Shopify Review: Features, Pros, Cons, Pricing in 2024

There are a lot of options for running an online store, and your choice of the best eCommerce platform can have a big influence on your business’s success. In the tons of fish in the ocean, Shopify is probably the best-known e-commerce solution available that offers robust sales features to support your online store. 

In this Shopify review, we will take a comprehensive look at Shopify’s pricing, features, pros and cons, so you can see exactly why Shopify has become some sort of ‘rock star’ in the world of online commerce. 

Shopify Review: At a Glance

What is Shopify?

Created in 2006 in Canada by a German youngster – Tobias Lütke – who wanted to sell snowboards online, Shopify is a hosted solution that runs on its own servers and does not need any web hosting or software installation. Fast-forward nearly 20 years, Shopify has become the  #1 e-commerce website builder, be “home” to thousands of online businesses $95.45 billion in sales (until February 2024) and total number of employees over 12,000.

Shopify aims to give you all the essential things you need to build, design and market an online store out of the box. Thus as long as you have access to the Internet, you can run and manage your Shopify store anywhere.

How does it work?

Shopify is a software as a service (SaaS) platform which permits users to connect to and use cloud-based apps over the Internet. SaaS offers a whole software solution that you may pay a cloud service provider on a pay-per-use basis. In essence, to use the platform, users need to register a plan and pay the subscription fee. After that, Shopify allows you to access the tools you need to create and manage your e-commerce website.

>> Read more: How Does Shopify Work: A Complete Beginner’s Guide

You cannot move your Shopify website to another e-commerce platform; in order to keep your site up to date, you must keep your Shopify account active. You may sell online, in person, through social media, on an already-existing website or blog, and on online marketplaces like Google, Amazon, or eBay. You can even open an online store. You may create and maintain several “sales channels”—the many online marketplaces where your items are sold—using the Shopify interface.

•     An online store: Your primary website, hosted on a domain name of your own.
•     Facebook: a segment of your page where your visitors can browse and purchase your products.
•     Buy Button: Using “buy buttons,” you may include e-commerce features into any blog or website through this channel.
•     Instagram: this allows you to make your Instagram posts ‘shoppable.’
•     Shopify’s ‘Shop’ channel: provides you with accelerated checkout features through the “Shop Pay system”, and sells on Shopify’s Shop app.
•     Wholesale: this lets you set up a separate, password-protected storefront where you can sell products to businesses directly.

Choose one of Shopify’s e-commerce-ready themes to create your online store. You may begin selling as soon as you add goods to your Shopify account, configure payments, shipping, and taxes. Order tracking and company performance monitoring are made possible by Shopify’s robust reporting and analytics features.

Shopify Review: Core Features

Shopify themes

As of the latest update, Shopify’s official theme store hosts 13 free themes to help you start point for your online store and 150+ paid premium themes cost between $180 and $360. They are all attractive and fully responsive but if you can not choose the one you love and wish to create something unique for your own, there is always the option of creating your own theme thanks to its drop-and-drag element and customization options.

By using the drag-and-drop editor, you can easily move sections or blocks to other areas of your website to create the store layout you want. It allows you to customize images, font, color scheme,… all about your site’s look and feel but still retain the layout integrity to ensure a professional look. Demo preview is also supported in all Shopify themes, giving you a realistic look at how your website appears on a mobile or desktop before finalizing the design.

A theme is not fixed in your website so that you can change your theme at any time you want. Nonetheless, in case the current theme has witnessed a lot of customization, it can be sophisticated to change to another design settings and site features vary considerably from theme to theme.

✨✨✨ EXPLORE SHOPIFY THEMES NOW!

Or Try Agile theme: The Key to a Flexible, High-Performing Shopify Store

Shopify AI

Recently, Shopify introduced a new AI tool called Shopify Magic to help users in generating product descriptions promptly. What you need to do is just fill up a little information about your product, and Shopify Magic, on your behalf, will create compelling descriptions for you. As an AI tool, Shopify Magic does not suggest exactly 100% of what you want, but it still is useful in shortening the time of writing compelling product descriptions for your store.

Here’s how you can take advantage of Shopify Magic besides creating product descriptions:

•       Produce, delete or edit image backgrounds
•       Personalize and streamline responses to customer
•       Create email marketing

Dropshipping with Shopify

Shopify dropshipping allows customers all over the world to place orders while a separate supplier handles all aspects of product sourcing, fulfillment, shipping and, when necessary, handles customer returns. With Shopify, you can launch your dropshipping business effortlessly thanks to its full package of essential tools for dropshipping and integration with dozens of third-party suppliers such as Aliexpress, Spocket, Printful,…which allow you to source and sell a variety of supplier’s products online.

 Shopify is also a strong choice for print-on-demand (POD) applications, with over 500 POD apps like Printful, and Printify integrating particularly neatly with the platform.

Shopify Point of Sale (POS)

When it comes to Shopify reviews, a powerful feature provided is its comprehensive Point of Sale (POS), which lets you use the platform for multi-selling purposes. 

With your Shopify POS, it is possible for both selling online and in person. To kick off, you will need to download  Shopify’s POS app, then it will automatically sync with your online store to keep track of orders and inventory from all sales points easily. Besides, there is an array of hardware that comes fully integrated with the Shopify POS system including card readers, barcode scanners, barcode printers, receipt printers, display stands help you to streamline the process of shopping and checkout. iPads and other tablets may be used with Shopify POS, which acts as the main interface for handling transactions, keeping track of inventory, and gaining access to customer information.

Shopify POS comes with 2 plans: Shopify POS Lite and Shopify POS Pro.

• Shopify POS Lite offers basic features such as accepting payments, managing orders, tracking inventory, reporting, and analyzing. It allows businesses to sell at pop-ups, special events, temporary markets, and retail stores. You can also collect credit card payments, sell gift cards, issue refunds,… This plan starts at $1094 per business as a one-time payment that covers both the Shopify POS system and your Shopify subscription.
• Shopify POS Pro begins from $2162 per store for the first year, giving you remarkably more control over staff permissions, comprehensive inventory reporting tools, a two-year warranty on POS hardware purchases, and omnichannel selling capabilities. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, this plan would be perfect for you since it offers advanced capabilities and features to manage a complicated business. 

>> Read more: Shopify POS Lite vs Pro: A Head-to-Head Comparison

Checkout

Shopify Checkout is a gateway developed by Shopify aimed to keep purchase processing simple and safe. That said, when customers add a product to their cart, they can be navigated to the checkout page, where they should fill up all important information such as shipping address, payment information, and other relevant details to verify the order and deliver the product. 

Just like other features, you can choose a third-party app to simplify and enhance the checkout process. The Shopify App Store, where they provide 27 checkout apps for your choice to help you explore additional functionality and add it to your store’s checkout process. It includes apps for 

 There are 27 checkout apps available via the Shopify App Store that you may want to explore to add additional functionality to your store’s checkout process. These checkout apps include apps for post-purchase surveys, age verification, shipping insurance, loyalty and reward programs, upsell and cross-sell recommendations, and more.

According to some statistics, the rate of abandoned carts in online shopping is nearly 70%. Therefore, with the right strategies in place, you can also optimize your Shopify checkout process to create a seamless customer experience, reduce cart abandonment rates, and boost sales. Here are what you can do to customize your Shopify checkout: 

Adding custom brandings such as logo, brand colors, and fonts

• Edit checkout form fields
• Adding custom branding
• Adjusting the layout and design
• Set up additional features or functionality

Shipping

Included in all Shopify plans, Shopify Shipping is a powerful tool to simplify the process of fulfilling orders. Once building your Shopify store, you will be guided to set up shipping rules such as flat rate, free shipping, rates based on country or region, etc for each of your products, entire collections, or your whole store. 

With Shopify shipping, it is much easier, faster, and cheaper to fulfill orders as it connects with major carriers such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, Canada Post, Sendle, etc. By partnering with these popular carriers, Shopify shipping offers competitive shipping rates which help you to save up to 77% on shipping with the Basic plan and up to 88% with the Shopify and Advanced plans. Shopify also integrates with several popular shipping apps, including ShipStation, Shippo, UPS Shipping, Easyship, and ShippingEasy, giving the most convenient and flexible way for your customers to choose the suitable shipping method and track their order on hand. 

Additionally, Shopify Shipping gives sellers access to features like overnight delivery, international shipping, shipping insurance, address validation, personalized packing slips, and notification emails. In certain countries, you can get the benefit of a highlight feature – real-time shipping, which gives you a real-time shopping quotation from local postal services, prints shipping labels and provides preferential rates on shipping. If Shopify real-time shipping is not available in your country, another option is to use a third-party calculated shipping rates app. However, this will end up being extremely expensive and you have to satisfy some conditions required. 

The Shopify app store

Shopify Apps can help you simplify the process of creating, designing, managing and marketing your Shopify store as well as extend its functionality. There is a place where you can explore tons of apps and plugins to develop your store, both those built by Shopify and those designed by third parties – it’s the Shopify marketplace. 

Now, in the Shopify marketplace, there are over 13,000 apps available (including free and paid) – a huge amount that makes Shopify’s app store bigger than those of all the other well-known e-commerce platforms. These apps either add specific functionality to your store, or let it work with key pieces of business software.

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Below are some recommended types of Shopify apps you can install on your store:

• Accounting apps
• Customer relationship management apps
• Abandoned cart-saver apps
• Checkout apps
• Advanced reporting apps
• Mobile app builder

If you are facing a knotty problem about choosing the right apps for your store, write your store problem or the function you need, then browse app Shopify review articles, we believe you can get a better understanding about the best apps for your needs and requirements. 

Order Management and Fulfillment

Shopify’s order management system gives merchants access to a central dashboard where they can see, track, and manage orders. Vendors have the ability to manually complete orders, collect payments, replenish returned goods, and manage correspondence with clients. Order fulfillment processes that are automated can be configured to reduce the amount of time spent on repeated operations, such as updating order statuses and sending confirmation emails. 

With Shopify, you can choose one in various order fulfillment models. 

• If you want to get total and direct control over your inventory, packing, storage, shipping, and reverse logistics to personalized customer experience self-fulfillment (or inhouse fulfillment) can be the best for you. However, this can be capital-intensive.
• If you’d rather not fulfill your own orders, you can join Shopify’s Fulfillment Network, which handles product storage, shipping, and returns on your behalf. To help you calculate the expenses associated with product storage and shipping, Shopify provides a cost calculator for its shipping Network. Depending on the item’s dimensions, weight, form, delivery destination, and expected volume of shipping, these expenses might differ considerably.
• Outsourcing fulfillment to a third-party provider is a common strategy for Shopify sellers. The third-party companies, on behalf of the store owners, will handle storage, packing, shipping, and returns. You can have more shipping options and better carrier rates. That way, it improves profitability overall.

Inventory Management

As businesses strive to meet the demands of an ever-evolving market, the role of platforms like Shopify in facilitating effective inventory management cannot be overstated. Like most e-commerce platforms and inventory management systems, Shopify comes equipped with a range of robust inventory management tools. Shopify inventory management lets you:

• Assign inventory in up to 1,000 locations, including retail stores, warehouses and pop-ups while giving you a centralized view of your stock
• Add different variations such as size and color
• Add inventory numbers manually or in bulk via a CSV file
• Track inventory levels on a per SKU basis and for individual variants
• Group products by category, type, season and sale and quickly scan products using barcodes
• Automatically adjust your inventory levels, helping you to save time and reduce the risk of human error.
• Stock notifications help you stay on top of your inventory and avoid stockouts

Shopify Payments

In terms of payment Shopify review, Shopify Payments is no doubt running across your head, working as a wonderful default payment gateway, saves you from having to partner with a third-party payment provider credentials individually in your Shopify store. 

We are able to say thay Shopify Payments is the cheapest and easiest payment processing options for Shopify store owners. If you use Shopify Pay, you will not have to pay any transaction fee at all on any plan (except the Starter, which applies a fair rate of 5% per sale). The payment method allows accepting secure online payments from customers using payment methods such as Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Gift Cards, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Paypal, Stripe, Adyen, and local methods like Klarna, Sofort, Ideal, EPS Payments, Bancontact, and more.

If you are a US business, luckily, you have a special privilege to accept one or many of these credit and debit cards through Shopify Pay such as Visa, American Express, MasterCard, Discover, Diners Club, Elo, JCB. Plus, depending on your plan, you get an incentive credit card processing fee of 2.5% (or maximum of 2.9%) of each sale that your store earns. 

Although Shopify Payments is built-in for you, you are still allowed to use third-party payment gateway. Similar to Shopify Payments, third-party payment gateways also charge user transaction fees. Moreover, you will need to pay an extra amount to Shopify for each transaction you make, ranging from 0.6% to 2% depending on your Shopify plan. 

Therefore, utilizing the built-in Shopify Payments payment processor will typically be the most economical choice, unless you have a very good reason not to. 

Marketing and SEO

In terms of marketing, Shopify includes built-in tools for crafting targeted email campaigns, integrating social media, and running retargeting ads. You can connect with popular marketing and promotional applications to enhance your marketing capabilities. Leading third-party apps include Mailchimp, Google, YouTube, SMSBump, and Klaviyo. These features can be especially useful for Shopify stores that need to attract new customers.

A key benefit of Shopify’s SEO tools is the ability to customize meta titles and descriptions, utilize canonical tags to avoid duplicate content and edit robots.txt files, facilitating easier crawling and indexing by search engines. Additionally, Shopify provides an easy-to-use blogging platform, enabling store owners to create and share valuable content that resonates with their target audience.

Top Shopify’s marketing and SEO tools and features include:

• A wide variety of discount types, such as product category discounts, shipping discounts, buy X get Y free, volume discounts, and storewide $X and X% discounts
• Targeted social ads
• Marketing campaign tracking tools and dashboard reports
• Abandoned cart recovery notifications
• Customer reviews
• Built-In blogging platform
• Alt text
• 301 Redirects
• …

Analytics and Reporting

When it comes to reporting and analytics Shopify review, how does Shopify work to support your online store? The answer is an extensive report suite, providing you with deep insight about customer behaviors, product profitability, and other vital drivers of online store success. You can access all these reports by navigating to the Analytics section on your Shopify dashboard. 

Here are some reports you got from Shopify:

• Acquisition reports
• Behavior reports
• Customer reports
• Finance reports
• Inventory reports
• Marketing reports
• Order reports
• Profit reports
• Retail sales reports
• Overall sales reports

In addition to the Shopify review, the reports can be viewed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, providing store owners with a comprehensive overview of the store’s performance.

Security and Backing Up Data

It is a nightmare when you realize your website got hacked. You will face the risk of leaking important data and trade secrets. Luckily, Shopify handles updates and security, preventing you from common problems like losing data or hackers. 

To be specific, the servers that power Shopify’s system are Level 1 PCI certified, which is a requirement for taking credit card payments. To protect the information of your visitors, every Shopify shop also has SSL encryption activated at 256 bits.

 Also, Shopify has a backup system in place. They have the ability to revive your online store in a pinch. However, as this is not an official service, they recommend that you export a number of CSV files from your website and make regular backups of them. The manual backup method seems time-consuming, but it gives you full control of your data. Otherwise, you can visit Shopify App Store to find a “lifesaver” for your mistake. 

Shopify Customer Support

Shopify offers robust customer support designed to help merchants at every stage of the e-commerce journey. Available 24/7, Shopify’s support system includes various channels such as live chat, email, and phone support, ensuring that users can get immediate assistance whenever they need it. This is particularly helpful for business owners managing stores across different time zones.

In addition to direct support, Shopify provides an extensive Help Center with detailed articles, tutorials, and step-by-step guides covering topics like store setup, payment integration, and SEO. There’s also a thriving community forum where users can connect, ask questions, and share solutions.

For more technical needs, Shopify offers access to a vast network of Shopify Experts—professionals who specialize in various aspects of store development, marketing, and design. Whether you’re just starting or scaling your business, Shopify’s comprehensive customer support system ensures you’re never left without solutions.

>> You may concern: Shopify Support Chat: How To Easily Get In Touch

Shopify Review: How Much Does Shopify Cost?

For newbies, Shopify offers an “introductory plan”, which allows you to get started with Shopify for 3 days with no fee and 3 months at only $1 per month. However, this plan can not give you much of a chance to explore the platform. To continue with Shopify, you will need to purchase a plan from one of the four core plans – Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Shopify Plus. Now, let’s take a closer look at Shopify review pricing and plans.

Shopify 3 Months for $1 (The newest deal for Shopify’s users)

Shopify’s 1 dollar for 3 months subscription plan gives merchants access to Shopify’s powerful eCommerce platform for just 1 dollar. This subscription plan includes everything you need to start selling online. Here is what comes with this plan:

•       Online Store: Effortlessly design an e-commerce website and start selling your products.
•       Shopify POS Lite: Allows your customers to make casual and in-person payments at market fairs, pop-ups, and so on.
•       Shopify AI Sidekick
•       Marketing Automation
•       Recovery for Abandoned Cart
•       Unlimited Products Addition
•       Unlimited Contacts
•       Unlimited Products Addition
•       Fraud Analysis
•       24×7 Support
•       Customer Segmentation
•       Sales Channels
•       Fast & Reliable Checkout
•       Free SSL Certificate
•       Seamless & fast Checkout
•       Manual Cart Creation
•       Sell across — 133 Countries
•       Shopify Taxes
•       Access to 4100+ Apps

Basic Plan ($19) – For small businesses looking to grow

Shopify Basic is ideal for merchants who are just starting selling online. It provides you with most of the features to create your own online shop to market and sell your products. Just select a theme that is suitable for your niches and brand characteristics, set up products, shipping, payment, inventory, marketing,… to earn from your store.

The $19 monthly fee for the Basic plan (you’ll be charged 2.9% of each transaction, plus 30¢) allows you to sell unlimited products. It permits business owners to assign 2 staff accounts to manage store’s operation and while it does offer Shopify Point-of-sale (POS) for offline sales, it is impossible to access some of the hardware support that is included on the other plans.

With this plan, you are able to promote and sell your products and services multi-channel. Coming with various top-tier features like an AI-generated email marketing tool, Basic Plan helps to dump up your brand awareness promptly and effortlessly.

Shopify Sidekick is also an outstanding feature of the Basic Plan, which is a personal e-commerce assistant that helps you to respond to queries. This tool is especially useful to users with little prior e-commerce experience.

Shopify Plan ($49) – For growing businesses

This is the most widely-used plan of Shopify according to customers’ Shopify review which costs users $49 per month, with 2.6% of every transaction, plus 30¢ and 2.5% in-person credit card. The decrease of 0.2% to 0.3% may seem a tiny difference, but it is just for low sales volume stores. For high-volume merchants, it could add up to significant savings. That’s why it is one of the key advantages of the Shopify plan over the Basic plan.

Another superiority of the Shopify plan is the improved point-of-sale functionality. You will get unlimited Shopify POS app staff PINs, which means you can hire more people. Third-party POS apps are also supported in this plan, helping you to increase the function and efficiency of your POS. Beyond the 2 staff accounts that come with the Basic Plan, you can have up to five staff accounts for this Shopify plan which is helpful for larger stores that require more support from editing, analyzing, and updating your store.

Advanced Plan ($299) – For large-scale businesses

At $299 per month (if billed annually), the Advanced plan is best for seriously established on- and offline businesses. Credit card processing fees continue to decline. In-person prices are reduced to 2.4%, while online transactions cost 2.4% + 30¢.

The Advanced plan comes with up to 15 staff accounts and a maximum of eight stores to suit the scale and requirements of your business. The biggest improvements from the Shopify plan are its handful of advanced features such as advanced report builder, which gives you all the tools to have greater visibility into store performance and customers; automatic e-commerce workflow and the best shipping discount available to improve the sales journey

In order to help affected clients have a clearer understanding of the costs and returns, the Advanced plan now offers third-party computed shipping rates, tariffs, and import tax estimates at checkout for individuals who are involved in international business. Potential consumers will almost certainly see this as a strong trust signal, which will keep them from giving up at the last barrier.

Shopify Plus ($2300) – For industry-leading enterprises

If you ever outgrow the Advanced plan, Shopify also offers a Shopify Plus plan for high-volume stores. Shopify Plus plans are custom-priced based on your specific needs and requirements but start at $2,300 a month. This plan is designed for enterprise-level businesses with bespoke platforms, and functionality. Normally, enterprises which earn more than $750,000 every twelve months are able to join this plan since the price is quite high. So, you’ll need to be in with the high rollers to make this plan worth it.

✨✨✨ EXPLORE SHOPIFY PLUS PLAN NOW!

Shopify Review: Pros and Cons

Curious if Shopify is right for your online store? Check out our Shopify review at Shopify Pros and Cons to make the best decision.

Pros

Caters to a wide range of businesses

Shopify is a versatile e-commerce platform that is suitable for almost all business types and adapts to nearly all e-commerce needs and requirements. No matter what products you are selling, from physical to digital products or even service-based events, Shopify takes it all. The pricing plans with many levels help you to choose the best one that matches your business’s needs and size.

Furthermore, Shopify gives a variety of businesses the ability to rapidly manage the online presence, which helps you expand your audience reach and advance in their e-commerce journey.

Ease of use

Shopify’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for everyone, even beginners to set up your online e-commerce store without high technical knowledge since almost everything can be completed with just a few clicks. A comprehensive guide and extensive documentation provided help you to effortlessly build and launch your store within a few days.

Variety of themes and templates

The biggest superior of Shopify review is its huge themes and templates exhibition match your brand identity. Both the quality and quantity of Shopify themes are excellent and they are mobile-friendly. Whether you are in fashion apparel, electronics, beauty and health, or provide consulting services, freelancing, and many more, Shopify covers them all. More than 200 themes and templates are available for your choice and help to retain customers at a large level, there is no reason to hesitate to get started your e-commerce business with Shopify.

Scalability

Scalability is one of Shopify’s main benefits. Shopify can meet the demands of your business, regardless of how quickly you’re expanding or just getting started. Shopify’s infrastructure can accommodate growing traffic, orders, and product listings as your business grows without sacrificing functionality. Shopify’s scalability guarantees that your online store will always be dependable and quick, giving your consumers a flawless shopping experience.

Extensive Apps & Community

Shopify App Store is packed with more than 6,000 useful (free and paid) add-ons for adding customized features and functionality to your store. The app store provides you with all the essential tools that every company needs such as inventory management, marketing automation, customer support, etc. These apps are developed by third-party developers and Shopify experts, ensuring reliability and compatibility with the platform.

Additionally, they also offer a sizable network of self-employed developers and professionals available to assist you.

Cons

Pricey plans

When it comes to Shopify reviews about drawbacks, many people agree that this is one of the most expensive platforms to build online stores in comparison with other competitors on the market. Even though Shopify offers various pricing plans to serve different needs and business sizes, the costs still can add up. The lower plan may not adapt to all your needs while the higher plans are too expensive to upgrade. Also, it can have significant additional costs besides the monthly subscription fees such as apps, templates and transaction fees. This is sometimes prohibitive and the biggest barrier for small businesses or startups with limited budgets.

Difficulty in content creation and management

It is undoubtedly that Shopify is a great e-commerce platform. However, content creation and management can be a bit tricky, especially for beginners. Explain that, unlike some content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Shopify lacks robust built-in content editing tools, making it harder to design visually rich pages or manage large amounts of content without using third-party apps or custom coding. In addition, managing content such as blog posts, pages, and product descriptions can sometimes feel restrictive, particularly when trying to customize layouts or add advanced elements.

A limited number of free themes and customization options

In the ocean of over 200 themes, only one-tenth of themes are free (it means less than 20 themes are not charged). There are nearly 90 paid themes through Shopify but they cost $180 or more for one. Furthermore, customization options may feel limited for some users as it often requires knowledge of coding or hiring a professional developer. Businesses which need a highly personalized and distinctive online shop design but lack the financial resources or technological know-how for substantial modification may find this constraint irritating.

Heavy dependence on apps for advanced features

While Shopify’s diversified ecosystem of apps and plugins plays an important role in extending your store functionality and enhancing performance, some users may passively rely on these third-party apps for advanced features. The thing is that this dependence can increase the costs and complexities to manage apps for achieving desired functionalities. It also means that the core Shopify platform might lack some features that competitors offer out of the box.

Shopify review: Compare Shopify competitors & alternatives

 

	Shopify	BigCommerce	Wix	Squarespace
Rating	★★★★★ (4.8/5)	★★★★★ (4.7/5)	★★★★☆ (4.2/5)	★★★★☆ (4.4/5)
Starting Price	$19/month (Basic plan)	$39/month (Standard plan)	$27/month (Business Basic)	$27/month (Business plan)
Transaction Fees	2% unless using Shopify Payments	0% (no extra transaction fees)	No extra transaction fees (standard payment processor fees apply)	3% on Business plan, 0% on Commerce plans
Payment Options	Shopify Payments, PayPal, Stripe, third-party gateways	PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, etc.	PayPal, Stripe, Wix Payments	PayPal, Stripe, Square
Sales Features	Excellent inventory management Unlimited products Abandoned cart recovery (starting with Basic plan) Multi-channel selling (social media, marketplaces, etc.) Strong app ecosystem for added functionality	Unlimited products Advanced inventory management Built-in abandoned cart recovery (starting from Standard plan) Multi-channel selling (eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) Advanced SEO tools Complex customization for larger businesses	Unlimited products Basic inventory management Multi-channel selling (social media) Drag-and-drop editor for store customization Limited e-commerce apps compared to Shopify Abandoned cart recovery (on higher plans)	Unlimited products Basic inventory management Abandoned cart recovery (only on higher Commerce plans) Limited multi-channel selling Excellent design and customization options Not as robust as Shopify or BigCommerce for large stores

 

Shopify vs BigCommerce

When talking about top Shopify competitors and alternatives, it’s hard not to mention BigCommerce. Shopify and BigCommerce are both subscription-based e-commerce platforms that help businesses of all sizes, from solopreneurs to large international companies with their robust e-commerce features.

Shopify and Bigcommerce are relatively equal in pricing and plans. Nevertheless, it is not required for transaction fees on top of your regular monthly subscription when using BigCommerce. That means, all the profits you earn from selling products are 100% conserved. (But it still set a online sales limitation per year for each pricing tiers).

BigCommerce offers more built-in features while Shopify offers more than 8,000 paid and free third-party apps in its app store. As a result, BigCommerce requires a steeper learning curve and Shopify offers an ability to scale and expand your business.

Shopify vs Wix

It’s off the top of our head that Wix is the best competitor and alternative of Shopify. What makes Wix come first in this list is its commitment to top-notch features in many aspects.

If Shopify requires subscription fee or third-party plugin to upgrade advanced features, Wix on the other hand, provides you with the built-in apps for whatever your business needs, from Wix Booking, Wix Hotels, Wix Menu to the newly added – Wix Donations. Thanks to its extensive range of built-in features, you have greater control over your site’s operation and edition. The easy-to-use and useful tool – drag and drop lets you add and place elements at any place you want in your website and customize size, color, font and even animation.

Wix’s templates and themes are also flexible for many industries. However, it is not allowed to change once your site has been done. This means that unless you delete your site, you will never make any changes to the theme you have chosen. All themes and templates are free from Wix, and in case you cannot find the one you love, Wix’s ADI permits you to have a personal AI-generated template while Shopify only has under 20 free templates and no AI website builder.

However, Wix is beaten by Shopify because it lacks a huge amount of multichannel integrations. Wix may be a little easier to use for beginners, but Shopify offers more extensive e-commerce tools and is frequently more versatile for those with more complex demands.

>> Read more: Wix vs Shopify: Which Is Better For Your Business Success

Shopify vs Squarespace

In the Squarespace vs Shopify review, the score is really close. In terms of pricing and plans, Squarespace is more affordable, as its highest price is only $49 per month while that of Shopify is $299 per month (and even ten times higher if you join Shopify Plus). Although it doesn’t have a free plan, Squarespace does have a 14-day free trial, which should be enough for you to build your site and see if it is for you.

Both Shopify and Squarespace come with elegant and high-aesthetic themes but according to user reviews, they are more likely to choose Squarespace since it has a reputation for producing modern and visually appealing websites.

Since Shopify was designed only with e-commerce in mind, every feature on the site is intended to assist you in creating and managing product sales for your company. With more than 6,000 third-party connectors, Shopify offers almost infinite capability. The Squarespace inventory system used to be restricted and did not allow bulk uploads. Squarespace now enables selling both goods and services thanks to the Acuity Scheduling tool, which was used to address this issue.  Furthermore, unlike Shopify, Squarespace does not offer payment alternatives for digital cryptocurrency wallets like Amazon Pay.

Is Shopify worth it?

To sum up, Shopify is a powerful and reliable platform for online businesses compared to other Shopify competitors on the market thanks to its ease of use, flexibility, a vast selection of themes and apps and non-tech friendliness. In addition, Shopify offers users tons of comprehensive and robust reporting and analytics, along with internationalization capabilities that help you to grow and expand your customer base.

However, in this Shopify review article, Shopify has its drawbacks. Therefore, it’s important to weigh both the pros and cons of Shopify before making a purchase decision.

So, our answer is – Shopify is definitely worth it if you are a small to medium-sized business looking to sell online. But, you might want to select a different platform if you’re concerned about additional expenses, want certain specialized features, or have a tight budget.