Shopify vs. Teachable

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

Gets the job done and is easy to use. We've definitely made serious revenue with it, and it's worked well enough with our other systems to enable some handy automations. I'd say if you've got a course or courses you're looking to launch and they are fairly straightforward with up-front payments, Teachable can definitely get the job done. However, if you're running more of a membership model for access to your courses, Teachable by itself may not be the ideal solution, or you may want to use a different platform for the payments and just use Teachable for the actual courses.

• 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

• Hosting video-based training
• Receiving and passing on payments and handling the slaes tax
• Allowing me to work with affiliates

Incentivized

• 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

• They FALSELY ADVERTISE their services.
• They kicked us off their "unlimited" plan b/c we were using serving too many downloads?
• They were terribly rude, cursing at us, threatening us, deleting our forum questions.
• They have no unlimited plan and need to be sued in a court of law for their misleadings.

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

Because we haven't had any major issues with it. The platform is really simple to use and the content can be uploaded and modified very easily. It has a drag and drop feature that makes everything fast and easy. Their support has always answered our questions or concerns and the cost is affodable. We will keep using it in the future.

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

Because it's easier to use both as administrators and both as user. We have never heard of any users having issues login in or going through the lectures or completing the course

Incentivized

Shopify support is always available when you need them.

Incentivized

We haven't had any issues, it's always available. Even when they schedule a maintanance on their end, students still can access the courses

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Never had any issues with pages or videos not loading

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

Their support is good overal. There are a couple of things that I would change, like answering faster. Sometimes they take a day to answer a concern and that's kind of annoying considering sometimes there are urgent issues we have to deal with. But the support has been good, they have answered properly.

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

I'd say: learn the system first, try it out and then publish the content with customers. There are a couple of features that will cause issues with customers (especially lazy ones) but I'd say it's easy to implement and modify if needed. People don't need to train much to use Teachable, but they should take their time to know it.

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

It's honestly just worked really well for us in terms of serving the actual course content. Plus, our customers can maintain one profile and use that to access all of the courses and bonuses that they've acquired from us. And the cost of Teachable has been very reasonable in terms of our budget.

We wouldn't change anything. Everything seemed fine when we purchased

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

We haven't had any issues with it. Their maintanance hours are always at times when we don't have students there, and even then, they still can access the platform

Incentivized

All the implementation process was fast and easy.

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

• This is the basis of my business.

Incentivized