If you are looking for an Ecommerce platform, Shopify can be a great option and we are going to review this SaaS (Software as a Service) with helpful information in this Shopify Review and what you need to know before signing up with Shopify.com.
Shopify has built their brand in a great way globally, despite of their reputation is Shopify the right tool for you?
Maybe or not? Let find out in this Shopify Review
Shopify Review
In this Shopify Review, we will dig into its features, pros and cons and pricing. You will find out whether it is suitable for your business or not, or you seek other alternatives like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Woocommerce or Bigcommerce.
What is Shopify?
If you are new to eCommerce or online platform, you may or may not have come across the word ‘Shopify’. The company was established in 2006 by a young German living in Canada who was selling snowboards with an online website. He created his own eCommerce platform and thinks that it could be useful for people who want to sell online.
A decade later Shopify has become the number one eCommerce online store building tool on the internet. The company has more than 800,000 websites under its wings, with 3000 employees and offices around the world, plus sales that worth $63 million.
Shopify - How it works?
Shopify is an online SaaS (Software as a Software) website building tool that makes it easy for everyone to build an eCommerce online store with no technical knowledge. It is just like a drag and drop editor without coding. It helps business owners to manage their sales, orders and returns simply with just a few clicks.
It is geared toward sellers who want to add additional supplier channels like Amazon, eBay or even Facebook. They include technical support by live chat that help anyone who is in troubleshooting with a website.
Shopify Pricing
| Features | Basic | Shopify | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website & Blog | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited items | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User accounts | 2 | 5 | 15 |
| Sell on marketplace and Social Media | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Inventory Locations | Up to 4 | Up to 5 | Up to 8 |
| Discount codes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Professional reports | Yes | Yes | |
| Third-party calculated shipping rates | Yes | ||
| Fraud analysis | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Online credit card rates | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.6% + 30¢ | 2.4% + 30¢ |
| In-person credit card rates | 2.7% + 0¢ | 2.5% + 0¢ | 2.4% + 0¢ |
| Additional fees using other payment providers | 2.0% | 1.0% | 0.5% |
| Price | $29/m | $79/m | $299/m |
Shopify Lite & Plus
There are two additional plans in case that you didn’t realize just underneath the Shopify Pricing plans.
Lite Plan: Allow you to sell on social media platforms and you can purchase it for $9 per month.
Enterprise Plan: Designed for a large store with hundreds of goods to distribute. The price begins at $2000 per month. You need to make a crazy sum of profit every month to afford this plan.
Domain name: Shopify offers a domain name for $14 a year for a dotcom. You can also use a domain that is registered from an external source as well. I suggest you register a domain name at NameCheap since they have a cheaper price rate.
Shopify Payment
If possible we suggest you to use Shopify payment gateway, it can help to save the additional charge that other payment processor companies will charge beside transaction fees. However, this payment option is only available for users in the United States, United Kingdom, Puerto Rico, Canada, Singapore, Ireland and Australia.
Optional payment methods are available as well like ‘cash on delivery’, ‘bank transfer’, etc. However these methods do not have Shopify’s fee.
Shopify’s Pros and Cons
Pros
Easy to use
Shopify is designed to be user-friendly. Anyone without the programming skill can easily build a webstore with just a few clicks. It is great for beginners who can create websites on their own without hiring any developer to do it for them.
Design
Shopify stock interior design interface is far better than other eCommerce tool builders. They have great quantity and quality for the templates including responsive themes which are mobile-friendly. There are roughly 130+ themes available on Shopify, if you don’t like any of them you can make your own with their ‘Liquid template engine’ or purchase a new one.
Flexibility
The available elements and features are so great. Advanced users can take the advantage of its flexibility to access with the full coding.
Scalability
The system of Shopify is quite robust. They made it simple for small businesses to scale.
Application and Community
Shopify App Store is filled with a huge collection of useful add-ons apps (e.g. email marketing integration). There are friendly developers, website builders and other Shopify users who are there to help you if an issue arises.
Excellent Support Team
Shopify out do their support system and offer 24/7 support services. We are very satisfied with their help in setting up a complex website with over 50+ items in a website. Their support is better than other website companies we have used so far.
Cons
Bad Sub-directory
The URL structure for each directory such as blog posts, the about us page, etc. is not contributing to SEO-ranking. Google doesn’t rank well for websites with bad URL sub-directories.
Expensive & Limited Templates
Shopify stock has a bunch of 130+ templates in their store, however these themes are kind of high in price, low functionality and missing some important features.
Transaction Fees
Shopify charges a transaction fee for using external payment processors like Paypal, Stripe, 2Checkout, etc. Unless you use Shopify’s own payment gateway.
Building a Content Blog
Shopify is mainly used for eCommerce stores. The look of every website that is created with Shopify has the feature of being an online retail store in nature. If you want to make it look like a blog, it would be hard to customize the layout and interface.
Summary
Shopify is a great eCommerce website building tool. They make it easy to manage sales, adding products, handling order and shipping details for everyone without hassle.
The design of their template can be customized to a large degree in the way you want without limit. Except that it is hard to make it look like a blog if you intend to use content as the main elements to draw traffic to your store.
Even it is difficult to make your store look like a blog but Shopify platform includes a blog for you to post valuable content to promote your products.
All apps and templates are available in the Shopify’s app store, They are changeable and can add with extra functionality. If you are an advanced user, you can modify the apps and themes with full customization by coding them.
Shopify has a 24/7 support team that looks after their clients around the world. No matter where you are it isn’t a problem to speak with a representative from Shopify.
Shopify’s platform is made to accommodate small, medium, big to gigantic eCommerce stores. Their resources are sufficient to make every site work smoothly and without issue.
It is great for dropshipping as well, the Shopify’s app store has tons of useful apps that you can integrate to use for your dropshipping business.
Shopify is quite a straight-forward platform that offers what they claim on their webpage, there is no hidden fee or cheezy upsell. However you will need to have quite a budget to sign up or you can try out their service for free for 90 days (if it is still available usually they offer 14 day trials). If you like it then you can pay for it. I think Shopify plays fair with everyone.
The Shopify additional transaction fees may put some people off if they sell a huge amount of products, then the fees can add up quite a lot, unless you use their own payment gateway.
Not so friendly for a multilingual webstore. The main language is English, if you plan to set up a store with a non-English language, it will be difficult and most apps don’t support it.
Abandoned cart is only available for users who sign up for the higher plan. If you choose the cheapest plan, don’t expect to use an abandoned cart to gain back your customers.
Overall, we have wrapped up our Shopify Review. Now you should have the information you need to make a decision whether you should sign up for the platforms or not. The choice is yours!