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.
TrustRadius Insights
Shopify Review
Shopify: The Effortless E-Commerce Solution for Small Businesses that can help in scaling.
Shopify Makes Selling, Easy
Awesome Front & Back End, Not So Great WIth Inventory
Shopify Satisfy
Shopify for Your E-Commerce!
King of E-Commerce
The best platform for E COmmerce
Best e-commerce software right out of the box - Start selling with Shopify
Shopify will make your day to day much easier!
Best E-commerce store creation platform
Shopify is the ecommerce solution
Shopify, or not?
Sell online with Shopify
Awards
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Popular Features
- Product catalog & listings (131)8.686%
- Branding (130)8.484%
- Visual customization (129)7.575%
- Product management (129)7.272%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Shopify Lite
$9
Basic Shopify
$29
Shopify
$79
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $29 per month
Product Demos
1-Minute Demo of How Packwerk Works | Shopify Engineering
Basel Shopify - Use One Click Import Demo Tool
Shopify Online Store 2.0 Demo: Dawn, the new Theme Editor, and Metafields...
Instant Search + for Shopify Demo
Australia Post Shipping Labels for Shopify - App Demo
Hydrogen Coding Demo with Tobi Lütke | Shopify Unite 2021
Features
Online Storefront
Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.
- 8.6Product catalog & listings(131) Ratings
Products are easy to browse; listings include descriptions, photos, 360-degree views, and/or videos.
- 7.2Product management(129) Ratings
Product catalog can be easily updated.
- 7.6Bulk product upload(110) Ratings
Admins can upload products in bulk using spreadsheets.
- 8.4Branding(130) Ratings
Storefront is part of a unified customer experience of the brand across channels (social media, physical store, website, etc.)
- 7.4Mobile storefront(126) Ratings
Customers can easily shop on mobile devices; storefront is responsive or mobile optimized.
- 6.3Product variations(123) Ratings
Products with variations or configurable options are easy to list and easy to browse.
- 9.2Website integration(124) Ratings
Integrates with an existing company website or blog.
- 7.5Visual customization(129) Ratings
Users can customize the look & feel of the storefront; storefront is visually attractive.
- 4.4CMS(105) Ratings
Beyond product catalog, includes basic content creation and management features such as blogging capabilities.
Online Shopping Cart
Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.
- 7.6Abandoned cart recovery(116) Ratings
Saves contents of abandoned carts and allows customers to purchase on a future visit; may send a reminder email to the customer and/or a report to the merchant to help convert abandoned carts into sales.
- 8.5Checkout user experience(123) Ratings
Easy for customers to view shopping cart and checkout; maintains a consistent, trusted look & feel.
Online Payment System
Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.
- 9eCommerce security(127) Ratings
Security measures are in place to prevent a breach of sensitive payment information.
eCommerce Marketing
Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites
- 7.2Promotions & discounts(124) Ratings
Includes tools for offering and redeeming coupons, promotional codes, and time-based discounts.
- 8.4Personalized recommendations(32) Ratings
Display or recommend certain products depending on the customer’s identity or shopping/browsing history.
- 8.5SEO(120) Ratings
The platform & templates help users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
eCommerce Business Management
Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations
- 6.7Multi-site management(19) Ratings
Administrators can manage multiple storefronts or websites under one umbrella.
- 9.1Order processing(128) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for order processing.
- 8.8Inventory management(127) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for managing inventory.
- 8.2Shipping(120) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for order fulfillment of physical products.
- 7.2Custom functionality(120) Ratings
Users are able to customize the functionality of their eCommerce operation with custom code or add-ons.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Shopify?
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
Shopify Integrations
Shopify Competitors
Shopify Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(592)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
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
(76-100 of 144)The Best E-commerce Platform-biz in a Box
- Shopify academy has by far been the best resource in starting a business and excelling at every step necessary to have a profitable business. Shopify Academy offers so many articles, videos, webinars and tools/suggestions that you can truly do everything on your own even if you have no prior experience. This was the single most important factor in deciding to use Shopify versus other online store platforms. They offer the best support and guides for doing everything.
- The Product management within Shopify is so clear and organized that it makes it really easy to add products to your store with photos, details, SEO search terms and various color options. There is a bulk editor that allows you to select more than one product at a time and update details all at once. Extremely time-consuming to have this bulk editor to change prices, change product names, etc.
- Even though the app store has awesome tools, it can slow your website down if you add too many. Be mindful of each tool you add and make sure it’s necessary so you do not ruin the user experience on your site. There’s no point in having a fancy app if the user gets impatient with load time and decides to leave.
- Shopify has an easy homepage editor that you can use to create your first homepage only. This can have a downside when designing all of your other pages If you do not have experience with HTM or CSS. If you don't, customizing your website will be difficult for you if you plan to design it on your own. Shopify does offer guides to help implement certain features to your pages and change the coding, but if you have no experience doing this is can’t be frustrating trying to design the website of your dreams.
Branded products, no overhead or inventory!
- Easy templates to provide straight forward, simple to use UI for customers.
- Works with integrated APPs to allow for 3rd party fulfillment.
- Inputting new products can be time consuming because all categories have to be built by hand.
- Price changes can be time consuming because you can only change by product, not by style.
Shopify Vs The Competition
- I've used many website management tools, and Shopify was the easiest to learn. I was able to pick up the coding language and make many customizations easily.
- Shopify has the broadest range of apps that can add specialized functionality to websites. The only downside is that most of them do cost a monthly fee. BigCommerce provides more features free than Shopify, but they have fewer apps.
- The main reason we had to switch from Shopify for a couple of our websites is because we use the accounting software Avatax. You must be on the most expensive plan of Shopify to be able to use this. BigCommerce and Magento both provide this with any of their plans.
- Some Shopify apps have a lot of room for improvement. You really must look at what the reviews are on the apps because some of them are not very good at providing support, or the apps are very glitchy.
Shopify allows you to go beyond the Brick and Mortar store.
- Easy to use and easy to navigate.
- Layout of customer's order and customer information is clear and easy to navigate as well.
- We would love to be able to have a clear sandbox version of our system that we are able to utilize within our training program.
- Searching for customers can be difficult if you don't have the exact order number or email address. If you try to look up a customer by their name, phone number or physical address it will pull up almost every customer other than the one you are looking for.
Shopify is perfect if you're just getting started!
- E-commerce.
- Mailchimp integration.
- Stripe integration.
A user-friendly way to set up your first e-commerce store.
- Very easy to use. No expertise in web development required.
- Looks great. Tons of built-in templates.
- Add-on applications can be confusing. It tacks on (what I think) are some unwanted add-ons for no beneficial reason.
Shopify Review
- Cloud-based.
- Scalability.
- Promotions.
- Marketing tools.
Easy to grow and expand.
Shopify is not made for business-facing, only consumers.
Shopify Works
- Shopify offers limitless themes, some are free and others are available at a decent cost.
- The platform is more cost-effective than a lot of other platforms on the market currently.
- Some of the apps available on the platform are lacking in quality.
- It would be nice if the free trial would be 30 days. It does take a little time to get everything into their system.
Nice basic platform at a nice price
Although those sites are large and robust, they don't always take advantage of the latest tools and trends the way Shopify does.
- Integrates with hot new tools and features well - early adopter.
- Economical price points - scale-able.
- Very broad reach across industries.
- Limited support, especially at lower plan levels.
- Customization beyond standard choices can be complicated and/or expensive.
However, if you have specialized or custom needs/requirements, be prepared to either pay to have a developer make changes for you, or bring someone in-house to do it. Either way, it's expensive to be unique.
Two thumbs up for SEO friendliness
- Simple, user-friendly interface.
- Great platform to get started with eCommerce.
- Solid SEO functionality.
- More customization possibilities for XML sitemaps.
- More advanced SEO capabilities around the addition of FAQ content on category pages.
One of the top eCommerce providers
- Great themes out of the box.
- Very affordable plans to be budget-conscious.
- Very easy to setup and customize a site with little to no coding experience.
- Shopify doesn't have much native functionality and you must pay for third-party apps for somewhat normal features. Naturally, third-party apps aren't always perfectly integrated into websites.
- Shopify can get expensive as you scale and isn't as good a value in the medium and large-scale enterprise space when compared to BigCommerce in my opinion.
- Shopify charges additional payment processing fees if you don't use Shopify's payment processor. This can cause problems in the back office of businesses.
- Much more cost effective than any other platform that we have found.
- Speed, speed, speed. The load times are much better than any other sites that we have used or found.
- The app store provides solutions for any of the little changes or things that we want to do on our sites.
- Customer service is fantastic, very helpful and quick to resolve issues that we have.
- None that we have come across yet.
- The pool of available premium themes for different sellers to purchase is deep.
- Storefront speeds.
- Comprehensive and deep pool of customised apps.
- Default, out-of-the-box SEO with basic subscription is very poor over time (over 18 months) for search engine crawling.
- The control panel speed for the merchant is very slow and nothing like the storefront speed.
- Product creation listing is not fast or simple enough.
Gotta love Shopify
- Great POS
- great customer services
- easy to navigate
- easy to set up
- cart discounts are hard to set up
- you need additional apps for a lot of things. Sometimes they work well other times they do not.
- The home page is often way to busy for a glance through to get basic information on daily sales
Shopify is an important ally in your online sales
- Shopify is intuitive. I believe that even this is what makes Shopify one of the platforms preferred by those who are in the beginning or starting your online store, as it is very easy to operate in it. In a few minutes after you add a product to your store, it already puts the sale online.
- It is highly customizable. You can create your online store from scratch and leave it with the appearance you want, thus avoiding that a generic appearance similar to other sites that use the same platform.
- The integration with several payment processors helps to avoid a loss of sales for not owning the client's preferred sales processor.
- The price of Shopify is a little high, although it is a quality product and with great support. There are other platforms offering a more competitive price.
- Telephone support is only available in English. For a platform present in sites from diverse places across the planet, they should offer multi-language assistance.
- The reports generated by Shopify are acceptable, but could be better and have more details and information.
Sales Assured with Shopify
- They are partnered with tons of companies to offer app integration and channels for sales
- I love the Instagram integration that allows my buyers to buy directly via Instagram
- It's easy to update my orders and fulfill them via the app or the website.
- I'd love if they could lower the fees, but they're still better than Paypal.
- I wish there were more free layout options.
- I'd love a way to prevent certain items from being excluded from discount codes.
A great platform to sell your products online!
- Their online help center and customer support are great. I've found most of my answers online, from their help desk. When I've needed extra help they've always responded to my emails in a prompt fashion.
- Their basic reporting is sufficient and easily digestible for small and medium-sized companies.
- They offer many integration options with fulfillment providers so you can quickly move online sales into shipped orders.
- They charge a bit too much for their premium subscription.
A Two Man Operation Made Easy with Shopify
- Competitive pricing
- A cornucopia of addons to suit your needs
- Basic user interface that anyone can adapt to
- Since I was an early adopter of shopify and our company's needs were basic, they eventually eliminated the weaknesses that we addressed
Shopify is a simple, easy to use, eCommerce solution. Just don't try to customize it much
- Product details and listings is simple and straightforward
- Inventory Management is robust and easy to grasp
- integration with the most common payment processors and Amazon listing are great
- Site/Store customization is difficult - it's page templates are based on an XML-like markup that you have to learn to do any page design edits
- There is a store/library of premium site themes to purchase, but the offerings are limited when compared to the comparable ocean of themes for something like WordPress
- Since custom development for Shopify is less popular - it's difficult to find help if have customization q's or get stuck. There isn't a very active Shopify dev community
Shopify great for users new to eCommerce
- Showcase Inventory
- Analytics on Website & Sales
- Integrations into other tools and marketing products
- Widgets being implemented are difficult to understand at times
- Needing coding experience to implement different tactics on website
- No donation based buttons to also allow for 3rd party integration for non-profit use
Helps a small software company get it's products out there
- I like the ease of setting up a store front.
- The ease of adding/editing items within the store.
- The ease of adding SKU's and product information.
- The only issue we had with the software was the fact I think we were looking for something that integrated further with our CRM & order entry system.
Technology can help you be your own boss.
- One of the pluses with Shopify is that it offers unlimited storage and bandwidth. This can be helpful because you have no limitations on how quickly high-quality images, video or other content loads on your site, and you can have as many of these things on your website as you need since there’s no storage limit
- This eCommerce platform integrates with online stores like Amazon and eBay, so if you’d like to sell your merchandise through these tools, Shopify can help you track sales and inventory.
- With Shopify, creating and launching an online store is a matter of seconds. An important advantage is the practicality to open an online trade in a very short time. The platform guides you step by step in the process of setting up your own store, customize it to your liking, develop the design and, finally, add your products
- Some of the features of Shopify are not very customizable. There is great adaptability in terms of design and payment gateways. However, the Checkout process is more standardized, it only gives you room for some modifications of the appearance.
- There are free hosting platforms and, in front of Shopify, the price could be a disadvantage. But free options will never have the same characteristics, support and benefits of a payment platform. It is necessary to evaluate what is intended to be achieved and the business plan in a medium or long term
- The helpline telephone service is currently only available in English, as are several parts of its website and the informative materials.
- We have in mind that the models are limited and we run the risk that another merchant has, in appearance, the same view or mode
Easy eCommerce with Shopify
- Easy to begin using
- Lots of tutorials available
- Offers nice layouts even with free themes
- All the apps make it pricey. I wanted to add things like currency converters and other email marketing which would have bumped my monthly fee up by 100%.
- A low barrier to entry means there is more competition in the eCommerce space.
Easy for ecommerce!
- There are many options to build your storefront the way you want it to look.
- The number of apps you can add for free is awesome. Inventory counter, customer service, help us be better.
- One of the best things is their support line is really good and helpful.
- The transaction fees can be hurtful to the company.
- The apps are great but they can add up when you start buying a lot.
- Some of the coding that you have to know can be challenging if you really want your store to look like you want it to.
Personal Use Gone Professional with Shopify
- User interface - simple to navigate customer data, and segment (e.g. how many customers have placed more than 1 order during a campaign).
- Reporting - Robust data with the ability to segment.
- Discount/promotional code management and measuring effectiveness.
- Delay in exporting orders. some orders can be directly downloaded while logged into the system. often I wanted to look at full order history which involved an emailed .zip link to be shared. probably our servers, but it took longer than desired.
- More advanced filtering on the orders. Often times we would like to segment/filter a multi-order vs. initial order and want to do so directly in the order tab.