Shopify Review (2021) — Key Pros and Cons / Pricing / Features
"In this detailed Shopify review, I look at one of the most popular online-store building tools currently available and provide a complete overview of its key pros and cons. Is it right for your business, or should you use another e-commerce solution?"
Read on to find out.
A growing number of online store building tools are now available, and choosing the right one for your business can feel challenging.
You’re probably here because you’ve heard a lot about one of the leading e-commerce solutions, Shopify — but you’re not sure if it’s the right option for you.
Well, this Shopify review is here to help you decide! Below I’m going to explore the platform’s pricing, templates, selling features and answer essential questions like…
What is Shopify?
How does Shopify work?
Are the templates any good?
What are the selling features like?
Is it good value?
What are the main advantages of using Shopify?
What are the main drawbacks?
What are the alternatives?
Let’s dive in!
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a web application that allows you to create your online store.
It provides you with a wide range of ‘themes’ that can be customized to meet your branding requirements and allows you to sell either physical or digital products.
A key aim behind Shopify is to let people without coding or design skills build an online store themselves (i.e., without the assistance of a developer). However, people familiar with HTML and CSS will be pleased to discover that the platform provides access to both.
How does Shopify work?
Shopify is a 'hosted' solution. This means that it runs on its servers, and you don't have to buy web hosting or install software anywhere.
You don't own a copy of the product, but instead, pay a monthly fee to use it — and, so long as you have access to a web browser and the internet, you can manage your store from anywhere.
With Shopify, the key things you need to build and market an online store — like templates, a payment processor, a blog, and even email marketing tools — are provided 'out of the box.'
That said, you can customize your store to meet more individual requirements through the addition of apps — more on that later — or using custom code.
Shopify video review
The number of Shopify users — and why this matters
Fast forward to today, and the company now has over 1,000,000 users, 5000 staff, and between 2016 and 2019 generated $319bn in sales.
These numbers matter because when you choose a hosted solution to build an online store with, you are placing a considerable amount of trust in the company providing it.
There have been instances in the past of similar services closing down, resulting in severe problems for their users, who had to migrate their stores over to a different platform at concise notice. However, Shopify's large user base and market share make the prospect of a store you host with them suddenly disappearing less likely.
But how much does Shopify cost to use?
Shopify pricing
There are five Shopify plans available, with the following monthly costs:
Shopify Lite — $9
Basic Shopify — $29
Shopify — $79
Advanced Shopify — $299
Shopify Plus — custom pricing.
A couple of quick things to note here: If you pay upfront, you can avail of a discount — 10% if you pay for one year, or 20% if you pay for two.
Additional fees apply to make the most out of Shopify's point-of-sale features (which let you sell goods in a physical location). I'll discuss these in more depth later on in the review.
There is also a free trial available, which lasts for 14 days (and can usually be extended if you need more time to complete a store).
You can access this free trial here.
Shopify Lite: a cheap way into online selling?
Shopify represents one of the cheaper ways to sell online, with its starter plan, 'Lite' costing $9 per month and allowing you to sell an unlimited number of goods.
However, it's important to note that the 'Lite' plan does not allow you to construct a fully-functional, standalone online store.
Instead, it:
lets you sell products on your Facebook page
allows you to use your store to sell goods or manage inventory in a physical location
gives you access to Shopify's Buy Button, which allows you to sell goods on another website or blog.
The Buy Button works similar to a Paypal 'Buy Now' button, but because it links directly back to your store, more sophisticated options regarding tracking orders and syncing inventory are available.
Additionally, you can use a Buy Button to display entire categories of products on another platform (for example, a Squarespace or WordPress website).
If you want to create a standalone online store, though, you'll need to go for one of the other plans. Let's take a look at these now.
Key differences between Shopify plans
All the $29+ Shopify plans provide core e-commerce functionality — you can choose a template, upload a catalog of products, accept credit card payments, sell gift cards and access a wide range of third-party apps.
But there are a few key features to watch out for and not miss by selecting the wrong Shopify pricing plan.
These are:
Staff accounts — the number you get varies by plan.
Reporting — professional reporting functionality is only available on the $79+ plans.
Third-party real-time carrier shipping — this is only available on the most expensive 'Advanced Shopify' plan (other plans do let you avail of real-time carrier shipping, but only with Shopify's preferred providers).
Inventory locations — you can assign inventory to retail stores, warehouses, pop-ups, etc., on any plan, but the number of locations you can use varies with each.
Transaction/credit card fees — these get lower as you go up the pricing ladder.
Shipping discounts — the more expensive the plan, the more generous these are (depending on territory).
Shopify Plus, the enterprise-grade version of the platform, provides additional functionality aimed at big corporations, including:
guaranteed server uptime
API support
'White glove' level of support via a dedicated 'Merchant Success Manager.'
dedicated SSL / IP address
advanced security features
extensive options for selling in multiple currencies
Sales automation tools.
I'll explore all these features shortly, but first, let's take a look at how Shopify lets you accept payments for your goods.
Accepting credit cards using Shopify
There are two ways to accept credit card payments on Shopify.
The most straightforward, for users in countries where it is supported, is to use Shopify Payments, Shopify's built-in payment system. If you use this, you don't have to worry about transaction fees at all.
However, there is still a 'credit card rate' to consider — in the US, depending on your plan, you can expect to pay a rate of between 2.4% and 2.9% of each transaction.
(In other countries, the rate can be considerably lower).
Alternatively, you can use a third party' payment gateway' to process card transactions — of which there are over 100 to choose from. If you use a payment gateway, Shopify will apply a transaction fee as well — between 0.5% and 2%, depending on the plan you're on.
One important thing worth noting about Shopify Payments is that it is available only for users based in certain countries.
These are:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Germany
Hong Kong SAR China
Ireland
Italy
Japan
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States of America (note: no US territories except Puerto Rico.)
So if you're not selling from one of those countries, you will have to use a separate payment gateway provider.
Refunding customers in Shopify
Won't return card processing fees charged by Shopify to you if you have to refund a customer. This is something to bear in mind if your business is one with a liberal returns policy.
Now that we've gone through pricing and payment functionality let's discuss how Shopify stores look.
Shopify themes – how good are they?
Shopify provides nine free e-commerce templates (or 'themes') that you can use – and each of these comes in two or three different variants, giving you a reasonable number of template options to choose from.
That said, the number of bundled templates on offer is small by comparison to other online store builders like Squarespace and Wix.
However, the bundled themes are attractive, and they are responsive, too, meaning they will display nicely across all devices.
If the free templates don't appeal, you can use a paid-for or 'premium' theme — of which there are 64 (and again, each theme comes in a few variants). These range in price from $100 to $180, and as with the free themes, they are all fully responsive.
You can browse all the free and paid templates using a wide range of filters in the theme store — for example. You can view templates by
industry
home page type
layout style
visual features (slideshows, video, parallax scrolling, etc.)
And more.
This means that you should be able to find a suitable theme for your store without too much difficulty.
In terms of the aesthetics, the templates are all professional in appearance, easy on the eye, and very contemporary — no complaints at all here.
Support for themes
One thing worth considering when deciding on a theme is whether Shopify officially supports it.
All the free themes are — but if you use a premium template, you may need to contact the developer who designed it for any help you might need when installing or customizing it.
All in all, Shopify's template offering is of high quality — but if you are not content with the options provided and wish to create something truly distinctive, there is always the option of building your theme.
It's easy to access the theme code, and a lot of support materials are provided to help you develop your template.
Comments
Post a Comment