Shopify Review
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- Date Established
- 2006
- Location
- Canada
Pros
- Easy to use
- Numerous integrations
- Attractive templates
- Advanced design tools
Cons
- Add-ons often necessary
- Variable customer support
Overview
If you’ve researched “setting up an online store” for more than 30 seconds, you’ve probably encountered Shopify. You’ve likely already learned that Shopify is a fully-hosted eCommerce platform specializing in ease of use. Shopify is reasonably priced, with a solid feature set and round-the-clock customer service. It’s one of the best shopping carts on the market today, as many independent Shopify reviewers can attest.
The company’s philosophy regarding its place in the eCommerce sphere can be described simply: If you don’t want to join them, try your best to beat them.
Based out of Ontario, Canada, Shopify began as a better way for Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake to sell their snowboards online. Since its founding in 2006, though, Shopify has grown to be much more. The company now hosts more than a million stores worldwide and has facilitated over $135 billion in transactions.
Despite its lack of some advanced features, Shopify’s platform provides eCommerce basics that can support most merchants. The rest can be added on with integrations and apps.
Shopify is one of the shopping carts we most frequently recommend here at Merchant Maverick, quirks and all. It’s fully deserving of its high marks. Keep reading to find out why.
In response to the coronavirus, Shopify is offering a free 90-day trial of the Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans. For more help during this pandemic, check out our COVID-19 hub for the latest news and resources.
Don’t have time to read an entire review? Take a look at our top-rated eCommerce solutions for a few quick recommendations. Every option we present here offers excellent customer support, superb web templates, and easy-to-use software, all for a reasonable price.
Table of Contents
Pricing
There are five pricing levels, but most of the advertising you’ll encounter focuses on the three plans in the middle. There is a free 14-day trial available with Shopify, no credit card required. The account automatically cancels at the end of fourteen days; to activate it again, you must purchase a plan.
Shopify’s pricing plans are billed on a month-by-month basis. While there are no contracts to sign, if you choose to purchase a full year-long plan, you can save 10%. If you purchase two years at a time, you’ll save 20%.
As we outline Shopify’s subscription levels, you’ll notice a Shopify transaction fee. While most other shopping carts no longer take a cut of each transaction on top of standard card processing fees from a payment gateway, Shopify’s transaction fees, unfortunately, don’t look like they’re going away any time soon. On the other hand, Shopify waives those transaction fees if you choose Shopify Payments (powered by Stripe) as your gateway.
Here’s the full rundown of Shopify’s pricing tiers.
Shopify Lite Plan
The Shopify Lite Plan costs $9/month and does not include an online store. If you use Shopify Payments, the credit card rate is 2.9% + $0.30 for online transactions and 2.7% for in-person transactions; if you use another payment process, Shopify charges a 2.0% Shopify transaction fee.
Here are the features included with this plan:
- Sell in-person
- Sell with “buy” buttons on existing websites
- Sell on Facebook
- Create custom orders
- Chat and email support
Basic Shopify Plan
The Basic Shopify Plan costs $29/month and includes an online store. If you use Shopify Payments, the credit card rate is 2.9% + $0.30 for online transactions and 2.7% for in-person transactions; if you use another payment process, Shopify charges 2.0% Shopify transaction fee.
The Basic Shopify plan includes everything in the Shopify Lite plan, plus:
- Unlimited products, bandwidth, and storage
- 24/7 support
- Discount code engine
- Multiple sales channels
- Manual order creation
- Online store and blog
- Shopify Shipping
- Free SSL certificate
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Two staff accounts (in addition to the owner’s account)
- Basic Shopify POS features
Shopify Plan
The Shopify Plan costs $79/month. If you use Shopify Payments, the credit card rate is 2.6% + $0.30 for online transactions and 2.5% for in-person transactions; if you use another payment process, Shopify charges a 1.0% Shopify transaction fee.
The Shopify plan includes everything in the Basic Shopify plan, plus:
- Gift cards
- Professional reports
- Five staff accounts (in addition to the owner’s account)
- Full Shopify POS features
Advanced Shopify Plan
The Advanced Shopify Plan costs $299/month. If you use Shopify Payments, the credit card rate is 2.4% + $0.30 for online transactions and 2.4% for in-person transactions; if you use another payment process, Shopify charges a 0.5% Shopify transaction fee.
The Advanced Shopify plan includes everything in the Shopify plan, plus:
- Advanced report builder
- Real-time shipping carrier rates (outside of Shopify Shipping)
- Fifteen staff accounts (in addition to the owner’s account)
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is for enterprise businesses. If you’re planning on selling over a million dollars per year, you’ll need to contact Shopify for special pricing. Check out our full review of Shopify Plus.
Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed
Shopify is web-hosted, SaaS (Software as a Service) technology. You’ll never have to worry about coordinating with a third-party hosting service.
Specific Size Of Business
As you probably gathered from the Pricing section, Shopify targets the full gamut of business sizes, from startup to enterprise.
Hardware & Software Requirements
Because Shopify provides fully-hosted online stores, all you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a reliable web browser.
Shopify also offers mobile applications for Android (5.0+) and iOS (10.0+). These apps allow you to manage products, process orders, and view analytics anywhere.
Ease Of Use
Ease of use is what Shopify does best. If you decide to test Shopify’s admin with the free trial, I think you’ll quickly become comfortable with the user interface.
The main dashboard is clean and orderly:
Although there is no tutorial video or setup wizard, Shopify provides three suggestions to get you up and running (Add Product, Customize Theme, and Add Domain).
The menu down the top-left of the screen provides your day-to-day store management tools, while the Settings menu contains storewide configurations (such as shipping methods and taxes).
Here are just a few of the Shopify back-end functions I tested:
- Adding Products: Easy! It only takes a few clicks and keystrokes. The interface provides enough detail to be functional and thorough without becoming endless and overwhelming.
Once you’ve saved the basics, you can open a quick product preview screen, which I always find helpful:
- Product Variants: This is always a good ease-of-use test. Thankfully, adding product variations (such as different sizes and colors) is super simple inside the main “add a product” screen:
You can adjust your prices, SKUs, and inventory for each automatically-created variant when you first add all your product options. Alternatively, you can edit these aspects later, along with configuring different product weights for shipping and adding variant-specific photos. The bulk editor is another useful tool for managing data for multiple product variants:
Note that Shopify does sacrifice some flexibility in favor of ease of use with its product variant feature. To add more than three options for a given product (such as size, color, and material) or over 100 variants, you’ll need an extension from the app store.
- Discounts: I dived head-on into this feature and tried setting up a Buy X Get Y coupon since not very many SaaS eCommerce platforms offer this level of discount complexity straight out of the box. I was not disappointed — this feature is also extremely user-friendly. Merchants can create discounts and coupon codes that apply to specific products or categories. Those discounts can be limited to a specific customer or customer group, a specified number of uses, or a minimum order total. The Summary box on the right is also helpful as your discounts become more complex:
As I experimented with these features and the rest of the Shopify control panel, words such as “smooth” and “slick” popped into my head. Overall, Shopify gets an A+ in terms of ease of use.
Features
As you’ve picked up on by now, Shopify aims to strike a balance between its trademark ease of use and additional customization capability. In truth, it tends to err on the side of simplicity. Most merchants will have enough features out-of-the-box to get rolling, but advanced functionality with Shopify often requires add-on applications to keep the baseline admin simple. For example, here are three rather basic features requiring an extension (albeit free) from the app store:
- Infinite Product Options: A third-party app extends the default three options/100 variations per product to infinite combinations.
- Digital Downloads: To sell digital products, install this extension created by Shopify.
- Product Reviews: You’ll need to copy a line of app code into your theme to add customer reviews to your store.
I added all three to my admin with relative ease, but it’s definitely worth paying attention to the associated cost and learning curve for each non-native feature you’d like to implement. Different theme templates may come with slightly different features as well.
As you read through my feature summary list, you should also note that some are only available with higher-level plans. Look into each plan before you make your purchase.
Checkout
- Multilingual Checkout: Your checkout can be displayed in over 50 different languages.
- Guest Checkout: Don’t let customers’ fear of commitment keep them from purchasing. On the flip side, customers are also able to create personal accounts to make future transactions easier and to receive your promotional emails.
- Automatic Shipping Rates: Shopify Shipping now makes carrier-calculated shipping rates from DHL, UPS, USPS, or Canada Post available for all plans in the US and Canada. (The Shopify Advanced Plan extends your ability to display additional third-party calculated rates at checkout.) You’ll also get a discount on shipping rates depending on your Shopify subscription. And you can purchase and print shipping labels from your admin panel, which we love.
- Flexible Shipping Rates: You can select factors to determine the cost of shipping, whether it’s free shipping, a flat rate, a tiered rate, a weight-based rate, or a location-based rate.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery: When a customer leaves items in a cart without purchasing, you can automatically send an email to encourage them to complete their purchase.
- Automatic Tax Calculator: Shopify calculates tax rates based on your location and the locations of your customers.
- Checkout On Your Domain: You can now host checkout on your own domain.
Store Management
- Multilingual Admin: Shopify is beta testing multiple language translations (currently six) for the control panel.
- Mobile Store Management: Shopify is continuously adding functionality to the Shopify App.
- Customer Segmentation: Use customer accounts to find out more about your customers and to group them by factors, such as location, shopping tendencies, and demographics.
- Manual Orders: Use Shopify as a virtual terminal to create and edit orders on behalf of your customers. Send email invoices and manage payment status from within your Orders page.
- Dropshipping Apps: Enabling dropshipping is one of Shopify’s specialties. Shopify integrates with Oberlo and other dropshipping apps. Learn how to start a profitable dropshipping business with Shopify.
- Point Of Sale: Shopify also offers a point of sale (POS) system for in-person selling. It’s recently added a new retail kit to the mix, which includes a tap and chip card reader and a retail stand for the iPad. Read more in our review of Shopify POS.
Product Management
- List Unlimited Products: Keep track of all of those products with Shopify’s inventory management and product category organization features. Product images are unlimited as well.
- Product Variations: List variations of your products, such as size, color, and material.
- Bulk Import/Export: Use this feature to facilitate migration from your previous platform or make bulk edits to your catalog.
Marketing & SEO
- SEO Best Practices: Shopify follows SEO best practices with such features as a customizable H1 and the ability to write title and meta tags as well as product tags. Also, a sitemap.xml is automatically generated for your store.
- Discounts: Create discount codes and coupons, including BOGO (buy one, get one) discounts. Gift cards are available at higher plans.
- Multiple Sales Channels: Link your store with a large number of popular online marketplaces, along with Shopify’s own POS system (or a third-party POS at the Shopify Plan or above).
- Shopify Email: This new feature allows you to run and track email marketing campaigns inside of Shopify Marketing.
- Blog: Use the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to create a blog that increases brand engagement.
- Analytics: Use Shopify’s built-in analytics to view product reports, export reports, and traffic reports. Or you can integrate with Google Analytics.
- Image Library: Pull free stock photos directly from Shopify’s curated library (called Burst) into your theme editor.
- Shopify Chat: Enable this new feature to engage with visitors on your site via live chat.
Web Hosting
- Unlimited Bandwidth: You’ll never get charged bandwidth overage fees.
- Automatic Upgrades: Keep your site up to date with Shopify’s newest features, without any effort on your part.
- 99.98% Uptime: With a record like that, you can be confident that your store will stay online through high-traffic seasons.
But wait, there’s more! See Shopify’s website for the full feature list.
Note: Shopify has also recently introduced its business financing service: Shopify Capital. Through Shopify Capital, you may be eligible for a merchant cash advance (MCA). Read more in our full review of the service.
Web Design
Shopify’s web design is truly beautiful. There are over 70 themes available, and all are mobile responsive. Most themes have two to four style variations, which is why Shopify advertises over 100 themes in total.
Of the 70 main themes, eight are free options created and supported by Shopify, while the rest are priced between $140-$180 and are supported by their respective third-party developers.
Even the theme shopping experience with Shopify is well-designed (perhaps not all that surprisingly). You can filter themes by various factors to determine the best option for your store as well as pore over user ratings and reviews for each theme.
In terms of both form and function, Shopify themes are among the best I’ve seen. They’re professional, elegant, and easy for your customers to navigate.
Once you’ve chosen a theme, there are several ways to go about customizing your storefront. Those without coding experience will use two primary tools — Sections and Theme Settings — accessed from the theme editor dashboard:
You should explore these tools for yourself, but here is a quick look at what they do:
- Sections: In Shopify lingo, your storefront widgets are called Sections — think slideshows and photo galleries, customer testimonials, newsletter signup, and the like. “Sections” is a drag-and-drop tool for adding, subtracting, arranging, and customizing the content within each widget.
- Theme Settings: Allows you to adjust site-wide colors and fonts as well as the look and feel of your checkout pages.
As far as eCommerce platforms go, Shopify’s design tools strike an excellent balance between out-of-the-box flexibility and ease of use. For example, the free Debut theme looks a bit like this:
Using only the Sections and Theme Settings tools, I quickly had my storefront looking like this:
Yes, I made it completely ugly, but that was on purpose to prove the point that you get a lot of customization capability without touching a line of code.
On the other hand, if coding is your thing, there’s a code editor. Along with HTML and CSS knowledge, you’ll need to brush up on Shopify’s proprietary templating language called Liquid. Here’s an example of Liquid code:
If you know what any of that means, congratulations. For the rest of us, I’ll translate a bit. Liquid involves a flexible code that allows changes in the admin to be featured on your site. While I do not speak computer, I’ve read several reviews from developers that call Liquid an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use language. Alternatively, Shopify theme design experts are also available for hire.
Integrations & Add-Ons
Similar to shopping for a theme, browsing the Shopify App Store is an informative and well-organized experience, partly thanks to a redesign in 2018. The multitude of reviews and ratings for each app are particularly helpful — that’s one benefit to having a strong and vocal community of users surrounding an eCommerce platform.
Shopify’s app ecosystem is one of the most extensive I’ve seen. With well over 3,500 add-ons and counting, I can say with certainty that Shopify integrates with whatever you’re looking for.
It’s worth reiterating at this point that, while Shopify does a great job offering the features most stores need, additional functionality will require add-ons. That’s part of the reason the app store is so extensive. Some simpler modules are free, but you may find you also need to integrate with a few software platforms that each have their own monthly subscriptions (even if the initial installation is free).
The takeaway here is to make sure you know which features you need before subscribing to Shopify. While Shopify is one of the least expensive shopping carts out of the box, it can quickly become the most expensive option if you need lots of advanced features. On the plus side, there’s a vast array of ways to expand your store’s functionality as you grow.
Payment Processing
Shopify integrates with over 100 gateways, including Adyen, Authorize.Net, Fiserv, and PayPal. For all gateways, always verify the availability in your country as well as whether shoppers remain on your website or are diverted to the gateway’s site to complete checkout. Shopify divides these into “direct” and “external” gateways, respectively.
As I’ve mentioned before, Shopify also offers an in-house payment method, Shopify Payments. This Stripe-powered gateway is currently available to merchants in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada, the UK, Denmark, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong. Below are some key features of Shopify Payments, but be sure to check your specific country for feature availability.
- No Extra Shopify Transaction Fees: The 0.5-2.0% additional fee charged by Shopify is eliminated. You still need to pay regular credit card fees, though!
- Reduced Credit Card Fees: Typically, Stripe and other similar payment facilitators charge 2.9% + $0.30 for online transactions. With Shopify Payments, those rates get reduced as you move up the subscription ladder. In-person processing rates also decrease (take a look at the graphic below).
- Fraud Protection: Shopify Payments provides its suite of advanced fraud and chargeback prevention features.
- Shopify Pay: An expedited checkout option that allows merchants to save their checkout information across Shopify websites, thus drastically simplifying repeat purchases on your site.
Here are the Shopify Payments rates and fees by plan:
Customer Service & Technical Support
Customer service is available through all of the usual channels. You can contact Shopify support 24/7 by email, Twitter, live chat, and phone. There are separate phone numbers for customers in North America, the UK, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand.
The quality of Shopify’s customer service varies depending on who you ask. Some merchants rave about Shopify’s “gurus.” They say that Shopify provides informed, friendly support. On the other hand, I’ve also read a lot of angry comments that condemn Shopify’s support representatives for reading answers from a script. These customers say that the representatives they contacted did not have the power to help.
I’ve had good experiences with Shopify myself. When I called with a simple question, I received an informed answer with no wait time. Live chat has also worked well in my experience, but you’ll need a bit of patience during peak periods (I’m number 122 in the queue but dropping fast as I type this!).
Of course, there are lots of other ways to locate the information you need on your own. Here’s a quick look at Shopify’s extensive (and I mean extensive) resources for solving problems and improving your eCommerce business:
- Help Center: Access the primary knowledgebase and documentation as well as phone, email, and live chat options.
- Academy: Free training courses with videos and full transcripts are available.
- Encyclopedia: Definitions and overviews of eCommerce terms and concepts.
- Guides: Multi-chapter PDF guides on specific topics.
- Forums: Several separate community forums are available, depending on your needs.
- Developer Docs: API documentation and other resources for the technically-inclined.
- Webinars: Sign up for live broadcasts.
- Podcast: The Shopify Masters Podcast features interviews with successful store owners.
- Blog: As you can imagine, the Shopify blog is well-maintained and informative.
- Changelog: Stay on top of new and updated features available for your store.
- Free Tools: Content templates, calculators, and other free resources accessed from the main website.
- Experts: From developers to designers to marketers, Shopify experts are available for hire.
- YouTube: The dedicated Shopify Help Center channel has countless video tutorials posted.
User Reviews
Negative Reviews & Complaints
Shopify has overwhelmingly positive reviews on most comment boards and third-party review sites. However, that doesn’t mean every merchant and developer is satisfied with all aspects of Shopify. These are a few of the complaints that I’ve seen most often:
- Limited Functionality: Because Shopify aims to keep its functions basic and easy to grasp, there are a few missing elements in the features list. Customers are often frustrated with the lack of wholesale (B2B) selling options, for example.
- Costly Add-Ons: To make up for a lack of functionality, merchants may have to enlist add-ons, which can become quite expensive.
- Poor Customer Service: As I’ve mentioned, opinions on customer service are widely varied. For every frustrated customer bashing Shopify’s service, there’s one singing its praises. Take that how you will.
- Poor Service With Shopify Payments: I have read many reviews blaming Shopify Payments for withholding vendors’ payments. Additionally, Shopify Payments reserves the right to discontinue services for any merchant it deems a risk. This has led to quite a bit of frustration among merchants. Read our article on the pros and cons of Shopify Payments for more information.
While the following complaints are less frequent, I also see these factors mentioned in negative reviews:
- Expensive: Separate from the add-on cost issue, some merchants name various fees as being too expensive for their budgets. Prices increase for merchants who want to list many users, and Shopify can take an additional 2% from all your transactions if you’re not “lucky” enough to be in a country where Shopify Payments is available.
- Some Reports Of Downtime: Some customers have reported that their sites went down or noticeably lagged during critical selling periods.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
Shopify has far more positive reviews than negative, earning it 4.3/5 stars on G2 Crowd. Users give the platform high satisfaction ratings overall.
Here are the most commonly voiced pros:
- Ease Of Use: As I’ve said before, ease of use is Shopify’s niche. You can get a store up and running in under a day. It’s a great approach for startup and mid-sized businesses alike, even if you have minimal experience with creating a website.
- Beautiful Themes: A professional-looking site inspires trust in your customers. Shopify helps by providing some of the best-looking themes I’ve seen from an eCommerce platform.
- Good Customer Service: Reviews of customer support are mixed, but at least Shopify offers a phone line and 24/7 availability. Even those two simple facts separate Shopify from a lot of its competitors when it comes to service. Users also praise the free self-help resources and paid Shopify Experts.
- Extendability: The extra cost of add-ons aside, users appreciate how well-connected Shopify is with the eCommerce software world as a whole.
Other customers mentioned:
- A Well-Documented REST API: It’s easy to build integrations and applications.
- The Benefits Of A Fully-Hosted Platform: It’s nice not to have to worry about organizing a third-party host for your site.
Security
Shopify is Level 1 PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant, which is the gold standard for eCommerce platforms. Every merchant gets a free 128-bit shared SSL certificate.
Also, Shopify makes site-wide encryption available for all merchants. You just have to opt-in. Shopify also uses white-hat hackers from Hackerone to test its security measures.
We weren’t able to find any information on the measures Shopify takes to secure its physical data centers, but it does advertise a 99.98% uptime and 24/7 monitoring. We’d love to see more information from Shopify on what it does to prevent viruses and if it employs any firewalls.
Final Verdict
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, dependable, and elegant online platform for your store, you can stop the search now. I feel confident recommending Shopify to most merchants, provided they aren’t seeking lots of advanced functionality on a shoestring budget.
But before you leap, I encourage you to take the admin for a test drive. Sign up for your free trial, call customer support with any questions you have, and see what features you may need to add on. You’ve got nothing to lose.
A Last Look At Shopify’s Most Popular Services:
| Mobile | POS | Online | Social Media |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
| Mobile App + Free Card Reader | Point of Sale | Online Store | Social Media Selling |
| Get Started | Get Started | Get Started | Get Started |
| Low-cost POS for iOS and Android with free hardware | All-purpose POS integrated with all sales channels | Build a store or integrate with your current website | Sell on Facebook and other platforms |
| Starts at $9/month | Starts at $29/month | Starts at $29/month | Starts at $9/month |
| Free Trial | Free Trial | Free Trial | Free Trial |
Rose Holman
Writer
Rose Holman is a writer, blogger, and educator from Portland, OR with an MA in Teaching from Western Oregon University. She enjoys educating SMB owners about the complicated (and notoriously sketchy) world of payment processing. Since starting at Merchant Maverick in 2016, she has also added eCommerce software to her areas of expertise.
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We've done in-depth research on each and confidently recommend them.
We've done in-depth research on each and confidently recommend them.
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Organization Name: Labwear.com
The WORST customer service I have ever experienced. It is impossible to get help!
Organization Name: NA
I’m an average Joe who got a new phone number a few months ago and have been receiving “Payment codes” from this ghetto site the entire time. Have tried to to contact support MULTIPLE times using MULTIPLE different methods. Still nothing. Now I’m forced to stick with these “spam” texts because this INCOMPETENT company doesn’t have a legitimate support system. Do NOT trust them with your business.
Organization Name: TEAM SPORTS OUTLET
We used Shopify for a while and the least I can say that it is not the right solution for us. Many times, We work for hours adding products while saving our work promptly then all of a sudden we get a server error message that wipes out all of our work.Also, our website is hidden under “myshopify.com” URL so our name never comes up on google unless I send you a link to it.The mechanism of uploading inventory through CSV file upload or API or even FTP is hit and miss work and it is not easy to set up by any means.One more thing, we were deceived by what is called “sales channels” that allows you to expand your sales channels to Amazon,.etc. We thought that you only need to set up your Shopify store and then Shopify will integrate your merchandise automatically to your Amazon seller account but it turned out that it only connects you to your Amazon seller account but you have to do all the work yourself.Their App store has a few Apps that are useful but the rest is a waste of time.
Organization Name: Goodman’s
Small Business Owner’s Beware Shopify is not as easy as they make it seem. We have had multiple issues since October 2019 when we launched our POS for our two brick and mortar stores and web store through Shopify for ease of integrating all platforms along with our eBay store. This has been a nightmare!!!!! Basically we can’t do anything in the program that we’ve needed and there’s only two standard reply’s …..they recommended a third party application which may or may not help or they will forward our issue to the development team for them to review. Their system lacks the basic needs of a small business for bookkeeping. One major example is that I can’t download a single report that shows the amount of the total gross sales for the day with a break down of taxes, payment type etc. or a report that breaks down taxable and non taxable sales this is ridiculous. Certainly not what they presented in the beginning and not how we envisioned our experience would be. I don’t recommend Shopify for any small business. I’m very very disappointed and frustrated.
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Organization Name: Party Fueler
I loved Shopify for my first year, primarily because of its simplified site design and ease of use. I understand these are preferable if you are new to web design, but I would caution against using them.My store was having errors that caused all products to show as out of stock in the cart for over a month. It was caused by a change Shopify made, and I did not detect it immediately as I run several businesses. Shopify was unwilling to do anything to make up for this, and I was the one to troubleshoot and fix it as their tech support was puzzled.More importantly, UPS overcharged me on several December shipping labels, citing incorrect dimensions to justify the charges. Shopify charged me without any notification; I had to dig into the month’s line-item finances to discover it. I sent proof to Shopify that this was incorrect. It has been over 3 months and I am still getting the run-around from support, who is claiming they are still awaiting reply from UPS. Do not use Shopify unless you are okay with them stealing your money via overcharges with no accountability or rectification.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Love your review. Shopify is increasingly the place people turn to for e-commerce and e-commerce hosting because of ease of use and extendability. Cost are minimal compared to most other solutions but I am wondering just how well the extended capabilities stack up against WooComerce? Pricing wise by the time you get paid plugins and have your own store set up is similar but you can use a wide range of payment gateways and have some really nice theme options.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: libre fit
BE CAREFUL they can shut down your store without any giver reason my store got shutdown immedietly and after 48 hours of contacting support that was the final answer :”I’m afraid that after reviewing your information and website we believe your business presents a level of risk that we will be unable to support with Shopify. I’m sorry we won’t be able to help with your business, and if you have any questions, please let us know.”
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hello,
I’m looking for a new payment processor after being with PayPal for years. Does Shopify or anybody else provide your transaction data in a similar way to PayPal’s IPN?
We get a datafile from PayPal that way that contains all the information for each transaction and that will generate each order in our system and deliver the purchase
Does Shopify provide something like this?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Par,
We think Shopify should more than meet your needs.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
shopify does provide that, however, there are other providers like bigcommerce or 3dcart do that too…..if you are only using paypal, you can go buy a php hosting account and install ready made shopping cart such as opencart, cs-cart, prestashop, magento ( adobe owned it now ..lol ) instead of paying all the monthly fees. Shopify regular version is lacking of some shopping cart features that you will not notice until you are really using it.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I paid thousands of dollars to setup my website with this company and they told me I am not allowed to use their services even after I complied with everything they asked for.DO NOT USE SHOPIFY. THEY WILL STEAL YOUR BUSINESS AND MONEY
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: m and m
I can’t figure out how Shopify has a 5 star rating on Merchant Maverick with all these 1 star reviews, hmmm?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi M,
To address your concern about the validity of our reviews, please read our post on Negativity Bias and How This Site Makes Money to better understand how Merchant Maverick delivers real, unbiased reviews to our readers. Thanks for reading!
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Organization Name: ColourPix
Total propoganda. Shopify will auto-renew your site despite your attempts to end the account. Buyer beware.
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Organization Name: Blessed Feet
This 5 star made me laugh. Shopify marketing clearly is paying this company to promote them….
Called shopify and the salesperson told me make a shopify payments account. Within 5 hours I launched a huge website promo selling 2.5k in product. Within this period my account was banned and they told me they wouldnt release my funds for 90 days. These people are criminal.
Heres how you dont pay their redic fee.
#1 make an authorize.net account
#2 make a flagship merchant services account
you will pay 1.4% per transaction after ALL fees.
Dont waste your time with these crooks. I also use clearsale for my business. Only .8% for chargeback protection! Shopify payments is a joke.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Jay,
That sounds very upsetting! Though, based on what you’ve described, it seems that your issue is not with the Shopify eCommerce service that this review covers, but rather with Shopify Payments. If you read through that review, you’ll see that we acknowledge the very issue you experienced, which appears to be a common complaint, unfortunately.
To address your concern about the validity of our reviews, please read our post on negativity bias and how this site makes money to better understand how Merchant Maverick delivers real, unbiased reviews to our readers.
Thanks Jay, and best of luck to you!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Do you use Shopify for your website just not for payment processing? If not can you suggest another company? Thank you!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: yourmoneysworthstore
I had a store with Shopify from August to December and spent most of that time setting up the store like i wanted. I decided to put my store on hold because i did not want customers ordering stuff and then the merchandise not getting to them before Christmas. I used 2 apps to gain access to more products and come to find out i get one bill total for all shopify cost and the 2 apps but if you cancel and app you find out that the due date for the apps is different than the shopify due date unless you added the apps the same day as your shopify account. It took me over 2 months to get it straighten out. I shut my store down completely and will never do business with them again nor recommend them to anyone.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shopify suddenly shut down our store & withdrew a payout from our bank account for no reason & we were told that they removed us from their service!We have a Shopify store for over one year, we just prepaid another whole year subscription on 09/30/17. Recently we just had our first online sale, the customer paid with his credit card(Amount: $2600) & picked up the goods on 11/10, I received an email from Shopify confirmed this order. On 11/13 I received another email from Shopify requesting my ID & I uploaded it follow the instructions in the email. Shopify sent me an email on 11/13 & said a payout is on its way. Then I found Shopify deposited a payout of $2524.30 to our bank account but withdrew back the same day, I also find our store website was down, I called customer service & they can’t give me any detail but then I received an email on 11/17 stating the following: “I’m afraid that after reviewing your information and website we believe your business presents a level of risk that we will be unable to support with Shopify. I’m sorry we won’t be able to help with your business” I called customer service again & then received another email telling me that for security reasons they don’t release the exact reason an account was closed from explaining that they are too high risk to support on Shopify and through TOS they decided to remove us!! They said they have refunded my subscription but they still hold the $2600 received from my customer!! Can’t understand how can they treat their customer like this!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’ve dealt with this company for years and am now planning on switching. I call their tech support two or three times a year. They are increasingly difficult to reach, last week requiring half an hour on hold. A few months I removed a domain from Shopify because it was no longer needed. Without contacting me, last week they charged my credit card. When I brought the matter to their attention, they responded, that I needed to read the fine print. “Our refund policy is strictly stated in our Terms of Service, we will not be able to offer a refund on this domain purchase at this time.”
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
What did yo switch to? I was shut down for being a high risk…LOL. I’d appreciate any direction.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I would like to know who you switched to. I am so glad I found these reviews before getting invested in Shopify. Thank you.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Are there any ligit , online businesses out there! I’m interested in having a business online to make money! Any advise?
DO NOT USE SHOPIFY PAYMENTS. We signed up for Shopify Plus. Three times they have frozen our account, today being the third time. Even with a personal representative, we cannot get it unfrozen. We cannot find out why they have frozen the payments and are holding our money. We were with Authorize.net for 15 years and never had this happen but we were trying to save the percentage they offer off for using Shopify Payments. There is no one to talk to, no one who can tell you why, they just stop taking payments and put your account on hold while they do a “review”. They usually pick a busy day and then take days to finish the review. So, going into Christmas, they are holding our money. They have offered us a loan but guess what, they still take their percentage out of our bank account and do not release the money that they are taking a percent of.Secondly, we have had the following happen consistently. We had an international sale for about 160.00 and we refunded 110.00 because the items were returned. The customer filed a chargeback. We did everything right according to Shopify representing our case, but they refunded 160.00 in addition to the 110.00. They insisted that is how it is done. It has happened several times. In other words, if you refund an order, all but a few dollars because the customer keeps one item, the customer files a chargeback, they always get their entire original sale refunded again.These are just two of the cons that Shopify Payments does. If we had it to do over, we would never have moved to Shopify. As soon as we get off hold, we are back to Authorize.net and planning a new platform.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
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If you want to have trouble or ruin your bussiness chose Shopify, I lost many time, work and money building my online store and they frozen my store and I don’t know why, I am in constant contact with email/chat and phone they only promised resolution, but in fact nobody resolve anything. No explanation.You can find many others complains and many situations like me they only frozen your store and is impossible to talk to a real person to solve problems.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
If you ever need to call in or “chat” with Shopify (for example, I have suddenly out of nowhere been locked out of my account) hope you didn’t have to! I am one hour & a half into my current call ON HOLD & #47 in line to “chat”. I had to call in a few weeks ago for a similar issue, not caused by me or anyone on my team. I was ON HOLD for 2 HOURS & FORTY TWO minutes. Yes, I watched the clock. It is not acceptable. Especially when they promise “Fast, Responsive & Reliable”. I would say that is an outright LIE to any company whose wait time is that long. : ( : ( : ( : ( : ( 5 FROWNS FOR SHOPIFY!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Minus five stars am locked out three days on two step verification hack. I’ve used this company for two years I’m so angry!!! Any phone contact numbers ???? I can’t get any tech person on the phone to help me
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I own two businesses and tried to use Shopify.com to create a website for the second business. When they asked for the primary domain, I gave it to them. They then locked out my primary domain and primary source of Revenue. I have had to hire a professional to put things back the way that they were for my primary website. It has been two days now and the problem is still not corrected. My website is down, and I am out of commission. I was told that if I paid for the service instead of using the free trial they would then release my primary website. Instead of giving them the money, I cancelled the account which has caused all connections to my hosting service to be deleted. Be careful of hidden scams while filling out the application.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shopify has the worst technical support of any digital service company I work with.I am without a doubt taking my store somewhere else.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
A business colleague client asked me to setup a shop for him and after hunting around I had thought that Shopify would fit the bill. Big mistake. This company is just awful and they are not cheap – it’s the old upsell with Shopify. Some basic native requirements for a store are not built in – you have to get an app and although some are free inevitably the ones you want are a monthly fee (of which Shopify gets a cut so they’ll never build it into the platform for free). I’m sure Shopify suits some but the comments on this platform reflect exactly my sentiment. Awful product and uncaring company. We eventually ditched it despite the pain of moving shop and went for a WordPress/Woocommerce setup. A bit trickier to setup but it does everything my client wanted and apart from a modest hosting fee there are no monthly extras.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Terrible customer service and zero concern about the businesses built on their platform. After a year of investing in our online store, doing SEO, marketing, and product development our payment channel is frozen without warning and our customers are unable to make purchases. We’re told we must wait while a “review” is done – meanwhile, we’re losing sales and paying for a service we’re unable to access. The customer service reps are happy to ignore the situation and copy/paste canned responses. Now seeking alternative platforms upon which to build our business. This type of customer service and opaque application of rules/reviews should be a huge warning to anyone considering Shopify. Beware.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shopify are withholding over $10000 from my account. Constant contact with email/chat and phone promise resolution but does not actually resolve anything. No explanations provided. This can cause destructive problems with new businesses. Beware!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Terrible customer service and unethical billing practices. Shopify will literally bill you for a month of service and take down your website two days later. We aren’t talking about retroactive billing, we are talking about future billing. This company is run horribly. They bill you for months that you aren’t even using the service. I had a horrible experience with Shopify and you will find many other complaints about them online as well. It is impossible to talk to a real person about your account and they use fake names for account reps which do nothing but generate a customer support ticket that goes to a pot-smoking hipster who will be extremely condescending, passive-aggressive, and unhelpful with your requests.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Horrible support when you need help!!! Everyone acts like they are going to help you but they don’t! They froze my payouts for no reason. I have gone above and beyond to give them the information they needed and with no explain as to why my payouts have been frozen. Horrible customer service everyone “acts nice” but they never help fix your issues it’s like I’m being disregarded. It’s like they don’t understand this is a business and you’re expecting this income. I haven’t slept in days because of the vague customer support and no one answers my questions as to when my payouts will be unfrozen and as to why this occurred.???!!!!! Even after this is fixed I’m removing my website from shopify. They don’t help when you have issue what about in the future when/if something new happens how are they going to treat my issue then? …….Vague answers? Vague replies?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
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They are unable to offer me shopify payment gateway, as a result we have to use our own stripe gateway cost us extra %2 transaction fees, I think this should have been removed, not that we don’t use it, it is because you wouldn’t let us use it.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Its ok, I use another site to sync products but I am getting almost no visitors. I will google one of the products I am selling on other platforms in the shopping page and can find it for my other platforms. not my shopifystore. Sold two items in two months and had tow abandoned checkouts. not really pleased with it. Synching is a pain in the butt if you use their ap.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
What’s the other site that you use?! I’m still in my trial phase and debating whether or not to pay for a month to month basis!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shopify is great until you have a problem. Their support is none existant. They are not very pro business, for example they are quick to disable your account if a payment method fails. Unlike other sites which will block admin access, shopify take your site offline. Better not lose your card associated with your shopify otherwise when your card gets cancelled your site will go offline!!!! Support will not help you either!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have been working with a small clothing boutique who has two stores and just recently went with Shopify. We seem to be having problems with the integration to QB on line. We have contacted Shopify as well as QB and do not seem to be getting any answers. It is a problem on Shopify’s end. They continue to down load all of transactions from Shopify into both a Shopify holding account as well as a Undeposited Funds account on QB. It is almost impossible to match transactions and is not clearing the Shopify holding account. Is anyone else having this problem that has more than one location?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have been trying to cancel shopify for 2 months, please help me cancel
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I am looking to switch from Quickbooks POS and BigCommerce to Shopify. Looking for an integrated solution to avoid all this manual synching of inventory. But, twice now, I have logged on to the Shopify on-line chat feature trying to get help from Shopify and I have yet to have a Shopify representative hook up on the chat. I am very worried about their level of 24×7 support given these experiences.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Dave, Did you ever make the switch? We are looking at the exact same scenario, moving from Bigcommerce/Quickbooks POS, and would be very interested in hearing about your experience.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
It would be better if you didn’t handled with their 24 7 Support, because they actually absolutely know nothing of their products. Before I was considering. I asked about their stripe reader in the 24-7 support chat. She gave me a broken link of their hardwares, and didn’t understood how the reader works, even though I sent her the direct link to it myself!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have used Shopify for 8 years. I have 3 stores running. I would not recommend Shopify. They are now too big and simply do not care. They are willing to go home on the weekend and leave your store down (Yes that’s all three) I then get an email on the Monday morning from Alan Hill “Hopefully it resolved itself over the weekend for you! ” No it didn’t. So you keep calling and get bright eyed little well meaning bunnies, now called Guru’s, who unfortunately are just not trained but worse not empowered.
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I left BigCommerce after they changed my monthly rate by 500%.! I’d been with them for nearly 2 years and overall was pleased, but when they increased it without an option, I looked to another source and decided on Shopify.
I have been using Shopify for 3 months and I am thrilled! My top reason is my Google ranking! It has continued to increase and I am now ranked HIGHER than I had ever been with BigCommerce. My only negative with Shopify is when you call in for help, BigCommerce wins on this one.
Go with SHOPIFY you won’t be disappointed and contact me if you have questions.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I am setting up my website on Shopify and wanted to know if you have the same issue since your seem to be so pleased. Maybe you did not notice but for me, there is NO log out button or log out link after a customer makes a purchase. So basically, once the customer is in the last check out page and makes the order, it says Thank you for your order, XYZ! and the only button available is a “continue shopping”. The customer cannot checkout safely!!! If the conputer is public or shared by several employees for example, even if the customer clicks “continue Shopping” by clicking the BACK button, you come back in the Thank you page with the name, shipping and cc info.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
First let me say, I really find the Shopify platform useful. We moved our store http://www.iConvertwireless.com from Bigcommerce to Shopify. Everything was going well. We signed up for shopify payments (stripe processes their payments) and were initially approved. 7 days later they said we were selling a prohibited item. We sell smartphones / cell phones. We can’t find those in their TOS as prohibited items. They do have telecommunications equipment / phone sales but if you google that you will see that category (category 4812) is meant for utilities as it lists telegraphs, water, gas, etc. We have called and emailed Shopify.com support about this problem but they say the risk management decision is final and won’t allow me to talk to a supervisor about the issue. So after we went to the trouble and expense of moving our website they are insisting we can’t use their payment system and because we can’t we owe an additional .5% as a fee for not using Shopify Payments (which again, we would use if we could). Needless to say, we were not thrilled about this as it could effectively DOUBLE our monthly Shopify.com fee. So our main shopify complaint is we are getting charged a fee that we didn’t intend on and now we have done all the leg work and invested both time and a lot of money in the site. And then is it worth the pain to move back to Bigcommerce? You should ask yourself that if you are considering the move to Shopify.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This may be a good platform to start your online experience with, despite the high fees.However, i’ve run into an unexpected hurdle that I can not seem to resolve. I have had a chargeback (stolen credit card) from an order. It was settled, i had to pay out of my pocket. After I covered the $2,000 chargeback willingly to keep my store operating, they froze my orders and would not let my money out of my account. They have started a fraud investigation on me, and requested my re-seller agreements and shipping and tracking information for my latest orders, which I produced promptly. This is not the frustrating part. I understand the importance of security and fraud prevention, and would assist in any way I can to resolve the issue. It has now been two weeks since I submitted all the required information for review, and I have not heard anything back. No “we’ve received it and its in review” no “we need more information”…. NOTHING. I have been calling back and they would not let me talk to the person who requested the information from me, because he is either out of the office, or “we are unable to transfer your call directly to him”. I have sent many emails directly to the “investigator”, starting off with nice and progressively more frustrated, but still professional and non-offensive. I have only requested an update…. and still NOTHING. At this point Shopify is holding $9,000 worth of my orders, and I can not get a simple damn email back from them either requesting more information, or simply to tell me that they’re in the process of review; I just cant reach them. My suppliers will not allow me to ship any more items until I pay my account with them (obviously), and I had to put a stop to my store’s advertising and marketing efforts to prevent orders from coming in that I can not fulfill. Again, I am all for security and fraud protection, but the lack of communication, and total lack of concern for their customer’s business is unnerving and infuriating. Food for thought.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Same thing is happening to me they are holding $10,296.71
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: The Salemart
Thank God I read all of these reviews. I just started putting my store up yesterday and I just stopped in the middle of these reviews and canceled it. The main thing I hear over and over is the fact that they hold your money which is 100% unacceptable. This is the reason I left eBay is because PayPal is horrible about holding your money and pull the same kind of crap. I am losing a lot of enthusiasm for the entire online selling platform because of the greedy people owning these sites.. they have billions of dollars and the sellers have pennies but they want part of those pennies as well. Pathetic
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I was asked to look into this for a friend who wants to possibly use this for a retail store.
Does the 2.9% get added to the actual credit card rate?
Does that mean you will be charged 30 cents + 2.9% plus 3.9% (or whatever the credit card rate is)?
So 6.8% + 30 cents, in this example?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Tim,
No, in this case the 2.9% + $0.30 includes the wholesale cost as well as the markup. So that’s the flat rate that you pay, with no additional surcharges or markups.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Tim, the 2.9% + $0.30 is the Shopify Payments merchant services rate. This would be the only fee for merchant services you would pay, since you are using their payment processor (they waive the 2% service fee for merchants who use their processing). If you bring your own processor to the table, you would be subject to their 2% service fee. So you would never be subject to 2.9% + X.XX% + 2%
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shopify: The best startup site for your small businessAfter a long search for the best ecommerce website builder, I finally settled on Shopify. Shopify is great site to start out with if you own a small online business. If you have no experience with web design, like most new business owners, this will be perfect for you. The entire site is user friendly too, no messy html codes. Shopify’s best features are the templates, the app store and its customer support. These three things became the deciding factor in choosing Shopify and I can’t be any happier with my decision.Professional Templates:The key to having a successful online business is having an eye appealing website. The better your site looks, the more trustworthy it looks, which helps drive sales. One of the first things I noticed about Shopify is the professional looking templates they have to offer. I was only a couple of weeks into my business and it looked like I was well established thanks to the appearance of my website. Not only do the templates look good, but there are well over 100 different ones to choose from. The only downside is that some of the best templates do cost extra money. If this option isn’t for you though, shopify has more than enough free templates to choose from, which is what I started with. Online App Store:Another great feature is Shopify’s App Store. The store includes hundreds of apps that helps you market and manage your business. All of the apps are automatically integrated with shopify, which makes them much easier to use. Similar to the templates though, some of the apps cost extra money. Some are one time payments and others you have to pay on a monthly basis. Some of them are really worth the money though. As a small business owner, you’re not going to have a lot of employees so having apps to make up for that is perfect. I downloaded my first app and before I knew it I had over 20. They’re really beneficial, trust me.Great customer support:Lastly, Shopify has great customer service. Many ecommerce sites advertise that they have good customer support, which I have found to be very untrue. I have never experienced a support system as great as Shopify’s. They have a true 24/7 anytime support system and I know this from personal experience. I called at 3am one time and a customer service rep solved all of my problems by walking me through each and every one. For people who are just starting out there are going to be roadblocks and a lot of questions so having someone who’s there to help at your disposal 24 hours a day is a great feature to have. I can’t say enough good things about this. All in all Shopify is your best option when looking to build your ecommerce site. It’s easy to use, professional, it has cutting-edge features and its customer support is hands down the best out there. I hope this review was helpful and I wish you the best in your ongoing business endeavors.
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We have used Shopify for our online store and generally we are very pleased.
However, with time and usuage stupid little problems appear and Shopify’s ability to sort them out (and sometimes to even understand them) is very frustrating.
We are based in the UK and most of our shipping is domestic.
However their site is unable to understand that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are two separate sovereign countries.
This is like assuming that the US and Canada are the same country.
It makes shipping impossible without doing a custom rate and defeats the whole principle of online stores.
It’s a small niggle, a 10 minute fix, but…
Get your act together Shopify and listen to your customers
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I tried Shopify and to be honest had a terrible experience with them. I tried and tested two premium themes both of which were not fit for purpose, they both had issues with menus resizing in iPad, support is useless for themes both developers couldn’t, really have cared less. I would advise using a different ecommerce platform. I purchased an app only to discover that the app was transferring my data out of shopify secure server to the apps own servers! There was not any mention of this in the App Store I only spotted it after checking url it was redirecting all my product data and variation to another server I have no idea where, how is this secure? After complaining with shopify guru (what a joke) I was told to maybe try a free theme and never mind basically don’t ask too many questions. It us not a solution I would recommend to anyone who is serious about their business.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Nice write up here Erik. I want to point out one thing that seems to be overlooked about Shopify. Yes they have very inexpensive plans when you first sign up – and you can upgrade to more expensive plans as your needs grow – makes sense! But my main gripe with the Shopify model is that most of the worthwhile apps / extensions that you can integrate into your web shop are an additional monthly cost. This takes what was once a pretty reasonably priced service to astronomic heights, fast. The other thing I don’t love about Shopify is that it’s NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS. The ads and promo videos make it look like you simply sign up, choose a template, and you’re ready to make millions in minutes. They definitely over hype the ease of use. It actually takes a good amount of know how and getting used to to get the website to look and behave the way you envision in your head. I still have my first site with them, but I signed up with Setmysite for my main business’s website (we sell medical equipment, and there are lot of strange things that go into the sales process which makes my selling needs more complex than the average joe) and the Setmysite guys built a custom site and the addons were all one-time fees, great support. But I like Shopify’s free templates, I like that they give you access to the code (we hired a developer a few times to make some customizations) and I like their support. If you have some technical know-how and you have realistic expectations, Shopify is great. If you need some help with designing the site and putting everything together and making it work correctly, I like Setmysite. For something simple though, you can’t beat the starting rate that Shopify offers. It’s a no brainer for guys just getting started in online selling.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Our company was really interested in using Shopify. Until we learned of a few issues that conflicted with our business. Shopify has no way to modify the checkout page and since we do a lot of business with the US Government, we need to have the ability to accept tax exempt credit cards. Apparently it is not possible. Unless anyone knows of an add on that would work for us. Also, it is not possible to hold an order for longer than 7 days or it results in a charge back. If anyone can offer alternate ideas, I would love to hear them.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We moved to Shopify from BigCommerce for their POS and I must say, it’s great, but to us that’s about where it ends. Their cart is good, but basic and does not include many options that other carts have standard, but you can buy an app that will do it which is more money…it adds up fast! One example is with phone orders. You can’t take phone orders through the control panel. When asked why they would not implement this, they said it was for customer credit card security, but in the same sentence, said we should take phone orders directly through our site…is that not the same security risk? I would agree that their support is good, but when you have a basic cart with a bunch of apps built on top of it, there’s not much to support. I can’t think of one time that called and wasn’t told that the problem was caused by someone else. I can go on and on, but bottom line, we’re moving back to BigCommerce. Anyone who has migrated a site knows what a pain it is, but the positives outweigh the negatives.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Helpful review. There are definitely some beautifully made themes in Shopify’s theme store with styles for everyone. We ended up purchasing the Retina Theme which gave us the building blocks and tools to create a great first website. With a bit of additional help from online html and css editing tutorials like http://www.codecademy.com/ we were able to get our shop to the level we wanted – http://www.hollowlegstore.com/We would definitely recommend Shopify to anyone looking for an e-commerce platform!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
One year later SHOPIFY has increased their monthly store rate by more than 50 %.
I just joined, it has been 24 hours, over 200 items for sale , not one sale yet, but staying hopeful !
YOU MUST UPGRADE THE NEW PRICES
todays price is :
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In Person: 2.7% + 0¢
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Professional
Get more sales with features like gift cards, professional reports and abandoned cart recovery.
Credit card rates
Online: 2.5% + 30¢
In Person: 2.4% + 0¢
$219/month
Choose this plan Plan unlimited
Unlimited
Save time and money with our lowest credit card rates, advanced report builder and carrier calculated shipping.
Credit card rates
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In Person: 2.15% + 0¢
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Great review, Erik! Very thorough. We really like the quality of the reviews on merchant maverick in general.———– Our conclusion in short – excellent, but not the best solution for Europe. Tends to become expensive with add-ons ————Our conclusion on Shopify is that it has a lot to offer, and that it is probably the best solution overall in the current ecommerce software landscape. However, if you want to enjoy the many features and excellent plugins that are available, the costs do add up a lot (Bigcommerce, for example, offers more plugins included already in the cheaper packages). In short, it tends to become expensive.As we focus on the European market primarily, we found that Shopify is sometimes slow to adapt to European conditions, and we would not recommend Shopify as the first choice in Europe.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thank you, Timo! That is very useful info about how Shopify responds to the European markets. Thanks for the addendum!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Anyone ever used Vendevor?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
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This is about Shopify Experts, The Mango Yard.
Do not work with them. They are scammers. I hope Shopify does something about this.
Buyer beware.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
They have a pretty decent API, but I thought for such a popular eCommerce platform they would support batch updates/inserts…sadly they do not. The API call limit is 2 per second, so you have to plan accordingly if you plan on making a lot of requests to their API. The docs aren’t the greatest either, I find myself being confused on what certain fields mean a lot of the time. Decent coverage though, I was pleasantly surprised to see you can get cart contents via the API!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Good UI but some of the simple options available with other ecommerce products are unavailable or cost extra. For example, if you want to calculate shipping for each item (as opposed to a flat shipping charge) you have to pay $20 extra monthly. Also, you cannot adjust image sizes. If you want a different size image for the category page and the product page, you have to upload 2 images.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I just want to share with everyone something I learned about RTCS (Real-time Carrier Shipping) with Shopify. If you purchased any of Shopify’s plans, other than the $9.99 LITE plan, RTSC is a free add-on. The trick is they don’t tell you that. You have to ask for it to be added to your site.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Well for starters I found out about this site through Facebook and currently have an eBay online store selling video games for the past 3 years, but am looking to now expand out of the eBay universe. My main question is do you guys do any sort of integrating with eBay so I could sell through shopify and eBay at the same time. This has been something I have been trying to do for a long time now and would love some info. Thanks for your time.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
After getting set up with Shopify recently for a show, I was amazed at how easy it was to get started. I was just using the site as a POS cash register and that was all that I needed. Well, once I had started using it and had about $2500 in sales I received and email that seemed to come from Shopify that asked me for my drivers license so that they could verify my identity. It took me many days of going back and forth with them to verify it really was shopify and then sending them my drivers license. They immediately came back and asked for a color copy ( I had sent mine in a scanner). I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t asked for this up front before I had twenty or so orders in their system that they wouldn’t pay me on. I figured out I could photograph my id and so I did and sent it to them and they then asked me for my suggestions as to how I could prove who my company was. I suggested sending them my FEIN approval from the US government and they agreed and asked me what more I could give them. It became apparent that Shopify for some reason was stalling me. I am now on a 45 day wait period and if nobody requests money back from a transaction then they will deign to transfer my money to my account. This company is terrible and the above review has no bearing on my experience which was totally negative and indecipherable. It was as if they didn’t want my business.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I to am having issues with – not sure if it’s Stripe or Shopify. Firstly they to,d me they were withholding my money for 7 days. I now discover they want a copy of my passport or drivers. licence. My gosh I will not be waiting 45 days before both companies will be investigated by Australian Authorities.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shoplify did exactly the same thing to me. They requested for proof of business registration, passport, how much sales I make, if I was new or not…and what not. At first, I was quite reluctant sending them the info, I asked if they were the IRS or what exactly? Anyway, after emailing back and forth I eventually did, and after sending all the information they requested, they got back and told me I could not set up store, because the items I intended to sale, hair extensions, could not be sold on their website…but there are plenty shoplify stores selling these same items. Just shady!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Which plans provide Real-Time Shipping?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Jim,
Real-time shipping is supported on the Unlimited plan only, but it can be added to any other Shopify plan for an additional $20 per month. More details here: http://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/shipping/carrier-calculated-rates
Thanks for reading!
Sara
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Does this offer still exist?! I have a client that I may lose if I force them to upgrade to the $179/mo plan just to have Real-Time Carrier Shipping Rates.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
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Here are the things that I think it hurts or it will hurt Shopify;
– Very elementary business intelligence reports. I am not sure how a business can run their business with these type of very limited reports.
– Do not use Shopify Credit card system. It is a: very expensive 2.5% plus 0.30. Money is deposited to your bank 7 plus days (some time 9 days due to weekend.
I am not sure what others see in this system..If you want to just sell but not manage the business, it may be OK..
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’m sorry but I think your review of Shopify is VERY misleading, uninformed and doing a terrible disservice to your readers. Shopify is a terrible platform. Shopify has been riddled with problems, bugs and instability from day 1.
Their “support” is none existent when it comes to REAL problems with the software. Sure, they will tell you how to change the colour on your “add to cart” button, but they will deny and lie about anything that is a real problem…until you send them a video of it happening. Then (no longer unable to deny it) they will state that they were unaware of the problem (even though you told them about it weeks-months ago.) At that point, they will state that “you are the only one experiencing it”, even though people on their own Forums have been posting about it for weeks. When you point that out, they will finally, begrudgingly admit that the problem exists and will give you no indication as to when, if EVER they are going to fix it. Read their forums, they are FULL of these examples. No firm release dates for updates, bug fixes, new features etc. are EVER provided. EVER. It took them 4 years to add “Gift Cards” and drop down menus. That is all they have added in the past 4 years. (They also removed functionality in that time. ?!)
I have been on the platform for approx. 3 years and sell just under 20,000 products. In that time, I have spent 10-20 hours a day, 7 days a week on their software. I can honestly tell you, Shopify DOES NOT WORK.
For 2+ years their inventory did not work correctly, only after 6+ months of me going insane trying to figure out what was happening, did one of their support staff tell me “off the record”, that the inventory system has never worked. This was the primary reason they developed Shopify 2.
Shopify 2- what a TOTAL DISASTER.
For 3 months Shopify 2 could not even save the price, sku, description and inventory correctly. Removing the ability for its users to go back to Shopify 1, the company FORCED its customers to pay to BETA test its new software. Meanwhile, Shopify would sell products 80% BELOW my cost! Every day I would have to email customers, explaining to them why I can not sell them the product that I paid $40 for, for the $9.95 price Shopify was incorrectly displaying. To this day Shopify 2 still can not duplicate a product correctly.
If you are serious about your store’s integrity and go with Shopify, forget ever having a good nights sleep. I would not use them if it was free. The fees are irrelevant compared to the damage they can and will do to your business.
I have nothing to gain by posting this review except to know that perhaps I am saving some people months-years of frustration if they decide to go with this deceitful and disastrous company.
You can immediately see how they are trying to trick their customers right from the day one, by visiting their “pricing” page. Hover over the “0% transactions” fees posted and you will see a hidden pop-up showing you the ACTUAL transaction fees…
AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Pretty disappointed with theme supplier Out of the Sand Box- they are very slow to answer questions and assist. Quite sad because I loved their design (for $140).
Unless you are a person with a lot of HTML experience, avoid Out of the Sand Box.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Really big fan of shopify. I think it’s one of the few companies doing it right. Thanks for your review tough, I am going to bookmark for later reading. Just tweeted this out to my followers. Thanks!
Jordan.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Shopify has been a fantastic ecommerce site for our small business. It is easy to navigate and the customer service is outstanding.Great customer service and a great hosting platform gives Shopify 5 stars.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We have been more than pleased with both the Shopify platform and the customer service we have received from the Shopify gurus.
We had a website for years that was not functional for today. It took up some time to convert the info from our old site to the new Shopify platform, but we are so happy we made the change. I can’t say enough about how much help the Shopify gurus were in answering all of our questions and giving great advice.
I highly recommend Shopify to any small business owner looking for a comprehensive web hosting platform with future growth capabilities.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Great review of shopify…seems like it’s one of the best. Have you heard of any other similar apps/plugins?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Jordan, thanks for your comment. Shopify is one of the best carts we’ve reviewed. Check out Ashop Commerce and CoreCommerce for some comparisons.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’m considering Shopify and would like to be updated as new comments are posted.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
One downside to shopify is that they do not integrate real-time price quotes for DHL. A functionality which they refuse to implement for whatever reason.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.