Why Shopify, or why not?

[dynambee]

There are pluses and minuses to a system like Shopify.

Minuses that I came across when considering Shopify:

• If you are outside the short list of supported countries (United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia) then you can't use "Shopify Payments" (seems to be rebadged Stripe) so you have to pay transaction fees which get very expensive very quickly.

• They don't offer calculated shipping options unless you choose their $300/month (wtf?) option.

• The shipping options they do offer are not very flexible and it may not be suitable for people in countries that Shopify doesn't serve specifically.

• Many Shopify plugins/addons are monthly subscriptions rather than one-time purchases. This is attractive to developers I am sure but as a shop owner it quickly jacks up the monthly cost if you need a few extra features in your store

• You have no direct access to your database. I haven't looked into this recently but in the past that meant no bulk updates or custom updates, you have to update items one at a time via the API. No problem if you have 1000 SKUs, huge problem if you have 10,000 SKUs, impossible if you have 100,000 SKUs.

• If you want to have multiple stores then you get to pay their monthly fees for each store, and of course monthly subscriptions for all addons for each store. $$$$

Pluses that I came across when considering Shopify:

• Their site designer is nice and their included free themes were high quality.

• Their API is very complete and seems to work well (as long as you don't need bulk updates, but maybe this has changed it's been some time since I last looked.)

• It's a complete package including CDN and everything complicated like caching is managed for you. This will result in far better performance than any unskilled person can expect when setting up their own cart.

• Shopify stores tend to be fast to load and nice to use for customers

• From memory their back end was nice to use for the store operator.

• Good built in SEO, as long as the user populates the necessary fields as they set up their store.

• No need to worry about type/performance of hosting, something that can be daunting for non-technical people

• No need to worry about updates or security patching as this is entirely managed by Shopify

• No need to worry about compatibility of add-ons with cart versions as this is managed by Shopify

Of the "pay us a bunch of money per month" options out there I think Shopify is the best available. For anyone non-technical running a single site in a country that supports Shopify Payments it is, IMO, their best option. If you don't need any addons and don't care about abandoned carts it's only $29 a month. If you're in a country where Shopify Payments isn't an option then it may still be the best choice if your market segment isn't super competitive and you can afford the additional 1% or 2% transaction fees.

If you want a system you can scale to multiple stores and you don't mind figuring things out yourself then going with Thirty Bees or a similar cart will be a much better option, especially over the longer term.

Edit: Added a few more "pluses" to the list.

[Havouza]

Thanks for the detailed answer. It just confirm what I have been thinking