I have always promised a short review of Shopify so I thought I would start the year by actually delivering it.
Prepare to spend a little more than other carts to use Shopify. That will probably be your only complaint though. It is the designer and developers choice of shopping cart software because of how easy it is to customise and how simple it is to train end users.
While it does not have the feature set of the other major carts by default most every piece of functionality can be added (sometimes at a small cost) from the Shopify AppStore. There are many free Shopify themes to help you minimise the upfront costs but given how wonderful it is to work with you can feel confident letting your imagination go wild, everything is possible with Shopify.
The bullet points
PRO Super simple to use and manage. No bloated features. Very clean, very attractive screens [insert image]
PRO Some very beautiful free themes.Better than the premium themes of most shopping carts
CON A small per transaction fee that can build up quickly on busy carts
CON No newsletter support or integration, although there is a MailChimp app in the app store that allows you to connect your store to your MailChimp lists.
CON SEO doesn’t exist, to get META tags (keywords and descriptions) you need to pay an extra $6 a month in the AppStore. There is integration with Google Product Search and Google Website Optimizer. No rich snippet support but you can find a tutorial and code snippet here.
PRO Very well organized backend that makes it simple to see how you store is performing and what needs your attention.
What does Shopify do better than every other cart?
It is very easy to use, looks great and let’s you get on with the business of selling and fulfilling orders. If you just want to sell online this could be your best option.
It is the most visually customizable shopping cart on the market. There is nothing you can not make a Shopify theme look like. There are no visual restrictions or generated markup and code to deal with, the liquid template engine is a developer and designers dream.
What is the downside of using Shopify?
Out of the box it does the bare minimum. No gift certifictaes, no wish list, no SEO. Probably not a downside if you just want to sell products and make money. Almost every feaure you could possible need is available via the Appstore for a usually minimum sum.
No default facebook store (although you can purchase an addon from the AppStore)
What payments methods are supported by Shopify?
All the major credit card gateways, Paypal, Google Checkout and several cusotm methods like Money Order, Bank Deposit and Cash on Delivery.
What shipping methods does Shopify support?
FedEx, UPS, USPS are the only shipping providers supported at the moment. Shopify does support various fulfilment services including Amazon, Shipwire and Webgistix.
Would I recommend Shopify?
Yes. It does cost more than carts like BigCommerce or CoreCommerce but it is worth every single cent if you want a wonderful looking site that is very easy to manage and use.
This Shopify review last updated January 2012
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I loved Shopify, but did end up on BC and V because Shopify has no way to enter phone orders other than going through the site just like a customer would.
This means you cannot zero out the price of something small to “close the sale”. This lack of admin order entry area was, unfortunately, a deal breaker for us. Love the looks of their themes and the easy to use interface though.
I agree with Andrew, and the lack of “phone orders” has me considering moving to Big Commerce. I also can’t understand why Shopify won’t work with Amazon for checkouts or payments. This is a huge disadvantage. Does anyone know if this has changed?
Hi Andrew. I’m a bit confused. Wouldn’t Shopify be cheaper since they have unlimited bandwidth? Or is there some other reason or issue that is causing them to be more expensive than the other solutions in your 2012 top 5?
I’ve been researching different commerce solutions and the unlimited bandwidth that Shopify offers in exchange for small transaction fees really eases my mind! The typical 45 to 55 GB the other solutions offer doesn’t seem like enough for traffic and I keep imagining huge bandwidth overage bills as a result.
Thanks for your input.
Hi Maribel,
The reason Shopify comes out a little more expensive than the other solutions is that they charge either a 1% or 2% per transaction fee as well as the monthly fee.
Since this only occurs if you make sales most people are not bothered by it especially since it is so small, but I forgot to tell someone once and they got the bill at the end of there first month with Shopify and were shocked that is was higher than the $24 they were expecting.
If you are planning for 45gb of traffic then a cart like Shopify is probably your safest bet
But doesn’t everyone want lots of traffic that may result in more than 45gb? I’m a bit surprised that more of these solutions do not offer an unlimited bandwidth plan!
You’d be surprised how little a bandwidth a lot of stores use. I have never had a BigCommerce or CoreCommerce customer get an over use bill.
Ideally everyone would love to be so busy they require 45gb of bandwidth but the truth is the majority of them will probably never pass 5Gb
Bandwidth (given you can always very easily buy more or take steps to minimize it’s use) is probably the last thing to check for when selecting an ecommerce platform.
Features, suitability, support, stability, ease of use and ability to customise are all far more important and unlike bandwidth can not be rectified with a phone call if you make the wrong decisions early on.
Thanks for your input and for helping to clarify the bandwidth issue.
I do have another thing I’m unsure of. The App Store. I was looking through it and it seems that many of the apps for add-on features are Free. I did come across some that indicate a small fee such as $2 to $6 and some are more expensive but otherwise many seem to be free.
Are they truly free or is there a fee such as to upgrade the add-on feature to work at optimal level or some other catch?
Thanks again so very much.
No if they are free then they will not cost you anything. Most will have a premium version that adds extra functionality but if it is listed as free it will provide whatever features it claims to for nothing
Hi andrew!
Is it possible to use shopify templates on the other plataforms?
Hi Luis,
You can not use Shopify templates with other platforms but becaus ethey are usually so well created they can be converted from say Shopify to BigCommerce or WordPress without too much hassle.
Andrew, you wrote: “You can not use Shopify templates with other platforms but becaus ethey are usually so well created they can be converted from say Shopify to BigCommerce or WordPress without too much hassle.”
I don’t quite understand what you have said here, but
I need to convert the template I purchased and am using on Shopify to Big Commerce, for reasons listed in another response.
How do I go about doing this, or can you recommend someone I can pay to do this? I have lost thousands of dollars paying “experts” who really didn’t know what they are doing, so I need someone who is truly qualified or I need to do it myself.
Thanks in advance, CatherineTodd2 at gmail dot com
AtitlanArts dot com
I will contact you via email about this Catherine. It is a relatively simple job to convert a Shopify theme to a BigCommerce one.
Andrew, really, thanks SO MUCH for these hugely informative articles.
You’re a guru of sorts so I hope you can help:
We need a store in English and Chinese.
I hate the look and feel of BC and Volusion. Sorry, but their templating engines are lacklustre too.
Shopify is really nice looking, but what really puts me off is the Liquid theming language (really? what’s wrong with plain standard HTML?) and an app for every feature like Facebook, MailChimp, eBay integration. So the price adds up.
I like CoreCommerce a lot in terms of features, but I haven’t seen detailed comparisons here.
Our site will have a blog magazine apart from the store too. So it’s vital that it doesn’t look just like a store.
We need an English store on MYSITE.COM and a Chinese store on CN.MYSITE.COM, so subdomains with DNS are important.
I want to:
- Fully customize the minified JS and HTML
- Serve images and static assets from our CDN, ideally
- Have a “wishlist” of products that people can add to, even if they don’t buy
- NOT pay transaction fee, unless it also includes my PayPal fee
- And have our domain shown to the user from start to end (Shopify goes “shopify.com” at the end stage during checkout…so our shoppers will wonder if it’s reliable!)
My battle is actually between CoreCommerce, Shopify and our own WordPress based CMS site with JigoShop.
Naturally WordPress gives us a lot more control, but the features etc are great to have without any additional programming too.
What’re your thoughts?
Many thanks in advance!
Sounds like Shopify is out because it will charge you a transaction fee (unless you get the $180/month plan) there is no know way to use your own domain right through the checkout process though.
CoreCommerce will not give you complete access to the HTML so there will be sections or HTML and many images you can not optimize, you can optimize a great deal of it and minify a lot of the JS and CSS (there are a few javascript snippets that are injected into the middle of the page you will not be able to optimize)
Have you looked at licensed shopping cart that you can install on your own server you would have complete control over DNS and optimisation that way
I’m curious what you mean by “no SEO”. Can you specify file names, title tags, and meta descriptions? What can you do and what can’t you do? I don’t particularly care about meta tags but I do want to manage my own title tags and file names for SEO purposes. Thanks.
A recent update added the ability to alter the page title on pages, products and collections – prior to that you have to do it with a mess of code in the template which put it beyond the reach of most people. I used to add it as theme options to help customers manage it themselves, but it required constantly updating themes for them.
There is a basic URL redirector but URL’s need to be added one at a time which make migrations a lengthy process.
You can customise some of the URL – Products must exist under http://www.domain.com/products/ but you can customise the rest of the URL
Neither of these options is available when you create a product so you need to save it and then go back in and edit it – a bizarre two step that is hopefully fixed in the next update.
You can not readily modify meta tags and you need to manually craft rich snippets into your themes.
What’s missing is more a function of your ability to edit the template files. There is really no meta, canonical, title or alt data by default but if you have the technical skills you can add it without too much trouble.
Where as many of the newer shopping carts actively take steps to inject head tags into your document for a basic search optimisation, Shopify just provide template developers with rich API that allows them to do it themselves.
I just got an email with this URL that you might find useful if you are planning to edit your own Shopify templates to get a little more search engine love.
http://wiki.shopify.com/Search_Engine_Optimization_%28SEO%29_101
Hey–just stumbled on your site while searching Shopify reviews. Great stuff!
I currently have an etsy shop and am looking to open a stand alone shop. Really leaning toward Shopify, but that’s still a few months down the road while I build inventory.
SEO, fb integration, coupons/gift certificates–all good thinking points. Thanks for your insight!
My pleasure Karen, best of luck with the new venture
hi andrew. i’ll be opening up a simple page where i sell prints (photos that i have take) and will have quotes printed on each. nothing real complicated, maybe a couple different size prints will be available, but i’m really torn between Big Cartel & Shopify. do you have any suggestions? i’m not good with understanding all this html and code talk. all i know is i will be having a friend design a logo for my business that i would like to have on the page as a header or background, as well as my own website name. any info you have would be greatly appreciated. thank you!
Either would be fine. BigCartel would be the simplest and cheapest but Shopify has extra features you will need once your build your shop up. Perhaps start with BigCartel for now and upgrade down the track when you out grow it.
I like your idea about starting with BigCartel and upgrading later, but what exactly does it entail to upgrade? How difficult is it to migrate an up-and-running site to another platform?
You would need to copy your template code over – this is a simple process of copy and paste and you would need to export and import your products – but in most cases the simplest method would be to just reenter them
MAHALO! thanks Andrew, i appreciate it. you’ve made me feel a lot more comfortable with taking this next step.
Andrew,
I have been reading your reviews for the past few days, as I prepare to launch my first storefront. Your information has been helpful, informative, and appreciated. One area I don’t see much coverage about (by anyone covering e-commerce features) is their capabilities of dealing with service businesses, rather than physical products. If you have any opinions on which e-commerce players do better in this area, I’d love to hear them. So far, I’m led to believe that Shopify is better than BC in this area, but I’m still researching. Thanks again for your reviews.
BigCommerce set to sell digital products can be used to sell a service (with some configuration) but I suspect and cart that can sell a non-tangible product (ebook, movie, download) could be used in this way.
Any more information you can provide will help me narrow it down though.
In my business model, I provide a customized report, based on the customer’s request. There is no download process, in this situation. The customer inputs a small amount of information, chooses a service level (how quickly they need this report). The order triggers an email to my company mailbox, which initiates the process of queuing and preparing the report, which is sent to the customer via email. BigCommerce has indicated that
“something” must be downloaded in the purchase process, even if its a just PDF containing instructions on how the order will be fulfilled. I view that as a non-value added workaround, that could be a negative from the customer’s perspective.
Thanks for your reviews. I am looking at both Shopify and BigCommerce. After a quick search, I see that they DO have some SEO:
http://www.shopify.com/blog/5299042-improving-shopify-seo-several-new-features
But as a commenter on their blog said:
>>
Please stop saying you have good seo on shopify.
1) The product title needs to go BEFORE the shop name in the title tag.
Correct = “Product Title Name – ShopName.com”
Incorrect = “ShopName.com – Product Title Name”
2) NEED unique Title tags and descriptions on EACH page. How can you not have this built in?
3) Your URL structure is so horrible I want to cry,..
“shop.com/collections/collection-name/products/product-name”
It should be “shop.com/productname” or at the least “shop.com/collection-name/product-name”
I have to now spend several hours trying to fix all these core/basic shopify issues.
>>
Makes me go hmmmmm. Great points. What do ya think?
Actually I see that a Shopify marketing person responded to that person’s comments:
Comment: The product title needs to go BEFORE the shop name in the title tag.
Answer: 100% agree. Shopify is 100% customizable so this is up to you. If the template that you are using is not setup this way right now, just go in and edit the Liquid code to make it that way.
Comment: NEED unique Title tags and descriptions on EACH page. How can you not have this built in?
Answer: We didn’t before and I made sure we got this changed. That’s what this post above is announcing.
Comment: Your URL structure is so horrible I want to cry…
Answer: All templates should have a canonical tag that points to the /product/ URL. If your template does not have this canonical, then you can easily add it. We have this URL structure because you can actually do some more advanced things if a product is viewed as part of one collection or another.
Brent hit the nail on the head with his comments and the excerpt from another blog: “3) Your URL structure is so horrible I want to cry…”
After reading this through this site, I can see that the problems I am having are not mine alone.
Shopify is beautiful to look at, but the overall structure is so lacking I can hardly stand it. Yet the other shopping carts I’ve tested are too boring for words. What to do? Help!
Thanks Andrew; will look for your email.
Catherine Todd, AtitlanArts dot com
CTodd1000 at mail.com.
I meant ctodd1000 at gmail dot com.
I was really leaning towards Shopify. For a web only store – vintage items. I dislike the transaction fee however I really need a company very simple to start and maintain that looks good. Many of the ecommerce seem more suited to larger or wholesale companies. Am I correct in your assessment that Shopify is great for those of us less technically inclined?
I am planning a big site that will need atleast 100gb bandwith after 2-3 months. I am inclined towards shopify because of unlimited bandwidth and facebook store app (i think thats free, comment on this pls)
Can anyone tell me is shopify fine for such big websites?
Shopify will easily handle a site that large Rishi, you will not have any trouble
reply to my above query!!!
Can i put sliding images on my homepage with shopify?..if so is it easy to do or do i need a particular theme?
ta
jc
You need a theme that supports it
We are considering switching to Shopify at the moment but what is bothering is the URL redirect, as shopify’s URL structure is different, if we migrate from existing site over to shopify, URLs will be changed and traffic will be lost, unless I do URL redirect one by one. wondering is there any faster & smarter way to do that? Looking forward to your advice Andrew
Andrew -
Honestly, thanks a ton for the write-up and the feedback you are giving to people’s comments on this post. VERY helpful and appreciated. I had two questions I was hoping you would be able to answer:
1. Can you integrate a forum into a Shopify site? I know some forums you can embed into a site, but wasn’t sure if you have that type of access to a Shopify site.
2. Do you have to use the default Shopify checkout page (checkout.shopify.com)?
Thanks!
Yes you have to use the default shopify checkout you can make some modifications to it with CSS though. I was initially very skeptical of it but to be honest I have never heard of a single case of lost sales because the user was forced to use the Shopify checkout system.
You can integrate a forum easily. I personally use vBulletin and find it is a great fit and can be easily styled to match your store. You have to install it on a subdomain but it is a simple task just like integrating a blog
Thanks Andrew for the update. This unfortunately is a deal breaker for me. Other than that small item, Shopify looks amazing.