ShipStation vs. Shopify

I do - and have - recommended them to other businesses. If they had taken care of the USPS pickup option and started supporting Rollo printers again I would have given them a 10. But a year with no resolution is unacceptable. Everything else about them is excellent. When I do have issues I'm usually able to contact someone via live chat and get it resolved. They are glitchy on occasion, but what piece of modern technology isn't.

Incentivized

Shopify allowed us to handle matrix items and combined listings. Both of which we could not do on our previous platform. There was some customization involved but overall, it did what we needed it to. The one downside was that if we want to change anything we would have to reload the entire set of matrix items manually.

Incentivized

• Integration: It works so well I forget that it is a 3rd party solution sometimes.
• Automation: You can set nested rules based on order details, really cutting down on the little things that slow down your fulfillment process.
• Management: We almost never log into the admin side of BigCommerce thanks to ShipStation. ShipStation handles all of our day-to-day needs.

Incentivized

• It's base security and integration with trusted security partners (such as NoFraud) is a game-changer when it comes to reliability and a "hands off approach" for our IT department. The up-time is also very good.
• It offers a wide range of verified plugins that are (for the most part) easy to install and use for any specific scenario you're looking for.
• It's Analytics area in the admin is actually nice and offers a wide variety of reports that you can run.

Incentivized

• For years users have requested UPS End of Day Report for Driver to Scan. Shipstation Refuses to offer this and it means that Claims with the carrier are next to impossible to process as there is no PROOF the carrier received your package.
• Customer Service is Seriously Lacking within the last 6-12 months. Repeated outages, problems, and their front-tier support has no insight as to how long the system will be down. Poor Response times for even the most basic of issues such as error logs so our cart can troubleshoot from their end.
• The Status Page is inaccurate. 5 of the last 6 times when we had major issues their status page shows as 100%. Not a reliable gauge of up-time.

• I would love it if Shopify built an in house app which helped us post UGCs and social proof from platforms such as Instagram, Youtube etc. more seamlessly on our website. Right now, we are able to do it through third party apps but the look and feel is just okay.

Incentivized

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!

Incentivized

Its a very quick platform and being web based it does not require install for say viewing order's shipping status. For the shipping itself, there is a app that grabs data in near real time. Its an easy install and I have had next to no issues with the shipping aspect of the app.

Incentivized

It is fairly easy to use Shopify regardless of what task you are attempting to perform. Most things are customizable to a degree without requiring coding ability. I have very limited coding experience and have still been able to navigate my way around changing features of the website that require edits to the code with the use of AI and trial-and-error. This previously wasn't possible with the WooCommerce platform.

Incentivized

Shopify support is always available when you need them.

Incentivized

Shopify website speed is quite impressive. Even if we integrate couple apps, it does not hamper the site speed.

Incentivized

I have quarterly calls with my account rep to discuss metrics and performance to ensure we are remaining consistent without fulfillment and transit times. He is super friendly and knowledgable. Whenever I have questions, if he can't answer them himself, he gets me in contact with the appropriate person almost immediately.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Shopify offered us several trainings to setup a Shopify store, how to build a brand, SEO, product photography etc. All this content have been super helpful in our journey.

Incentivized

Just start now and make the switch, the sooner the better. You will love it and it is really a simple process

Incentivized

ShipStation is mainly used for automating and streamlining our shipping process. It doesn't track inventory or deal with fulfillment. ShipBob, on the other hand, is a fulfillment and shipping provider. (in addition to automation) Because our e-commerce business is still small and we're operating from our brick-n-mortar store, we don't have a need for ShipBob at the moment.

Incentivized

Big Commerce and SAP Hybris are two other platforms we've investigated and Shopify is by far easiest to use and customize. While it doesn't do everything out of the box, the apps do fill in many gaps. The cost however, is probably the biggest selling point against these other two options.

Incentivized

Shopify has basic to high-end plans. The plans grow with the brand`s growth and I love that about Shopify.

Incentivized

• It saves a lot of time being able to import the customer data.
• It saves us money by finding us the best rate (e.g. when we offer free shipping on orders).
• It can save data such as your most common box sizes.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized