Shopify

Shopify is one of the leading E-commerce platforms powering 1.000.000 online shops whose revenue in 2019 was $135B in sales. That's why it's, today, the best alternative to selling on Amazon. Oh, but you can connect your Amazon Seller account to Shopify, of course.

It allows any individual wishing to become an online seller to set up and run an online store.

From their online store, the online seller can showcase and sell all types of goods.

Shopify Inc, a Canada-based E-Commerce multi-national company, owns the platform.

This company is also the power behind the Shopify POS (Points of Sale) system.  This system allows sellers to sell items from any place at all. Even from their garage.

What is a Shopify Store?

Shopify online stores sell a wide range of goods and services online.

You can sell handmade goods like jewellery, ceramics and pickles.

You can sell digital goods like audio downloads, e-Books, e-Courses and knitting patterns.

If you’re a consultant or a coach, you can sell your services online and give consultations, online or in person.

You can also sell and give classes and tuitions online.

If you run a membership site, you might sell subscriptions to exclusive content.

Shopify is a good platform to sell those tickets. You can even use the platform if you rent out items like wedding dresses and jewellery. It’s not surprising that this company is one of the biggest names in E-commerce. It’s taken less than two decades to establish a worldwide presence.

Shopify features list

Below you can find every feature included in the different pricing plans:

Basic features

• Ecommerce website and it's blog
• Unlimited products
• Staff accounts
• 24/7 support
• Sales channels (sell on marketplaces and social media in every country)
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards
• Professional reports
• Advanced report builder
• Third-party calculated shipping rates on the checkout

Shipping

• Up to 74% shipping discount on USPS, UPS, or DHL Express
• Print shipping labels
• USPS Priority Mail Cubic® pricing

Payments

• Fraud analysis
• Own platform: Shopify Payments
• Integration with payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Point of sale

• Shopify POS app
• Thrid-party POS apps
• Register shifts
• Hardware peripheral support
• Unlimited staff POS PINs
• Store locations

Shopify apps

In addition, you have a whole world of apps available on the Shopify app store, Shopify's application marketplace where you can find plugin to enhance your store such as:

• Dropshipping
• Product importers
• Marketplace integration (Amazon, Ebay…)
• Blogs
• Cart customization
• SEO and site optimization
• Translations
• Wishlist
• Maps and calendars
• Sales and discounts
• Contest and giveaways
• Affiliate programs
• Order recovery
• In-house fulfillment
• Order management
• Inventory management
• Customer support
• CRM
• Profit calculations
• Staff manager
• Reporting tools
• Etc

Shopify Plus features list

Apart from everything you have on the basic Shopify, you get tons of useful stuff:

• Multiple stores: up to 10 stores
• Scalability : up to 8.000 orders per minute
• High-volume traffic capacity
• Shopify Plus Launchpad: set a start and end time for some events
  • Change price of your products
  • Release products at a specific time
  • Increase your inventory during a certain time
  • Change your theme, images and banners
  • Lock the store
  • Prevent internet bots
  • Real time analytics
• Wholesale management: manage your B2C and B2B stores
• Complete personalization of the store using Javascript and CSS
• Advanced security: your store will be Level 1 PCI DSS compilant
• Shopify flow: customisable workflows using a condition based builders
• No API limit for apps and integrations
• Shopify scripts: will let you customize discounts as tiered pricing, minimum thresholds…
• Dedicated Success Manager on Shopify

Pricing

How much does shopify cost? Their basic plan start at $29 a month.

But Shopify offers differently-priced plans, depending on the business size, so you only need to pay for the Shopify services up to the level that you use.

Every paid scheme on Shopify has a 14-day free trial (extended to 90 days due to COVID-19)

Shopify users can switch from one plan to another as their business grow.

There are three main pricing plans.

Basic plan: $29/month

The basic or entry-level plan has a monthly charge of USD $29 per month and includes:

Features

• Ecommerce website and it's blog
• Unlimited products
• 2 staff accounts
• 24/7 support
• Sales channels (sell on marketplaces and social media in every country)
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery

Shipping

• Up to 64% shipping discount on USPS, UPS, or DHL Express
• Print shipping labels

Payments

• Fraud analysis
• 2.9% + 30 cents for online credit card rates
• 2,7% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates
• 2% additional fees using all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Point of sale

• Shopify POS app
• Thrid-party POS apps

Shopify Basic annual plan: $26,1/month

Shopify offers a 10% discount to it's annual plans

Shopify Basic biennial plan: $23,2/month

Shopify offers a 20% discount to it's biennial plans

Standard plan: $79/month

The standard plan has a charge of USD $79 per month and includes:

Features

• Ecommerce website and it's blog
• Unlimited products
• 5 staff accounts
• 24/7 support
• Sales channels (sell on marketplaces and social media in every country)
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards
• Professional reports

Shipping

• Up to 72% shipping discount on USPS, UPS, or DHL Express
• Print shipping labels
• USPS Priority Mail Cubic® pricing

Payments

• Fraud analysis
• 2.6% + 30 cents for online credit card rates
• 2,5% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates
• 1% additional fees using all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Point of sale

• Shopify POS app
• Thrid-party POS apps
• Register shifts
• Hardware peripheral support
• Unlimited staff POS PINs
• 1 to 5 store locations

Shopify Standard annual plan: $71,1/month

Shopify offers a 10% discount to it's annual plans

Shopify Standard biennial plan: $63,2/month

Shopify offers a 20% discount to it's biennial plans

Advanced plan: $299/month

The advanced plan comes has a heftier monthly charge of USD $299 and includes:

Features

• Ecommerce website and it's blog
• Unlimited products
• 15 staff accounts
• 24/7 support
• Sales channels (sell on marketplaces and social media in every country)
• Manual order creation
• Discount codes
• Free SSL certificate
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards
• Professional reports
• Advanced report builder
• Third-party calculated shipping rates on the checkout

Shipping

• Up to 74% shipping discount on USPS, UPS, or DHL Express
• Print shipping labels
• USPS Priority Mail Cubic® pricing

Payments

• Fraud analysis
• 2.4% + 30 cents for online credit card rates
• 2,4% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates
• 0,5% additional fees using all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Point of sale

• Shopify POS app
• Thrid-party POS apps
• Register shifts
• Hardware peripheral support
• Unlimited staff POS PINs
• Up to 8 store locations

Shopify Advanced annual plan: $269,1/month

Shopify offers a 10% discount to it's annual plans

Shopify Advanced biennial plan: $239,2/month

Shopify offers a 20% discount to it's biennial plans

None of these plans is expensive, considering the level of business they support.

Other Pricing Tiers – Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus

Shopify Lite

Shopify Lite is a programme by which an entrepreneur can sell products from a Facebook page. You add a ‘shop’ option to your FB page. An entrepreneur can add a Shopify button to sell through any website. They can also use Messenger Chat for online sales. They can use Shopify POS software to sell online or in person.

The plan costs USD $9 per month. This is a lightweight plan for online sellers who have a website of their own. But Shopify Plus is the top Shopify plan.

Shopify Plus

It’s for E-commerce merchants managing sales of more than USD $60,000 per month. Pricing starts at USD $2,000 per month.

That allows you to create up to 9 stores and you can create stores in different countries and languages. If a customer does more than USD $8000,000 in sales per month, Shopify Plus charges an extra 0.25 per cent.

This is Shopify's plan to compete with the larger E-commerce service providers.

Shopify Facebook, Messenger and Instagram Shops

Shopify sellers can add sales functionality to their Facebook page and Messenger app. A 14-day free trial is available. It’s not easy to get pricing information unless one is making a serious business enquiry. But it appears to be on a par with Shopify Lite. Starting at USD $9 per month with extra charges for credit card transactions.

There may be a similar pricing policy with an Instagram Shopify store. This is Shopify sales functionality added to an Instagram page.

Shopify on Amazon and eBay

An online seller can manage accounts from many sales channels at one place. Adding an Amazon sales channel on Shopify is free, whatever Shopify plan the seller uses. But Amazon will charge USD $39.99 per month for the Amazon Professional Sellers account. Synchronising Shopify with eBay comes under a different pricing system. There are four annual plans.

The price ranges from free for less than 10 orders per month to USD $69 per month for 5000 orders per month.

Shopify POS Systems

Shopify’s POS (Point of Sale) systems give the seller the ability to sell online or in person. It used to cost USD $49. At present, Shopify includes POS in the standard and advanced Shopify plans. You can buy the hardware for the system separately, should you need it.

You'll need the hardware for in-person sales. It's necessary if the user has a physical shop or sells in pop-up stores.

Does Shopify have a transaction fee?

Yes, so the cost of Shopify may vary depending on how much is your revenue.

When you check the plans above, you’ll notice a few extra charges. These are some charges for using credit cards for Shopify purchases. The more advanced the plan, the less transactional charge there is to pay.

They differ, depending on whether these purchases are online or in person.

Shopify online transaction fee

Online charges for a transaction made through the basic plan is 2.9% of the transaction value plus 30 cents.

Shopify offline transaction fee

The same transaction made in person costs 2.7% of the value and no extra cents.

Shopify Reviews

Are you looking for a Shopify review in deep? I've been working with this CMS for 4 years now, so I know it pretty well.

Shopify was the first of its kind in the world of E-commerce. The legend says there was a German-born computer programmer. He tried to set up an online shop to sell snowboards. He got frustrated by the lack of a decent E-commerce platform on which to build his business. So he set about developing the software to make that E-commerce platform himself.

That's why, from newbies to E-commerce veterans, Shopify serves all levels of E-commerce entrepreneurs. Some users think Shopify is great and rave about it. Others think Shopify is bad and rant about it. Who is right and who is wrong? Online sellers have been using the platform down the years.

I'll try to show you my 2 cents, but in detail.

Shopify cons

The Shopify app store

Shopify has a huge selection of apps to add functionality to the customer’s online store. Some of these apps are free and many cost money. Some of the apps are helpful and free as well. The apps with dropshipping functionality are well appreciated.

The problem with most of these apps is that they have a monthly cost, so if you're trying to reduce those monthly costs, Shopify might not be the better alternative for you.

Some of those apps have high prices, which might kill your revenue before you even start to have any sales.

Shopify and dropshipping

Dropshipping has made business accessible for many online sellers. There are some who dreamed of going into the retail business but couldn’t do it because of financial stress. Dropshipping makes it possible to sell goods online without storing them.

The seller shows the goods on the website. When they sell an item, they buy it from the supplier and have it shipped to the customer. As mentioned, the dropshipping apps on Shopify are good and most of them are free too.

Shopify dropshipping is VERY easy, specially since they acquired https://oberlo.com/, a dropshipping platform.

But, let's put all the cards on the table, there's a lot of people offering “6 monthly figure on autopilot with Shopify and dropshipping” courses which are a completely rip-off. As everything on this life, you'll have to work a lot. If someone knew the secret formula to Coca-Cola, he wouldn't sell if for $1,000, would he?

Shopify POS (Point of Sale)

Shopify’s POS (Point of Sale) tools are a great asset. Merchants who like to keep their sale operations synchronized find them helpful. The POS tools are in the form of both hardware and software.

The software goes well with iOs and Android smartphones and iPad tablets. The hardware makes it possible for the seller to receive in-person transactions. This is besides online transactions. E-sellers find it helpful that POS synchronizes that their online and offline transactions.

POS are one of the huge differences between Shopify and the average ecommerce software.

Abandoned cart reminder

Shopify has recently made abandoned cart functionality available in all the plans. Suppose a customer leaves something in the cart and fails to complete the sale?

They will receive an email within a few hours to remind them to complete their sale. Many E-commerce platforms make this functionality available in the more expensive plans.

24/7 Excellent customer service

Shopify makes 24 hours support available to clients, by phone, email or chat. The service is responsive and helpful too.

This is one of the best parts of Shopify. To me, customer service is everything once you face your first problems as a seller.

Shopify cons

Looking for reasons why Shopify is bad? stay tuned.

Corporate emails

Shopify doesn’t allow clients to create email IDs related to their domain. This is unlike some competitors.   Sometimes the client can somehow set one up.  Then they have it sent to their personal email account. But the reply will not come from the same email ID. This can cause confusion and looks rather unprofessional.

Technical bugs on themes

There are reportedly some technical issues on Shopify themes. A client was checking the theme he’d taken for his store. To his surprise, he found that the theme didn’t respond as he’d hoped it would. It created duplicate content for his website. He hadn’t planned that. The duplicate content could have caused him ‘search engine optimization’ (SEO) trouble. He only spotted it because he has technical knowledge.

I've found technical bugs myself, but they're NOTHING compared to the ones I've found on Prestashop or Magento in the past.

High transaction fees

Shopify works great if the online seller uses Shopify Payment Systems. Yet, when a customer pays by credit card, the transaction fees are quite high. If a lot of card payments take place, the customer loses a lot of money.

The customer can switch. to another payment system, they still have to pay an amount per transaction to Shopify.

This is one of the problems you'll face once you start selling and it will have a high impact on your margin.

Payment apps

I wrote about it at the beggining of the post. Some of Shopify’s apps are free and some are not. Some customers complain about this and me too. There may be a small but important piece of functionality they need for their site. They have to use a paid app, which is inconvenient.

Too simple reporting

The reporting functionality for online stores is thorough and detailed. But only on the higher-level plans. This is an area where Shopify doesn’t look well in comparison to its competitors.

No Platform is Perfect

Different E-commerce platforms are all good in individual ways. Each one has areas where it shines in comparison with others. They also have areas where they are not as good as others. No platform is perfect.

Yet it's important to appreciate that not all E-commerce platforms are a good fit for every seller. The seller needs to find the platform which suits them best and use it to its full potential. They are all different in the way they function. it might take a while to figure out which one is the right one.

People also ask

How much is shopify?

Shopify has a monthly cost plus transactions fees per every order.

The Basic plan starts at $29, plus 2.9% + 30 cents for online credit card rates or 2,7% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates.

There is an additional 2% if you use all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

How much is Shopify per month?

The cheapest plan (Basic) is $29 a month and the most expensive (Advanced) is $299

How much does shopify take per sale?

If you use the Basic plan:

• 2.9% + 30 cents for online credit card rates
• 2,7% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates
• 2% additional fees using all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Standard plan:

• 2.6% + 30 cents for online credit card rates
• 2,5% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates
• 1% additional fees using all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Advanced plan:

• 2.4% + 30 cents for online credit card rates
• 2,4% + 0 cents for in-person credit card rates
• 0,5% additional fees using all payment providers other than Shopify Payments

Our score

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