What we like about Shopify
The reason Shopify is the preferred choice for so many large or ready-to-scale online stores is there’s no other provider that is better at facilitating the addition and management of large amounts of products. Wix puts a limit on products sold, but Shopify allows for unlimited products, which is why it’s great for larger businesses. Simply put, if you’re more interested in selling a lot of products than having a site that looks exactly how you want it, Shopify is the ecommerce website builder for you.
Even better, through its Shopify Payments system, you’re able to track everything from sales on Instagram, Google Shopping, and even real-world point of sale transactions. That’s right – if you run a brick-and-mortar store, you can manage all your sales, inventory, and accounting through one platform. Shopify also permits 100 other payment gateways if you’re not using Shopify payments – but there will be transaction fees to pay.
Shipping is another feature that Shopify has locked down, with tons of ordering options. For example, Shopify’s carbon-neutral shipping option is great for businesses watching their environmental footprint. Wix isn’t too far behind, but you’ll still need some apps to help you with taking payments from across the world, as it only allows for up to 10 currencies maximum. Shopify, on the other hand, accepts more than 100 different currencies.
Shopify offers tons of top tier marketing features. We found its AI-generated email marketing tool to be a great way to drum up brand awareness quickly. Source: Tech.co testing
Although not nearly as good as Wix for design, Shopify is still better than a lot of other ecommerce platforms in this regard. It offers loads of different ecommerce website templates, all of which are optimized for mobile, and can be edited with ease. In fact, despite all those sales features, we found Shopify to be easier to use than Wix, largely due to the lack of customizability in Shopify’s design functionality.
To see for yourself, simply take advantage of Shopify’s free trial (followed by your first month at just $1) and check out the video below:
What Shopify should improve
While our testers scored Shopify higher than Wix for user experience, Shopify definitely has a specific niche it’s going for when it comes to functionality. One person that took part in our user testing described it as the “inverse of Wix,” with a heavy emphasis on the management of inventory and sales channels integrations rather than the actual design of the site.
The biggest downside to Shopify, though, is that it’s more expensive than most other providers on this list. While its cheapest ecommerce plan weighs in at a modest $29 per month, its app library, which allows users to take advantage of basically any ecommerce feature they can think of, doesn’t come cheap either. This, combined with the lack of built-in apps available right out of the gate, means you could end up spending a lot on Shopify.
The transaction fees the provider charges when you don’t use Shopify Payments can range from 0.5% to 2%, which further adds to the lack of affordability, particularly in a marketplace where competitors like Wix and Squarespace don’t enforce any.
Check out our Wix vs Shopify guide for more information on our top two ecommerce builders.
An individual product page on a Shopify website.
Source: Shopify
How much does Shopify cost?
Shopify offers three main pricing plans, but as we mentioned, they’re quite expensive. The $29 per month Basic plan is one of the more expensive starter plans in our research, while the $299 per month Advanced plan is easily the most expensive plan on this list.
Shopify has other plans available, but we recommend sticking to those two plans, though, as they’re the best suited for ecommerce. If you use the “$1-for-first-month” deal, you’ll have a long runway to see if the features really work for your needs.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning Shopify POS, which is software that can be used for in-person sales and also integrates with Shopify’s ecommerce and payments services.
Check out our Shopify POS pricing guide for details on its costs.
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