare.
Sources
- Cin7 Pricing - Cin7
- Cin7 Core Onboarding Services - Cin7 Core Help Centre
- Cin7 Spotlight: New Cin7 Onboarding Packages for Core - Cin7
- Amazon integration FAQs - Cin7 Core Help Centre
- Linnworks Pricing - Linnworks
- Onboarding Services - Linnworks
- Pricing - Brightpearl - Brightpearl
- Brightpearl vs Linnworks (2026): Multichannel Inventory - SME Compare
- Linnworks Pricing 2026: Plans, Costs & Total Cost - CheckThat.ai
- How much does Cin7 Core cost to implement? - Waypoint
- British Pound softens to near 1.3250 as elevated US yields outweigh BoE's hawkish tone - FXStreet
