Magento is built for brands that need more from their eCommerce: more flexibility, more control, and more room to grow. At Actuate, we’re a Manchester-based Magento agency helping businesses across the UK move faster, sell smarter, and unlock the kind of growth that actually scales.
Whether you’re starting fresh or stuck with an outdated build, we design, develop, and optimise Magento and Adobe Commerce stores that are easy to manage and built to convert.
Magento gives you full control over your store, from product logic to pricing, checkout to fulfilment. It’s ideal for brands with large catalogues, custom requirements, or B2B complexity. Magento Open Source offers full flexibility at a lower cost, while Adobe Commerce adds enterprise-grade features for scaling.
If you’ve outgrown Shopify or hit the limits of other platforms, Magento gives you the freedom to build around your business, not the other way around.
As a trusted Magento ecommerce agency in Manchester, we help you make the most of Magento’s potential.
Magento is powerful, but it takes the right tools and strategy to unlock its full potential. At Actuate, we combine technical expertise with performance-first thinking to turn Magento into a real growth engine.
As a certified Magento development company, we support version upgrades, replatforming, and full Magento 2 migration services to help you scale. Want faster load times? Our Magento 2 developers use Hyvä Themes for clean code, improved UX, and lightning-fast frontends.
From Magento solutions to conversion rate optimisation, we fine-tune your site for performance, not just polish.
We’re based at 3b Tariff Street, in the heart of Manchester’s Northern Quarter, a few minutes’ walk from Piccadilly station. For Manchester and North West brands, that means real face-to-face meetings, not just video calls.
We work with brands across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire and the wider North West, and plenty further afield too. Wherever you are, the door’s open. Come in for a coffee and a proper conversation about where your Magento store could go next.
Does Magento integrate with third-party systems and applications?
Yes. Magento plays well with the systems your business already runs on.
We connect your store to ERP, warehouse, accounting and logistics tools so stock, orders and delivery all talk to each other. For Reliant we built a custom ERP integration that kept their operations running without locking them into a single supplier.
The payoff is real-time stock, cleaner fulfilment, and fewer manual jobs eating your team’s time.
Is Magento the right platform for selling B2B?
For B2B, it’s one of the best. Magento is the highest-ranked B2B platform on the Internet Retailer 300 list, and around 30% of Magento stores sell B2B.
It handles what B2B actually needs: customer-specific pricing, bulk ordering, quote requests, and multiple account tiers. If you’re still taking orders by phone or PDF catalogue, this is the step up.
We build B2B stores that make procurement quick for your buyers and simple for your team.
How long before my shiny new Magento website is up and running?
You want to be selling, not waiting. We get it.
We’ve built on Magento since it launched, so our certified developers move fast without cutting corners. Most builds run 3 to 6 months from kick-off to launch, depending on size and complexity.
Being Manchester-based, we can sit down with North West brands in person to scope it properly at the start, which keeps the whole thing moving.
How much will it cost to build a new Magento website?
Every quote is built around your business, so you’re not paying for things you don’t need. A brand-new, bespoke Magento 2 site starts at £36,000 +VAT.
Migrating from Magento 1 works differently, and those projects start from £32,000 +VAT. We offer flexible payment plans to spread the cost if that suits you.
Come in for a coffee at our Northern Quarter office and we’ll talk through what your project actually needs before quoting.
How does the Magento website development process work?
We keep it simple. Our design, build and launch process runs in 7 clear steps, so you always know exactly where your project is and what’s next.
No black boxes, no dropped balls. You get visible milestones the whole way through, and a team down the road in Manchester you can actually talk to.
Can you help with ongoing website maintenance and management after launch?
Launch is the start, not the finish. We stick around as your Magento partner for as long as you need us.
That covers maintenance, security patching, new features, and ongoing CRO to keep lifting conversion. We’ve retained clients like Helmet City and The Skirting Board Shop for exactly this, and the gains keep compounding.
You get a local team on hand, not a ticket queue in another time zone.
Do I have to be based in Manchester or the North West to work with you?
Not at all. We’re based in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, but we work with brands right across the UK.
Being local is a bonus if you’re in Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire or the wider North West, because we can meet face to face. If you’re further afield, we run projects just as smoothly over video and email.
What are the benefits of upgrading to Magento 2?
Magento 1 is end of life. No more security patches, no updates, and a growing compliance risk under GDPR and PCI-DSS. Moving to Magento 2 fixes that and gives you a platform built to grow.
Magento 2 is fast out of the box, and faster still on Hyva. When we rebuilt Reliant on Magento 2 with Hyva, turnover rose 141% and conversion 78%. That’s the upside of a modern foundation, not just a safer one.
It’s open source, so you own it. We build the features you need as your business changes, with no licence fees holding you back.
What our clients say
Without Actuate’s help and support, our original website wouldn’t have succeeded. Time was of the essence, and Actuate stepped in to deliver a swift turnaround. The new site has performed exceptionally well ever since. We continue to grow thanks to Actuate. ❤️ Thanks guys!”
Chantelle Telford Robinsons of Bawtry
Working with Actuate is a pleasure — they are really trying to help, they listen and offer solutions to solve the problems. Thanks for all your help so far.
Rafael Bielinski Buller Ltd
“What impressed us most was how quickly Actuate identified the root cause. Within the first call they’d spotted the metadata issue that had been tanking our traffic. Everything that followed has been just as sharp.”
Mitch Tamcken AutoID
I worked with Actuate on the redevelopment of the Pickett London website. Their team is an excellent asset for any company or team, it was a pleasure to work with them – easy to communicate with, easy to reach and always willing to help.
Oliver Moser Pickett
We’ve worked with Actuate for several years and the results have been consistent. Conversion rate up 113%, AOV up, bounce rate down. They know our business inside out, and it shows.
Rob Dyer Be My Bear
I like working with Actuate because they care about what they do, they clarify the detail to get the job done right. They have worked incredibly hard with our complex needs and have been on hand for help and advice every step along the way…
Catherine Lund-Barker Elcometer
Actuate Digital has helped us improve the site’s UX and increase our conversion rate. Their team leverages their expertise to provide sound opinions and advice to guide the project in the right direction. They also always offer on-hand support and communicate via email and meetings.
