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Shopify For Artists: How To Know If It Is Right For You
Artists of all types can use Shopify's easy to use eCommerce platform to sell both online and in person. Find out more with this guide.
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Expert Analyst & Reviewer
UPDATED
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Though it’s not right for everyone, any artist who wants to create a website for selling their art should at least consider using Shopify.
Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce website solution that includes free hosting, an SSL certificate, and a Buy button to sell on your existing website. Whether you want to use a prebuilt Shopify theme to design your art website or use a web developer to build your online art store from scratch, Shopify has options for you. You can even use Shopify to sell in person if you have an art studio or to sell art at farmer’s markets or other venues.
In this post, we’ll explore and review Shopify for artists, including how to sell your art on Shopify, the best Shopify themes for artists, pricing, and the best Shopify alternatives for artists who don’t want to use Shopify.
Table of Contents
What Is Shopify For Artists?
With its affordable pricing and built-in web design tools, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms for businesses of all sizes to create their own branded online stores.
Shopify can be a good fit for artists who may not have a large budget or coding experience but still want to create a beautiful, functional web store that fits their aesthetic. Shopify, for artists, also gives you more control over your brand and your sales compared to a marketplace like Etsy.
Shopify Pricing For Artists
Shopify pricing varies depending on what features you want. Shopify has several pricing tiers with different features. Note that your payment processing price will also depend on your monthly plan.
The “Basic” plan and above includes a full Shopify website and also allows you to take payments in person with a Shopify card reader.
Starter
- Price: $5/month
- Transaction fees: 5% with Shopify Payments
- Features: Simple product pages you can use to sell on social media, email, text, and, more
Basic
- Price: $39/month ($29/month if paid annually)
- Transaction fees: 2.9% + 30¢ online or 2.7% + 0¢ in person with Shopify Payments; + add’l 2.0% if using third-party payment provider
- Features: Online store with tax, shipping, inventory, marketing, basic reporting, & international commerce features, + Shopify Lite for in-person mobile sales
Shopify
- Price: $105/month ($79/month if paid annually)
- Transaction fees: 2.6% + 30¢ online or 2.5% + 0¢ in person with Shopify Payments; + add’l 1.0% if using third-party payment provider
- Features: Everything in Basic, plus more shipping features, more staff accounts, and standard reporting
Advanced
- Price: $399/month ($299/month if paid annually)
- Transaction fees: 2.4% + 30¢ online or 2.4% + 0¢ in person with Shopify Payments; + add’l 0.5% if using third-party payment provider
- Features: Everything in Shopify, plus more shipping features, more staff accounts, and advanced reporting
Shopify Plus
- Price: $2,000+/month
- Transaction fees: 0.25% online with Shopify Payments (if making $800K+/month); + add’l 0.15% if using a third-party payment provider
- Features: Enterprise-level features for high-volume sites
Shopify POS Pro (Add-on)
- Price: +$89/month (on top of the monthly plan fee)
- Features: POS features and Shopify hardware integration for in-person retail stores
Best Shopify Themes For Artists
Shopify themes are templates that you can use to customize the appearance and functionality of your web store. Some Shopify themes are free, while others are paid. Here are some of the best Shopify themes for artists.
Highlight
- Price: $300
- Best For: Visual storytelling, quick setup
Studio
- Price: Free
- Best For: Showcasing fine art collections
Craft
- Price: Free
- Best For: Showcasing crafted goods, advanced customization options
California
- Price: $210
- Best For: Clean layout, option for longer-form text sections
Capital
- Price: $350
- Best For: High-volume stores with large inventories
When To Use Shopify For Selling Art
Shopify is a good solution for some artists, but not all. Shopify is not the cheapest eCommerce website builder, nor is it the most advanced. Overall, Shopify is good for serious art sellers with minimal web design experience.
How You Can Sell Your Art With Shopify
Ready to set up shop and start selling your art with Shopify? We at Merchant Maverick have written exhaustive step-by-step guides on how to start selling on Shopify as well as how to sell digital products on Shopify, for those artists who want to sell digital art using Shopify.
But there are also some tools that are specific to selling art with Shopify. In particular, you will likely benefit from using certain Shopify integrations for artists, such as on-demand dropshipping/print-on-demand (POD) services.
Some useful Shopify integrations for artists are listed below:
- Printful: Printing and dropshipping service selling art prints and merch with your art on Shopify
- creativehub: Printing and dropshipping service selling framed art prints with Shopify
- ArtPlacer: Lets customers view how your art will look on their wall using AR
- Spotify For Artists: Lets musical artists sell their Shopify merch using Spotify
- Unlimited Digital Downloads: Useful for selling digital art on Shopify
Shopify stores are fully customizable, but again, you will likely need to use integrations to sell art on Shopify unless you are only selling unique hand-created pieces. For selling prints, you will greatly benefit from integrating a POD service with Shopify. Fortunately, there are a large number of Shopify integrations to choose from, and many of them are free—you only pay for the printing and shipping expenses.
Alternatives To Shopify For Artists
Is Shopify not quite right for your needs? As follows are some of the top Shopify alternatives you can use to sell your art online.
Shopify For Artists: FAQs
Shannon Vissers
Expert Analyst & Reviewer at Merchant Maverick
The former editor-in-chief of SteelOrbis, Shannon has been researching and writing about small business software and financing since 2015. Her shopping and retail expertise has been cited in numerous publications, including Reader's Digest, MSN, Yahoo Finance, and GOBankingRates . She has also published articles for LIVESTRONG.COM, eHow, Life'd, and other websites. Shannon attended San Diego State University, graduating in 2005 with a BA in English.
View Shannon Vissers's professional experience on LinkedIn.
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