Item: Shopify
Rating: 8
Author: Jeff Montgomery

Overall Satisfaction with Shopify

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Shopify as one of our main e-commerce platforms for our supplements. We chose to use this platform because of it's variety of (semi) easy to use features, connectivity, and trusted partners (such as ReCharge and NoFraud). Shopify allows us to easily sell to our retail customers without the hassle getting too complex with backend code, especially security related. It's admin user interface is simplistic and easy to use for our CSR's on everyday orders.

Pros and Cons

Pros

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.

Cons

They nickel and dime you for everything. They also purposely do not add very "typical" features to their core because they want you to purchase plugins (which they get a cut of each month).
Unless you're willing to pony up and pay for Shopify plus, they lock you out of the checkout page code (so, no installing apps there, either).
Their UI sometimes will randomly freeze or not allow you to update something. The only thing we've figured out in those cases is just to wait 30 minutes.
You can't get too "cute" with wanting complex functionalities (esp if there's not a plugin that does exactly what you're wanting to do).

Return on Investment

Shopify has allowed us to easily make retail sales with normal customer operations while being pretty hands-off.
Shopify has taught us that our more complex and custom integrations need to be done on a different system.
Shopify makes you realize that the more "cute" you want to get with integrations, the more you'll pay monthly for everything.

Usability

Shopify's basic usability is near the top of industry standards for these kind of "plug-and-play" websites. Choosing a 3rd party theme to integration may seem easy, but it does require some work and doesn't always go smoothly with Shopify's user interface (or allowed code). For the most part, our customer service reps use the basic things perfectly fine on a daily basis.

Alternatives Considered

WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions and Adobe Commerce

Shopify allows for companies to quickly and easily get online and selling. However, the more you want to customize the platform, the more you'll realize that other platforms (such as Wordpress + WooCommerce) end up being better because you have access to all of the core code and can choose to update it whenever you'd like.

Key Insights

Do you think Shopify delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

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

Other Software Used

Adobe Stock, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe InDesign

Likelihood to Recommend

Shopify is perfect for companies who are looking to run a simple-to-medium base e-commerce system and aren't looking to get too fancy with integrations. Those companies, though, that have more complex integrations (especially with checkout) might be better off using another e-com system out there where you have access to the full core code.

Shopify Feature Ratings

Comments

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Shopify Delivers But With Some Drawbacks

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