Shopify Review: Are they really the best?

The Canadian company Shopify launched its online store platform in 2006. The goal was simple: provide an easy way to sell products online that frees sellers from all technical hurdles.

Shopify states that there are already 150,000 businesses that rely on their platform to sell products. Given the fact that there is only a free trial bu tno free plan, this is an impressive number indeed and makes them one of the leading store builders worldwide.

In our test, we will find out how easy it really is to setup and maintain a shopify online store. How much knowledge do you need beforehand and where are the limits? Is shopify a reasonable alternative to other big players like eBay or Amazon Market Places? We’ll also take a look at the differences of their paid plans to give a better picture of which plan makes the most sense.

Let’s find out the secret behind shopify (or rather, if there is any secret to it)!

See the Online Shop in action

Shopify’s Online Store can be tested for 14 days for free here. (Link will open in a new window.)

The Shopify Online Store in Detail

Feature	Rating	Comment
Total Score	4.9 / 5	Excellent online store both for beginners and professionals. It doesn’t matter how big or small your online store is. Shopify offers you a perfect platform that makes selling not only easy, but also gives the tools to improve your sales. It’s worth mentioning that their website builder and blog are also pretty decent. Try it for free.
Basic functions
Product presentation		Zoom function, picture gallery, video - it’s all possible.
Product variants		First you define up to three options (e.g. size, color, material), then you add the variants (e.g. S,M,L,XL). From that Shopify will then generate all possible combinations, which can be up to 100. If you need more you can use one of their apps.
Cart function	Yes	In the “Professional” plan there is also an “Abandoned cart recovery” feature integrated. Among other things, it allows you to remind your visitors with an automatic email to complete their purchase.
Article numbers	Yes	Add your own SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) numbers to each product.
Mobile view	Yes	Optimized for smartphones and tablets with fully responsive layouts. For store owners, there are mobile iPhone and Android apps that let you manage your store on the go.
Checkout, payment and shipping
Payment options		Credit card (via more than 70 processors including Stripe and Authorize.net), PayPal, manual payment options and even BitPay for Bit Coins. They even introduced their own Shopify Payments gateway, which will waive the Shopify transaction fee for all plans (Currently available in the U.S., UK and Canada only). More details.
Sale of digital goods	Yes	It is possible to limit the number of downloads or the time of availability. Delivery is handled via email. Supports the new rules on charging VAT for digital goods in the European Union.
SSL encryption	Yes	Customer data and payment transactions are encrypted via SSL (https). Included at no additional cost.
Customer log-in area	Yes	Visitors can check out with a guest account or create their own personalized login. It’s even possible to let your customers decide whether or not they want to create an account.
Coupon codes	Yes	Fixed price, percentage, free shipping. You can set a maximum amount of usage and expiry date.
Shipping cost settings		Shipping rates can be set for each country individually or by shipping carrier (e.g. UPS, FedEx, etc.). You can also choose fulfillment/dropshipping with services like Amazon.
Tax settings		Is able to pull US tax rates automatically. Individual tax rates for other countries can be set individually. Allows you to display VAT prices on your product pages.
Backend
Article management		Shopify tracks all items you have in stock. There are also settings to receive notifications automatically. There is even a new POS system to manage both your online and offline inventory. This also allows you to take offline payments via an iPad.
Customizable e-mails for order confirmation		Yes. You can edit every notification email as you wish.
Importing/exporting product data	Yes / Yes	Product data can be imported from Magento, eBay, WordPress and CSV. This saves a lot of time and makes moving previous web stores to Shopify easy. Exporting a CSV-file is also possible.
E-Commerce analysis	Yes	Shopify offers reports in its “Professional” plan and higher; product reports, order reports, and more are available (you can see how orders vary from month-to-month, for example). Moreover, it’s always possible to integrate Google Analytics.
Exporting order data	Yes	Export your orders in a CSV-file.

Conclusion

After having tested Shopify for a whole week, we have to admit that we are quite impressed. To compare it with small-scale online stores like Weebly or Squarespace almost seems unfair as they easily beat them in every single category – except price.

Adding products as well as setting up the payment and shipping options works absolutely painless: no important service is missing. That makes both ordering and paying easy for your clients. Their layouts can be modified to a large degree without any programming knowledge.

But Shopify is not only an online store. You can also use it to do content marketing via a blog and also add content pages. And that’s what we find so fascinating: Shopify can be handled by an absolute beginner while at the same time providing a great looking, cutting-edge online store.

Just in case you’re missing a function or want to change the layout, most of the time you are only one click away. New templates and apps can be installed with one simple click via their app store. If you should miss a function that doesn’t exist, it’s possible to create it since Shopify has a powerful template language called “Liquid.”

No matter how fast your business and requirements grow, with Shopify you don’t have to be afraid of moving to another platform and restarting everything from scratch (unless you become another Amazon, that is).

Of course, quality has its price. Shopify is not the cheapest solution, and even in their “professional” plan ($79/month), they charge you a 1% transaction fee. But you can bypass this fee by signing up for Shopify payments, which is their own payment gateway.

In their “Basic” plan ($29/month), they offer telephone support and the ability to modify your entire template. Find our full analysis of Shopify’s pricing plans here.

Still looking for flaws in Shopify? We’ll give you one: you won’t be able to set up a multilingual store out of the gate. However, we found a bilingual template and there is also an app priced at $17.50 per month that can help you create a multilingual store.

If that’s not an issue for you, Shopify might be THE answer to all your ecommerce questions!

>> Try Shopify 14 days for free (no credit card needed)

Our recommendation: before going “big,” consider picking the “Starter” plan ($14/month) if you are selling 25 products or less.

FAQ 

(1) Can I sell digital goods like MP3s, videos or eBooks with Shopify?

Answer: Yes. You can sell files with Shopify.

(2)  Can I upgrade or downgrade my plan easily?

Answer: Yes, you can always change your plan type. An upgrade or downgrade will initiate a new billing cycle and close the current one. Existing funds will be credited to your new plan.

(3) How do I cancel my Shopify subscription?

To cancel your online store, go to Settings > Account page.  Select the “Close my Store” option.

 10 Reasons People Love Shopify
1. Shopify Is Easy to Use
2. Shopify Is Hosted
3. Reliability
4. Customizable Design
5. The Shopify App Store
6. Simple to use
7.Unlimited, 24/7 toll free Shopify support
8.Conveniently run your store on the go
9.1-click integrations
10.Start selling in no time at all

Shopify Payments

Traditionally if you wanted to accept payment you would have to use a third-party payments processor like Stripe, PayPal, or others that would charge a certain fee per transaction. The company has created their own payment processor called Shopify Payments, if you decide to sign up for this program then all transaction fees will be lifted regardless of your plan.

With the basic payment plan Shopify charges 2.9% + 30c per transaction, while the company charges 2.5% + 30c and 2.25% + 30c per transaction, for the Professional and Unlimited plans per transaction. At the moment this plan is currently only available in the U.S. and Canada. Other than Shopify Payments the company also offers integration with more than 70 different payment gateways, these include accepting payments from credit cards, Google Checkout, PayPal and many more.
These gateways all come with their own transaction fees, as these can get a little confusing, I strongly advice that you familiarize yourself with these before signing up, as you might otherwise be surprised at just how much is charged as a fee.

Shopify Security

Security is taken very seriously in ecommerce and therefore they have created their shopping cart platform as well as their hosting to be Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, in other words your data is secured. All pricing plans offer 128-bit Free SSL certificate at no added cost.
While data security is very important to etailers, many also worry about their store always being available, and Shopify provides their customers with a 99.94% uptime guarantee. Furthermore the company creates secure backups of all your data, so even if your store should for some reason disappear, it will be backed up and ready to be restored within minutes.

Shopify Support

If you find yourself in the need of support, then Shopify has one of the best offers in the industry. Regardless of which pricing plan you decide on the company has 24/7 customer support, this includes phone support as well as chat and email support. Another great form of help offered by Shopify is the access to a sizeable support system directly through their website, this includes user forums, tutorials as well as FAQ’s.

If you are just beginning your journey as an e-tailer then Shopify has created the Ecommerce University. Here users gain access to eBooks, videos and guides, with the purpose of helping customers learn the ins and outs of running their own web store.

Conclusion

After having taken advantage of the features offered by Shopify for quite a while I can say if you are looking to sell commodities online, or looking to sell your products in general then you ought to give Shopify a try. I would gladly recommend Shopify to everyone, if nothing else then at least give their 14-day free trial a try, I am certain you will not be disappointed.

UPDATED CONCLUSION (March 2015)

Since the initial review of Shopify, they have continued to make improvements to their platform. The fact that customers are no longer redirected to a checkout.shopify site when completing their purchase is a very big plus. It helps to make the shopping experience more fluid. One thing I would like to see in the future would be a few more free themes, however this is still a minor complaint, and I would still gladly recommend Shopify to anyone who is looking to start their own online store.

What do you think of  Shopify? Let me know what’s your opinion in the comments. 
Originally Composed By Armin Pinggera