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Shopify

Shopify

Overview

What is Shopify?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Shopify is a versatile platform that fulfills various use cases for businesses of all sizes. Users have found success using Shopify as …
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Shopify Makes Selling, Easy

7 out of 10
November 11, 2022
We use Shopify for the sale of one of our product offerings. We needed a platform for people to easily purchase our product from instead …
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King of E-Commerce

10 out of 10
December 02, 2021
I'm using Shopify in my organization for my online E- Commerce platform. Shopify helps us to showcase our products properly in a very good …
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Shopify, or not?

8 out of 10
June 22, 2021
Incentivized
We use Shopify as our eCommerce tool across the whole organization. We're a small company, so we needed something we could set up and …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 20 features
  • Product catalog & listings (131)
    8.6
    86%
  • Branding (130)
    8.4
    84%
  • Visual customization (129)
    7.5
    75%
  • Product management (129)
    7.2
    72%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
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Pricing

View all pricing

Shopify Lite

$9

Cloud
per month

Basic Shopify

$29

Cloud
per month

Shopify

$79

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.shopify.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $29 per month
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Product Demos

1-Minute Demo of How Packwerk Works | Shopify Engineering

YouTube

Basel Shopify - Use One Click Import Demo Tool

YouTube

Shopify Online Store 2.0 Demo: Dawn, the new Theme Editor, and Metafields...

YouTube

Instant Search + for Shopify Demo

YouTube

Australia Post Shipping Labels for Shopify - App Demo

YouTube

Hydrogen Coding Demo with Tobi Lütke | Shopify Unite 2021

YouTube
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Features

Online Storefront

Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.

7.4
Avg 7.7

Online Shopping Cart

Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.

8.1
Avg 7.6

Online Payment System

Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.

9.1
Avg 8.3

eCommerce Marketing

Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites

8.1
Avg 7.5

eCommerce Business Management

Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations

8
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a commerce platform that allows anyone to easily sell online, at a retail location, and everywhere in between. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales. Shopify is used by over 90,000 retailers in 100 different countries.

As a SaaS, Shopify's stability and always-on availability are touted. The eCommerce site presents the customary inventory and presentation controls typical of eCommerce solutions. Items are organized into collections, or using smart collections customize groupings to fit the merchandise (e.g. less than $20 items, gift ideas, bundles, etc.). Content management features (e.g. a blog) are present for tailoring the look and interactivity of the site.

For selling online, the $14 Starter pack includes a basic eCommerce site with 1GB of storage, chat & email support, and support for 25 listings. The $29 Basic pack includes POS and unlimited products, as well as fraud analysis tools. The $79 Professional Pack bumps storage space from 1GB to 5GB and adds gift cards, professional reports, and abandoned cart recovery. Finally, Unlimited, at $179 per month, makes space unlimited, and provides advanced reporting and real-time carrier shipping.

Shopify Features

Online Storefront Features

  • Supported: Product catalog & listings
  • Supported: Product management
  • Supported: Bulk product upload
  • Supported: Branding
  • Supported: Search & filter
  • Supported: Mobile storefront
  • Supported: Product variations
  • Supported: Subscriptions & downloads
  • Supported: Website integration
  • Supported: Visual customization
  • Supported: CMS

Online Shopping Cart Features

  • Supported: Abandoned cart recovery
  • Supported: Tax calculator
  • Supported: Shipping calculator
  • Supported: Integration with Amazon
  • Supported: Integration with eBay
  • Supported: Checkout user experience

Online Payment System Features

  • Supported: PayPal integration
  • Supported: Returns & refunds
  • Supported: Single-click checkout
  • Supported: eCommerce security

eCommerce Marketing Features

  • Supported: Promotions & discounts
  • Supported: SEO
  • Supported: Product reviews
  • Supported: Social commerce integration
  • Supported: Customer registration

eCommerce Business Management Features

  • Supported: Order processing
  • Supported: Inventory management
  • Supported: Shipping
  • Supported: Custom functionality

Shopify Videos

Subscribe to Shopify
Shopify is a powerful tool for ecommerce, but users will have to know how to setup products and collections to get the most out of it. We go through the process step by step.

Shopify Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Shopify starts at $29.

PrestaShop, Volusion, and Miva are common alternatives for Shopify.

Reviewers rate Website integration and Order processing highest, with a score of 9.2.

The most common users of Shopify are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

View all alternatives
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Reviews and Ratings

(592)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Shopify is a versatile platform that fulfills various use cases for businesses of all sizes. Users have found success using Shopify as their primary webpage to showcase and sell unique products, catering to different brands and the general public. The platform's easy-to-use features and integration with third-party apps make it the go-to choice for most small business e-commerce requirements. Shopify has proven particularly useful for selling apparel, books, and various other products, with its seamless printing and package preparation capabilities. Additionally, organizations benefit from Shopify's efficient inventory management, integration with the US Postal Service, and discounts on order fulfillment. Notably, Shopify stands out among other e-commerce platforms due to its beginner-friendly user experience, ease of use, and integration with popular platforms like ShipStation and MailChimp. It is also highly regarded for its SEO capabilities, low cost as a hosted solution, and integrated shopping cart functionality. Overall, Shopify serves as a powerful tool for managing sales, stock, shipments, and online presence - making it the backbone of many small businesses' operations.

Based on user reviews, there are three common recommendations for Shopify. Firstly, users highly recommend Shopify for its quick and easy setup process. Customers mention that they were able to get their eCommerce stores up and running in no time, thanks to Shopify's user-friendly interface and intuitive features. Secondly, users often describe Shopify as the best plug-and-play solution for eCommerce stores. They appreciate the seamless integration of various tools and extensions, allowing them to easily customize their online stores and enhance the overall shopping experience for their customers. Lastly, reviewers also highlight the reliability of Shopify as a platform for managing their eCommerce businesses. They praise its robust infrastructure, reliable hosting, and responsive customer support team, which provides assistance whenever needed.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 144)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is a super user-friendly customizable option to create a storefront as in our case to sell a limited quantity of items. We use this only occasionally across the entire organization as we are working to figure out a storefront as we go. However, our experience has been extremely positive and we believe this solves a lot of the issues we were looking for!
  • Shopify has a super user-friendly interface! It doesn't require any knowledge of coding or back-end writing. Love that anyone in our organization can use it without that special knowledge.
  • You can manually input products to sell easily, or you can import them which is great if you have a lengthy offering!
  • We love how professional the final quality of items look once they are posted. It is an intuitive app that helps adjust photography, cropping, and alignment for a cohesive and professional appearance.
  • You can't create sub-categories for your products which is a bummer if you have several items under one category of you product. This also makes it a bit more difficult for people to find what they are searching for if you have several items but can't sub categorize.
  • The URL isn't completely customizable which is an issue if you aren't embedding the app in your website or it bothers you that your brand may not look completely cohesive if re-directing to the shopify site.
  • You have to pay for the highest level of the app to get access to advance reporting. This isn't an issue if you are dealing with a relatively simple storefront and basic reporting.
Shopify has a lot of great features to suit beginners and professionals alike! It is a great fit for almost everyone. Perhaps the "variant" limit of 3 per item might be an issue if you are trying to sell several more colors or variations of one product. Overall, This is a great product for almost all users!
June 07, 2021

Sell online easily.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is being used as an e-commerce platform for our team to be able to sell different products online. It helps us to host and create an e-commerce platform for ourselves across several different websites.
  • Shopify has a great support team and a great platform.
  • The interface makes the site easy to customize and make changes.
  • Allows you to not have to pay a developer to makes changes, etc.
  • They could have better templates that are provided up front.
  • Some customization requires coding to change.
  • If you are coding, there is the need to learn Shopify's language.
This is a great product with an excellent team and so I would definitely recommend. If you are selling online, you should use Shopify without a doubt.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Shopify as our main e-commerce platform. It is used across the whole organization by the sales team, the marketing team, the operations team, and also the management team to check on reports and overall business data. As a small business, Shopify truly offers to us an end-to-end solution for our digital channel. We don't use anything else since all we need to do (in order to attract customers > receive orders > send orders to production > invoice > receive payment > ship the product to the customer > manage post-sales processes) can be done within the platform and its app marketplace.
  • Easy to implement.
  • The app marketplace.
  • The whole end-to-end solution.
  • lack of good payment gateways for Latin America.
  • no recurrent payments option in the core functionality
  • POS doesn't work in Latin America.
Shopify is an absolute time-saver. In my case, we are a small and new shop that wanted to start selling online, and it worked perfectly. But the more I learn about the platform, the more I see it actually works for any type of company. Even for big corporations, Shopify has a tier system that unlocks more of the system's capacity when you need to scale up.
Besides time, Shopify is a very cost-effective tool since they take care of all the technology and security. You just need to learn how to sell your products online.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Everything about this tool is absolutely awesome. It has helped our team tremendously to create an eCommerce store and build out a page with a variety of different products that we can offer. The integrations are super easy and it does not require a lot of coding.
  • Shopify is easy to set up and does not require a lot of work upfront.
  • The templated themes are awesome and look very clean and professional.
  • The support team is super helpful and can assist in almost any effort.
  • Shopify could be a little less code intensive for customizations.
  • The pricing is a bit high just compared to other platforms out there, but it definitely is better.
  • More solutions for non-eCommerce sites since they are wonderful to deal with.
I would definitely recommend using Shopify for any eCommerce website. I have not come across a better solution than this.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is the best cloud-based, multichannel eCommerce platform by far. Their product is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses like ours as for more advanced organizations you can create your custom made eCommerce [platform].
It is used mainly by our marketing department but the product team also uses it to make sure they take full advantage of Shopify's integrations to boost sales and help on the upselling of our most-sold products.
  • Integration with Facebook and other social platforms is fantastic.
  • Constant product improvements.
  • Great support team to help with product knowledge.
  • Cost of the custom templates is very high at $180 USD.
  • Affiliate platform integration is quite complicated.
  • Analytics system and forecasting need to be improved to calculate my expected monthly sales.
Shopify is very well suited for small and medium-sized businesses that sell on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. It is very easy to integrate into those scenarios and helps you to be able to sell products in an easy way without worrying over development costs.
For big companies that need a stronger, more customizable, and more robust e-commerce solution I would go with Magento or another alternative that can be totally customizable.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used by small business client doing online retail. Used by owner and possibly employee. Shopping is being used to bring the client's products to a worldwide market. The platform was selected because it specializes in online retail sites, and purportedly can handle large amounts of products. Detailed filtering and searching of products on the website page by the customers was a very important feature.
  • Built for online retail. Products are quick to load in if you have a spreadsheet and not too many products.
  • Quick setup of a website.
  • Low cost to try out, at least at first.
  • Shopify uses a plug in for every little function you want to add. It doesn't do even some very basic things you would expect out of the box. Almost everything needs a plugin.
  • Plugins can be costly and of inconsistent quality. The price seems low when you start building but then adds up quickly when you really start to try to bring a fully functional website to completion.
  • It is not easy to customize plug-ins to your needs and it takes a long time to review all the plugin options to figure out which one might actually serve your needs adequately.
  • Shopify was not very friendly for managing lots of products. If you get up over 400-500 it doesn't support them very well, at least not without hiring programmers and putting a lot more money into it.
Shopify is good for small stores with small budgets where you don't care much about customized branding. You can do much more with it, as evidenced by the large e-commerce websites out there that are built on Shopify, but costs will climb quickly for customizations so you need to be ready to make a true business investment. On the other hand, if you are able and willing to learn their programming language you can perhaps do some customizations yourself cheaper. That gets quite involved though.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is used by the company I work for to implement e-commerce features on our website. It assure site hosting as well which is very useful, getting all the facilities integrated in one place. The platform and its features are user friendly, you just require a plug-in readily available to add products on the e-shop, and it can be easily used by non-IT users.
  • Designs are excellent and mobile-friendly
  • Flexible core system and templates
  • 24/7 customer support
  • URL structure is not ideal for SEO
  • Multi language is not a standard feature
  • Processing fees are high
Shopify is the platform that assures its users to set up an online store without any experience in coding. Every step of the process, from themes to store launch is very simple. The integrated apps of Shopify allow managing the day-to-day store activities. Additionally, teamwork is allowed by tasks sharing.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is the number one go-to application when it comes to creating an online e-commerce store. There are a number of benefits and flexibility in setting up things and working on them. Code is quite simple and preset functions are there to take care of things that are complicated to set up for users.
  • Ease of setup.
  • Vast community of developers.
  • Great customer service.
  • Costly extensions and plugins.
  • Need third party apps to avail features.
  • Not focused on the back-end systems.
The API is quite advanced which also makes advanced scenarios. Super easy to set up and get it running. You don’t necessarily need to be a developer to set up your online store. There are graphs for analysis and reports for the sales made which make work easy. Take the best advantage of the trial.
Mitchell Terpstra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is an e-commerce platform we routinely recommend to some of our small to mid-sized food + beverage brand clients for integrating with their own websites to set up online sales for the first time.
  • Easy setup for the un-tech-savvy.
  • Allows for contact info capture to build customer lists for later communications.
  • Allows for easy setup of promo code discounts.
  • Shopify charges a transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments
  • Additional features mean additional costs.
  • Other e-commerce options may provide greater inventory management features.
Shopify is especially well-suited to the first-timer getting started with an e-commerce store. Setup & integration with your own website is easy even for the internet un-savvy.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The need to have an affordable online e-commerce solution became even more of an issue since many businesses could not carry out their regular brick-and-mortar operations during the past 15 months. As a company that provides web services to small and medium businesses, Shopify presented a fairly straightforward solution for us to offer websites that could be launched very quickly and be easily maintained by either the customers themselves or our technical staff. The Shopify Partners program is a great option that allowed us to facilitate setup and management of Shopify accounts on behalf of customers who could not mange it themselves.
  • The Shopify platform has built-in templates which are offered either for free or for a price so that the look of a site can be customized. Even after choosing a template, the platform allows for a great deal of customization in terms of colors and the order of certain features on the page.
  • Even though Shopify is a subscription service, it has some very flexible options for stopping the service for specific lengths of time with varying permissions. For example, if a small business owner needs to step away from the business and not have the store "open', they can do so for up to 3 months at no cost as long as certain conditions have been met. These options are worth checking out especially for seasonal businesses.
  • The availability of the Shopify Partners program is also a great help for customers who might not have the knowledge or time to build the site themselves. For businesses that offer developer services, it is also a good way to help potential customers.
  • Shopify is affordable if you just need the basics for your store. However, once you start to customize it or try to add more features you can quickly find yourself paying additional monthly charges. While this good for the developers who invest time and effort to build apps for Shopify, it can leave businesses spending more than they intended or going without certain features.
  • While Shopify offers backup and restore options for sites if you need to leave the platform completely and return later, leaving the platform to move your data to another platform isn't very easy. This means that businesses need to think carefully about what they will need in the long term before committing their resources to Shopify.
  • On the ability to customize, Shopify has made great improvements in the selection of available themes and apps but the selection is nowhere near as diverse as other popular e-commerce platforms. So again as a business person, you need to carefully consider what your e-commerce roadmap looks like in terms of features and functionality. Shopify may be ideal to get most businesses started, but may not scale well as the business grows.
Shopify is best suited to small businesses that have a fairly simple product offering and a straightforward order process and are not too particular about every little detail of the site design. The platform to work for businesses whether they offer delivery services or pick-up services. If the off-line model of the business has a fairly complicated order process system, is highly technical, or requires lots of option-setting or even conditional logic during the order process, then Shopify may not be the best platform. If the business has advanced custom designs in mind for the site then Shopify may not be the best fit.
Luke Hall | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I offer Shopify to my website design clients if they need an eCommerce website designed. It's a great platform for eCommerce, not so much in terms of development but for the user that's going to be adding products to the website.
  • Easy to add products.
  • Quick setup.
  • Amazing interface.
  • Difficult to develop.
  • Limited features and quite restricted.
  • Apps are in place to make Shopify more money.
Shopify is well-suited for someone looking to sell products online and would like the basic features of an eCommerce store.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is our central platform for selling D2C goods. It’s used by our digital marketing team. It enables us to manage our commerce catalog, customer base, front end website design and allows us to make WYSIWYG changes on the fly with zero back end developer support. It makes our User design to implantation process relatively seamless.
  • Support help
  • Easy to use interface
  • Shipping operations
  • On boarding support
  • Ease to implementation
  • Order management
[Shopify is] best suited for companies that do not use a separate product information management system. I recommend for smaller business units and/ or smaller businesses. For companies that need to be nimble and move swiftly, Shopify is one of the easiest to use platforms on the market. They also offer easy to implement templates.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is being used by our organization so that we can sell online. It makes our life much easier by not having to create a full e-commerce site from scratch.
  • Shopify makes it super easy to be able to list products.
  • Saved us time on developing site.
  • Monthly fee is much cheaper than building a full on website.
  • Could be better with some more options for customization.
  • Not have their own language.
  • Make it lower code for more customization.
Shopify is great for any business selling online. I would definitely recommend it for just about any business if they are selling any sort of physical or digital product.
Alan Bloxham | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Many of our clients use Shopify as an avenue for their retail space, and we have familiarized ourselves with the software and especially how to integrate it with the Amazon and Walmart side of 3P selling.
  • Shopify has a great platform for integrating with Amazon and Shopify.
  • Shopify is an easy way to pass over the listings from there to Walmart.
  • Their integration tool with Walmart has some issues that need resolving.
  • The ability to have multi-pack fulfillment via Amazon for Shopify orders is way too complicated.
As far as integration with Amazon and Walmart 3P, this is the best ecommerce platform we have worked with. It integrates very easily and has so much support that any issue that comes up can be easily resolved!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a co-founder at my company and we use Shopify basic as a resource to have a website and to allow for the purchase of drop shipped product from Printful. As a small business, Shopify has helped us reach a larger audience for our product and service offerings. Thank you!
  • Seamless UI
  • Auto dropship
  • Template website design
  • Cancelled orders
  • Fee breakdown across
Shopify basic is perfect for small businesses looking to create a new website without the need for a professional designer. Additionally, there are many third-party offerings that you can hook up with your Shopify basic backend to help facilitate sales further. We use Printful Connections and Facebook integration.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is our ecommerce solution for selling our products. We center our entire company around Shopify for our frond end web presence to fulfillment to inventory management. We also use it for interfacing with advertising mediums such as social media and email marketing. We would not have a business without it.
  • Shopify is excellent with easy of setup for basic sites
  • It interfaces with virtually every other tool
  • They offer some really great startup capabilities like purchasing a URL, setting up email etc.
  • The customizations to the front end of the cart are somewhat limiting. I found myself wishing for more flexibility.
  • Their support is pretty good but it would be nice to have the options to call someone at startup on the lesser plans.
  • I dont like that they charge you a fee for every transaction. I have used other carts that do not charge a transaction fee.
Shopify is fantastic for the very small business who is getting started with ecommerce. They have great tools for getting a site off the ground and a product available for sale. They have a lot of great tools for those who are starting from scratch and someone with very little knowledge can get up and running in a day. For large companies it would require a lot more manual customization to fit. Also their per transaction fee can be prohibitive for some scenarios.
Ashia Ackov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am an Independent Contractor and was asked to build an E-Commerce Webpage for a Client using Shopify. I am currently adding elements and adjusting the theme to fit our needs. It is not a hard program to jump into and get started, it just lacks things we are specifically looking for from a design perspective. But for building a store, it has everything you need.
  • The store layout is clear when it comes to uploading your products.
  • Inventory options, Shipping, Variant, and more are easily adjusted
  • Pricing has a feature that let's you adjust your price to see what your profit will be based on what you spent on the product. This is very handy, you can see your cost-per-item, the margin, and profit.
  • Themes are lacking.
  • Even when uploading your own themes, it is hard to adjust the background to fit instead of fill.
  • The Font! Needs a ton more options than the few available.
Some may find Shopify useful when starting a retail business online because as I mentioned before, it is very easy to upload products and adjust the price, shipping, quantity, keep track of sales, and even editing your website SEO...yes, there are a lot of pluses for creating a simple online store. But I think if you want to "Design" the store with your own themes or font, this may not be a good choice unless you have a background in web design and decide to upload your own ZIP, then this is perfect. So, my conclusion is that it isn't beginner-friendly in the design department.
Micah Jewell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Shopify for our online store for all our products. It solved the problem of having an e-commerce presence. It allowed us to have both physical in stock items as well as drop shipping items. It was also very easy to use for my 13yo son and business partner.
  • Simple to use
  • Great app add ons
  • Great podcast to learn from others
  • Being able to integrate with Square as a merchant
  • Integrate with Oberlo as a feature, not a separate app
It is easy to use for someone with no coding or design experience. It’s simple to set up a store and add products. When adding the Oberlo app, it’s makes using and shipping from AliExpress extremely easy.
Joseph Rounds | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have serval clients on the platform. I help them to integrated it into there existing platforms. It is a great tool with many advance features. The api is very open and allows you to easy integrate.
  • Open api
  • Third party tools
  • Easy to use
  • Pricey
  • You are locked into there platform
Shopify is great for small to medium size company’s. It allows a company to easily get up and running.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
When a web-design client wants to sell something online I find Shopify to be the most cost-effective, fastest, and easiest way to get their store up and running. Even though most of my small business clientele already have a "website" I find myself recommending Spotify in addition to whatever online presence they may already have.
  • Quick setup
  • Cost effective
  • Clean design
  • Beginner friendly
  • No email hosting
  • Add-ons can be expensive
  • Valuable features come at additional cost
You can't really go wrong picking Shopify if you want to sell a few items online. It offers so many ways to sell and makes it very easy to do so. Any small business with a few items for sale will love the tools Shopify offers and the low cost/speed to selling online. However, if you have hundreds of SKUs, complicated customizations and shipping requirements, etc. you may need a more robust tool.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Shopify is being used as an eCommerce platform for some of our websites in order to sell some items digitally on our website. Not all of our organization uses this, but we do use it for those businesses that are selling products online. It helps sell products easily online.
  • The platform is very easy to set up.
  • Very intuitive software.
  • Customer support is very helpful.
  • Customization can be difficult if it is more in depth, as you may need to code.
  • The price is a little steep compared to other platforms.
  • You have to learn the Shopify liquid language.
I would definitely recommend Shopify, as it is one of the top ecommerce platforms online and there is a reason why so many people use it. The only reason I wouldn't recommend it is if the price is an issue.
John Crumpton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
One of our clients, a city farm in East London, uses Shopify to sell hand-made gifts, seasonal plants and farm produce. This is the online version of their bricks-and-mortar shop at the Farm, which only opens on weekends. As a charity, the Farm has to watch its budgets carefully. It wasn't economically workable to have the physical shop open during the week with the footfall.
  • Easy to set up
  • Manage orders easily
  • Marketing tools
  • More customisation on the homepage (I'd like to see an option for all/filtered products, not just popular this week)
  • Had a sidebar filter for price, attributes etc
Anyone can start using Shopify and figure out how to add products and launch their store. It's very easy to use and the pricing is great compared with using WooCommerce and WordPress. They handle all the maintenance and security for you.

It's positioned more for micro businesses and small organisations or as a starting point. As you ramp up, I recommend Adobe Commerce (aka Magento)
May 21, 2021

Shopify for ROI

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Shopify to sell a variety of merchandise online. We sell everyday merch and special edition merch to brand enthusiasts in the bass fishing industry. We use Shopify to organize inventory catalogs and sell merchandise directly on Instagram. We use the Instagram Shopping and integration to track conversions and sales to measure ROI on our social media advertising spend. We also use Shopify's built-in Google Analytics tracking to measure website behaviors and sales performance.
  • Integrates well with Instagram Shopping API
  • Real-time reporting for website analytics and sales performance
  • Catalog grouping and reporting
  • Inventory customization and branded design
  • Conversion reporting from Facebook with the new iOS 14 updates could be improved
  • Experienced hassles with connecting the Facebook business page multiple times
  • Google Shopping integrations with tracking pixels have been glitchy at times
  • Extremely user-friendly, especially for beginners just breaking into e-commerce
  • Excellent real-time reporting and tracking features
  • Very customizable, especially with inventory grouping
  • Very organized dashboard with almost endless integrations
  • Reasonably priced for the basic features
  • Excellent customer service and support team
  • Clean interface with robust training and tutorials for ease of deployment
  • Brand safe user settings and permissions
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Shopify for our company B2B website. We added an app that allows us to have a "hidden side" you can sign on with wholesale pricing for our retailers only so consumers can see the products but can't buy directly on the site since we are 100% B2B. We also use the buy button store to hold virtual trunk shows for consumers allowing them to buy directly for that evening only.
  • Easy to add new products with multiple images quickly with a very professional outcome.
  • Easy to create a new collection twice a year when we come out with new products.
  • Easy to keep pricing hidden from consumers and from retailers until they are approved for an account.
  • I wish the graphics were a bit easier to work with so I could resize and crop images from within the program.
  • I wish I didn't have to add coding from a professional to make my headers work seamlessly on all platforms.
  • I wish it was a little more of a "drag and drop" platform for moving and duplicating images
Shopify is really great if you are looking for an online website that can sell inventory and fulfill orders. I don't use it to fulfill orders because all of our product is hand-made after the order has been placed. We don't stock products so the fulfillment features don't really apply to us. I use it to print an order and then enter the order into our own proprietary software program to run a production for the pieces that were sold.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I work for an early stage medical device startup and we have been working towards selling our products for some time. We have always planned to have an online marketplace and Shopify has helped us accomplish that goal much faster than we thought possible. It is used across our entire organization as the marketplace for all of our products.
  • Great for starting a business online or moving one to online
  • Great with helping in marketing campaigns
  • Intuitive dashboard with several easy to understand metrics about sales and transactions
  • Shopify has had everything we have needed to move our business online!
I would highly recommend Shopify to any small business or startup that wants to bring their business online. It is a great tool to get a marketplace up and running and has many built in tools to improve sales. It is agnostic to the type of business and is universally useful.
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