Review on Shopify

These days, there are a tonne of tools for creating online stores, so picking the best one for your company may be really challenging. Shopify is perhaps the most well-known e-commerce platform available today, but is it the right choice for you?

I'm going to assist you in finding out in this review, nonetheless. By the conclusion of the piece, you'll have a clear understanding of if Shopify is the best ecommerce solution for your project or whether you'd be better off with an alternative. I'll go into great detail about the platform's price, templates, and selling capabilities.

Let's start out with a crucial query. Describe Shopify.

What exactly is Shopify?

Shopify is a web application that lets you create your own online store. It provides you with a wide range of ‘themes’ (templates) that can be customized to meet your own branding requirements, and allows you to sell either physical or digital products.

The platform aims to let beginners build an online store themselves — you don’t need coding skills to use Shopify.

However, the platform also caters for developers, because it provides full access to CSS, HTML and Liquid (Shopify’s templating language).

How does Shopify work?

Because Shopify is a "hosted" solution, you don't need to purchase web hosting or install any software in order to use it. It runs on its own servers. You can operate a Shopify business from anywhere as long as you have access to the Internet since you develop and manage your Shopify store in a web browser.

The platform's "big idea" is to provide you with the essential tools you need to create and advertise an online store "out of the box"; most Shopify plans include with templates, a payment processor, a blog, and email marketing tools.

However, you may further customise a Shopify store by adding apps (more on which later) or writing custom code. 

Finally, you don’t own a copy of Shopify but instead pay a monthly fee to use it.

Shopify pricing

There are five Shopify pricing plans available, with the following monthly fees:

• Starter — $5 per month
• Basic — $39 per month
• Shopify — $105 per month
• Advanced — $399 per month
• Shopify Plus — custom pricing, but starting at $2,000 per month.

You may also sign up for the new "Commerce Components" plan in the US, which allows you pay (on a "modular basis") for the Shopify capabilities you wish to utilise. The cost of this is not yet known; you must speak with Shopify to explore your needs and obtain an estimate.

If you are based outside of the US, you will discover that the plan names and features are the same, but that the fees are in your own local currency and are roughly equal to those in the US. The aforementioned rates are in USD.

Here, it's important to quickly note a few things:

• You may save a lot of money if you choose to pay for your plan annually. For example, if you choose to pay for your first year of service ahead rather than monthly, you will receive a 25% discount on your plan. As a result, the monthly charges for the "Basic," "Shopify," and "Advanced" plans would be correspondingly $29, $79, and $299.

• Making the most of Shopify's point-of-sale features, which enable you sell items at a physical location, requires additional payments. (I explore these in more depth later on in my Shopify review).

There is also a free trial available, which lasts for three days. When this is over, you are given the option to pay $1 for three months of full access to the platform. After that, regular fees apply.

Shopify review: conclusion

In general, Shopify is among the finest hosted options for individuals looking to set up an online store, and it's maybe the best for those looking to utilise one product to sell both online and offline. Users that wish to dropship or sell in other languages and currencies will find it to be especially helpful.

The product is competitively priced — particularly when you consider that abandoned cart saver functionality, a feature which many other platforms charge a premium for, is included on all plans. And at just $5 per month, its ‘Starter’ plan represents great value for anyone needing to sell products on an existing site.

It’s also easy to use, integrates well with a huge range of other apps, and its templates are attractive.

It has a very big user base, which also inspires confidence.

All in all, Shopify is a very good option for anyone hoping to start a business, or existing small businesses wishing to take their product offering online — but there are some disadvantages of using Shopify to be aware of too.

First, there’s the transaction fees for those using a third-party payment gateway (some of Shopify’s competitors don’t charge any transaction fees at all, regardless of the payment options used).

Second, its limit of three options per product isn’t ideal.

Third, Shopify’s multi-currency selling features, while very welcome, don’t work in all countries or with all payment gateways. And to get the most out of them, you need to be on an expensive ‘Advanced’ or ‘Shopify Plus’ plan (otherwise you won’t be able to collect import and duty taxes at checkout).

A more complete summary of Shopify pros and cons follows below, but as always we strongly recommend that you try before you buy — it’s worth having a good play with the platform via the Shopify free trial. You can access this free trial here.

And of course if you have any questions or feedback on the platform, do leave them in the comments section at the end of this post.