Item: Shopify
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Return on Investment

It has been a good ROI as it was easy to get up and running and begin selling right away.
The monthly fees are reasonable compared to the competition but the per transaction fees are disappointing.

Alternatives Considered

3dcart and BigCommerce

Shopify has better integrations than the other two tools I have used. Each tool has it's own strengths and flaws. For example, 3dcart has much more flexibility and customization with things such as variations or reporting but it is not as attractive on the front end using their templates. BigCommerce is another great tool but has some frustrating oversights that seems essential to ecommerce such as reporting on orders that have been received but not shipped.

Key Insights

Do you think Shopify delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Shopify's feature set?

Yes

Did Shopify live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Shopify go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Shopify again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Shopify, a great tool for very small businesses that are starting from scratch.

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Shopify