For a shop, not a warehouse
Shopify is built to run an online store. If you run a real shop that also sells a few things online, that is a lot of machine for the job.
A real Clay site, built from a Google listing
Shopify is the best product in its category and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. If online sales are your business, stock levels, shipping zones, abandoned baskets, a hundred SKUs, use Shopify and stop reading.
But a great many businesses are not that. A bakery with eight things worth posting. A studio selling prints. A deli with a Christmas hamper. For those, a Shopify subscription is a monthly bill for a warehouse you do not have, and what you actually needed was a website with a basket on it.
Clay vs Shopify
Products, options, a basket, sent to you
Photographs, a price, options like size or flavour, and a basket that hands you the order. Enough to sell a box of pastries or a print run; not enough to run a fulfilment operation, and it does not pretend to be.
The rest of the site is the point
A shop on its own does not answer the question most of your visitors have, which is whether you are open and where you are. On Clay the shop is one band on a site that also carries your hours, your map, your reviews and how to reach you, because for a real-world business that is what the traffic is looking for.
Your photographs, already sorted
Clay reads the pictures on your Google listing, grades them, crops them for the shape each band needs and puts the best one at the top. Nothing to upload, nothing to resize.
What it looks like when it is live
Drawn rather than described, the page, the address, and what it can switch on.
What you get
- A website first, with a shop in it
- No monthly fee before you have sold anything
- Built from your Google listing, photographs, hours, map, reviews
- Move to Shopify later if you outgrow it, and you will know when
How it works
Search your business
Type your name, Clay pulls your photos, hours, reviews and contact details straight from your Google listing.
Pick a style
Choose a look and Clay builds a full site around your content. Change anything with a tap, no code, no templates to wrestle.
You're online
Publish to your own name.clay.site in minutes. Add a custom domain and connect your own tools whenever you're ready.
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot, so what you see is what it looks like right now.
Questions
How many products can I list?
There is no hard cap, but the shop is designed for a browsable list rather than a searchable catalogue. Past a hundred or so you want proper filtering and stock control, which means Shopify.
How do payments work?
They happen off the site. Checkout sends you the whole order on WhatsApp or by email and you take the money the way you already do, in the shop, on delivery, by transfer. That is the honest difference from Shopify: no card is processed here, and no fee is taken because nothing is.
Can I do click and collect?
Yes, collection is the common case for a local shop, and it is the default. Flat-rate delivery is there too; carrier-calculated rates are not.
What about stock levels?
You can mark something sold out. There is no live inventory syncing with a till system, if you need that, you need a real commerce platform.
Can I move to Shopify later?
Yes, and you should if the shop becomes the business. Your products are yours; your domain moves with you.
Is there anything to connect?
No payment account, no approval, nothing to set up, because the site never processes a payment. What you type as a price is what the customer sees, and what they pay you is between the two of you.
What happens to my product photos?
Upload from your phone and they are cropped and compressed on our side, so a forty-product page still opens fast on a phone with one bar of signal.
Try it with your business
Search your business and see your site in seconds, free, no signup.