React vs. Shopify

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
React
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React enables users to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in an application, and React will update and render just the right components when data changes. React is available free and open source under the MIT license.N/A
Shopify
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.
$29
per month
Pricing
ReactShopify
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Shopify Lite
$9
per month
Basic Shopify
$29
per month
Shopify
$79
per month
Advanced Shopify
$299
per month
Shopify Plus
2,000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ReactShopify
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
ReactShopify
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
React
-
Ratings
Shopify
7.4
131 Ratings
4% below category average
Product catalog & listings00 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Product management00 Ratings7.2129 Ratings
Bulk product upload00 Ratings7.6110 Ratings
Branding00 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
Mobile storefront00 Ratings7.4126 Ratings
Product variations00 Ratings6.3123 Ratings
Website integration00 Ratings9.2124 Ratings
Visual customization00 Ratings7.5129 Ratings
CMS00 Ratings4.4105 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
React
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.1
125 Ratings
7% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery00 Ratings7.6116 Ratings
Checkout user experience00 Ratings8.5123 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
React
-
Ratings
Shopify
9.0
127 Ratings
8% above category average
eCommerce security00 Ratings9.0127 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
React
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.0
129 Ratings
7% above category average
Promotions & discounts00 Ratings7.2124 Ratings
Personalized recommendations00 Ratings8.432 Ratings
SEO00 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
React
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.0
130 Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-site management00 Ratings6.719 Ratings
Order processing00 Ratings9.1128 Ratings
Inventory management00 Ratings8.8127 Ratings
Shipping00 Ratings8.2120 Ratings
Custom functionality00 Ratings7.2120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ReactShopify
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ReactShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(13 ratings)
9.0
(144 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(15 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ReactShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
React is a JavaScript user interface construction library that works well for:
  • Developing web apps with dynamic and complicated user interfaces.
  • creating reusable UI elements that may be used in other applications.
  • creating single-page applications with dynamic content updates that don't require a page reload.
  • The Virtual DOM's effective updating mechanism allows it to handle large volumes of data updates.
React, on the other hand, might be less suitable for:
  • Websites that are simple, stagnant, and have no interaction. Other libraries or simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript may be a better fit in such circumstances.
  • Web sockets may be a better choice for applications that need real-time updates, such as chat or gaming apps.
  • When creating mobile apps, React Native is a better option.
  • Server side rendering only, as React is designed to run on the client side.
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Shopify
Shopify is a great platform for small to medium-sized businesses looking to set up an online store. It's easy to use, offers a wide range of features and integrations, and is perfect for businesses in the retail and food industry. However, large enterprise businesses with complex and custom needs may find Shopify less suitable.
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Pros
Open Source
  • React is fantastic for building performant user interfaces. Our web app is snappy and great for our customers.
  • React has the philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well which is the view layer of the application. This makes it incredibly intuitive and flexible for developers to use.
  • React has lead the way in being able to write modular and structured code. It is a drastic improvement since the days of spaghetti jQuery code.
  • React has an unmatched community. The amount of tools and libraries available is fantastic, and there plenty of solutions available online for common problems.
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Shopify
  • It is definitely easy to set up and get going. This does not take a lot of work or effort on the user end, especially if using templates.
  • Low code platform. You can. make customizations without code.
  • The integrations are diverse and increase functionality.
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Cons
Open Source
  • Debugging React is challenging. Bugs in react code generate stack traces internal to React and it is often totally unclear how it relates to the code you actually wrote.
  • Relating your React elements to corresponding DOM elements is difficult. The intentional separation of virtual and actual DOM also makes it difficult to map the elements to the structures in the DOM. This is partially ameliorated by the use of the React dev tool, which provides a DOM-like view of the React elements, but the tool still does not provide a direct correspondence with the DOM that is often necessary to figure out why something isn't right.
  • Because JSX is React-specific and not a language feature, a special compilation process is necessary to convert JSX code to normal JS. Coming from a C++ background, compiling things doesn't bother me, but many JS developers are used to a less structured development.
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Shopify
  • The main drawback that I am facing in Shopify for a long time is that their sales analytics system is not up to mark. As I am using Shopify to run different stores for my organization it does not get updated after-sales and does not provide the right analytics about the product strength and number of sales.
  • Secondly, Shopify has different apps which are best to run the store on max strength but they are very much costly like inventory management, generating multiple discount codes, and more robust customizable editing.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Shopify
Nothing we have used in the past or have seen thus far even comes close to offering what we get with Shopify Plus, especially for the price. You cannot even come close to getting what we are getting at the price we pay. We are beyond thrilled and Shopify Plus meets and exceeds all of our needs and expectations. We love it!
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Usability
Open Source
React is just a bit of a different animal. I was avoiding it for the longest time. I thought for sure I would land on Vue or something else with a more approachable and familiar appearance. But after taking an online course in React, I started realize what people were raving about (and complaining about) and decided to implement it at our office for one of our products.
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Shopify
I think most people are able to suer Shopify that have used a computer. There are some features that take a bit longer to learn. If you are not a creative person it may be a bit more difficult to learn the website customization, but with a help guide or tutorial it will only take a few tries to understand how to work the interface
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Support Rating
Open Source
Since it's open-source and very popular, the community support for React and related tools and libraries is excellent. There are a lot of people using the same tools, and so issues tend to get fixed quickly and "recipes" are easy to come by. And since it's backed by Facebook, they have a dedicated engineering team working on the progression of React.
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Shopify
In terms of support I give Shopify a 9 out of 10 because they're always very friendly and thorough, and they personally can't solve my problem for me they always point me in the proper direction with the proper information I need to move forward
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Shopify
Just start now and make the switch, the sooner the better. You will love it and it is really a simple process
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source
While this is a widely contested debate with various blog posts and benchmarks all over the place, its really a personal choice to determine what works for the team. Coming from a Angular 1.x background, I decided to try a new framework when Angular 2.x was announced and at that time React is gaining popularity and Vue hasn't taken off yet. Compared to Angular 1.x and Vue (hybrid of React and Angular) that split the logic from the html templates, I loved the way React breaks code into components using the jsx syntax. In my mind, this allows for cleaner components and easier maintenance
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Shopify
The old platform that I used could not help us to meet our requirements. It was not helping us properly, then I got to know about Shopify and started using it. After 1 month [of] usage of Shopify we could understand that this is the best platform [for E-commerce] to make better sales and goodwill. Shopify helped us to get a proper idea of the analytics of the website. Shopify [supports] most of the [applications] and helps us to make better results.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • Our web applications now run much faster because the whole page doesn't reload
  • We spend less time developing UI components because a lot of them are readily available on NPM
  • We don't have to optimize apps for multiple browsers since React natively supports it.
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Shopify
  • It got the store up quickly so the client could start selling. She was previously selling products on Etsy and Facebook and wanted to consolidate everything onto one website, so the main thing Shopify solved was to reduce the store owner's time in managing all her products on multiple sites. Also, we had previously built a website on Wix with all the custom functionality and branding she needed - a truly great, high-end website - but it performed so slowly that it was unusable. So the speed at which Shopify can be set up and then works on the page is appreciable.
  • The website was manageable by the client - she could figure the system out herself after a while so she saved money on costs for hiring developers. She did have to hire developers to customize some of the plug-ins but costs are all relative; it wasn't a high investment compared to building a full e-commerce website. With the complexity and size of her product base and the functionality and branding she wanted to have in a website, and the potential of her business, she would have needed to invest well over $10,000 to get to where she really needs to be. In the end she kept the budget under $5000.00.
  • Costs kept climbing with plug-ins having to be added with everything. My client became more involved in building the website and began to try multiple plugins, and she did not have the skill base to evaluate the plugins functionalities so she chose plugins that did not do everything she needed, and then ended up paying the plugin developers to customize the plugins. So on one hand, it's pretty amazing to be able to bring up an e-commerce website as quickly as a week or so, but on the other hand if you need anything customized or deeper functionality in regards to product searching and filtering on the web page, and management on the backend, it quickly goes beyond the skills of the average person to manage, and above their expected budget as well. In the end my client really did not get anything close to the functionality for the website we had originally envisioned.
  • Shopify was the easiest way we could find to bring the client's products to a global market. We evaluated several other platforms and the functionality simple did not seem to be adequate, so Shopify seemed like the only solution that could do enough of what we needed and still stay within this client's budget. Really the problem in this project was not platform per se but that the budget wasn't large enough. Shopify managed to provide a solution for an ecommerce store with thousands of products on a tiny budget, so in the sense of pure functionality it provided the best value of all the platforms we evaluated. The solution still isn't big enough for this client's business though so, without having insights into this client's post-build sales results, my guess is that because her new website did not make her products easier to sort through, and she likely didn't have much more budget left to invest in SEO and other marketing of the website, her sales probably didn't increase substantially as a result of having built the website. So I think this project all in all did not likely have a high ROI.
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ScreenShots