inkFrog vs. Shopify Plus

Inkfrog is a useful upload tool for adding stock from your website to eBay and now also to Amazon, although we don't sell via the latter and we only list to eBay UK. I think it works better as an upload tool than an all-in-one eBay shop management tool and some tasks are easier to do directly on eBay itself. eBay also offers insights - such as offering trending prices - that Inkfrog doesn't. However it is useful in terms of being able to bulk adjust item pricing to include the cost of eBay selling fees. Inkfrog is probably ideal if you have a recognisable product to sell - with our offering it struggles with mapping shop categories (we use lots of sub and sub-sub-categories). Certain listing capabilities cannot be reproduced, such as quantity discounts, and I've never got to grips with mapping products with options and variations, so a lot is left out of our full inventory. Ultimately you will still need to find some time in your day to manage your eBay store - Inkfrog is not 100% reliable sometimes. Inkfrog will also take some of your time and a lot of patience, but ultimately is a huge timesaver for uploading products so it is worthwhile.

Incentivized

Any business that needs to keep track of orders and payments would benefit from Shopify Plus. Customers information, orders, and payments are all saved and available for reference. You are able to refer to past orders to review trends and offer future purchase suggestions. Shopify Plus is also easy to use so it does not take long to train employees how to use this system.

Incentivized

• inkFrog handles product variants really well. Their platform pulls the SKUs and information directly from BigCommerce and then lets me easily customize each variant with different pictures which is really helpful.
• It also makes adding multiple listings very easy. Since it imports the item specifics and description directly from BigCommerce I don't have to go through each listing one by one and I can just bulk upload our products onto eBay.
• inkFrog also lets me set different templates for shipping, or profiles from different items and then I can apply those in bulk to items which saves a huge amount of time since I don't have to go through every item and change specifics.

Incentivized

• Scales incredibly well. Forget about hardware concerns, load balancing, downtime, etc. and focus on eCommerce. We've seen merchants go from a few thousand dollars per month to having million dollar days, all on Shopify without having to worry about performance or scaling systems.
• Great new features consistently being added, ahead of the curve on almost everything
• Solid API to build on and work with, a few annoying quirks here and there for super complex use cases but overall very well documented and works well
• Most Merchant Success Managers are good and genuinely want to be helpful
• A fantastic user interface, very logical and easy to use
• Tons and tons and tons of out of the box integrations. Easily the best integration marketplace of the e-commerce platforms. There's an app for that.

Incentivized

• The pre-built themes are really bad. Thankfully we don't have to use them and created our own.
• The other issue regarding these themes is that they are locked behind a paywall and are a premium feature; subpar themes should not be charged to consumers.
• InkFrog also connects with other marketplaces that we also sell on, such as Amazon. Unfortunately, it does not work as well with other marketplaces as it does with eBay, which is a shame since we would prefer to have it all in one place.

Incentivized

• The Account Managers/Reps have become more scripted and seem like they are busier and handling more clients than before. It doesn't seem as personal and special anymore like when we first upgraded to Plus.
• Shopify still has missing features in their software that might not have an app in their app marketplace available that fills this void.
• The 24/7 support doesn't seem as dedicated as they once were.

Incentivized

It just works! It is so prolific worldwide that there are a plethora of partners who can support you. Development time is cut in half as many plugins can be used that would require custom development on other platforms. It is stable, fast, and scalable.

Always are quick to answer our questions and help us find a solution

Incentivized

We looked at Sellbrite. We really liked Sellbrite in view of its glowing reviews and integration with Etsy. However we didn't fully trial the program so I am not able to comment here more than to say that Inkfrog is by far the most economical option. We currently pay around $10 per month, whereas Sellbrite is nearly $50.

Incentivized

Shopify had the quickest go-to-market and most robust API among the products we compared. CommerceCloud required a VERY LONG integration phase that we just didn't have time for. BigCommerce fell short on the number of features and API coverage that we needed. Overall Shopify gave us the most bang for the buck.

Incentivized

• Overall inkFrog has had a positive impact. It has really freed up huge amounts of time that would be normally spent manually managing eBay listings one by one.
• It also has had a very positive impact by using the inventory management which again frees up huge amounts of time since I don't have to go through and manually manage all of our listings. We also do not oversell items anymore which is a giant plus.
• inkFrog's template customization has also really really helped by making our listings much more aesthetically pleasing and more professional looking which builds a lot of trust with our eBay customers.

Incentivized

• Shopify Plus has been a very cost effective solution for us.
• As our business grows, it's easy to train new hires on how to use Shopify Plus.
• What we've lost in the missing features of Shopify we've made up for in the other areas.

Incentivized