Launching an eCommerce business capable of generating sales of $900 billion, maybe a profitable venture in a wide range of scenarios.
Here’s where Shopify comes into play! A seamlessly integrated e-commerce solution entitled Shopify offers pre-built web stores that you can edit and personalize to your heart’s delight.
German-born businessman Tobias Lutke launched Shopify in Canada in 2006 after realizing that the e-commerce system he developed to sell snowboards could be used and sold to other companies.
According to Internet statistics firm Builtwith.com, the platform is utilized by millions of businesses across 175 countries, has produced over $543 billion in sales, and supports almost 3.7 million online storefronts. Moreover, the firm presently employs over 10,000 people.
Building a Shopify store is as simple as creating an account and editing an established template.
It includes several sophisticated marketing capabilities, such as a gift-card system, omnichannel commerce, social media integration, blog, and mobile application builder.
Shopify has everything you require to enter the realm of online marketing and sales, whether you are a newbie exploring the world of online commerce or an experienced expert running a profitable business.
Before you sign up for Shopify’s services, you need to understand how it may assist your business and where it can go awry. Well, let’s peek at the pros and cons of Shopify!
Table of Contents
Pros Of Shopify
There must be some legitimate reasons for Shopify’s current prominence, right? The following is a breakdown of some of Shopify’s benefits.
1. Ease Of Use
The first feature a company owner seeks from their online marketplace is a reduced reliance on technology. Most significantly, you would want an online eCommerce platform with an intuitive user interface.
The most recurring statement in Shopify’s advantages breakdown is how it minimizes the need to maintain the technical components of your online business.
The platform is frequently sold and lauded as being simple to use and maintain, with a simplified single dashboard that allows you to access and control your whole business in a few keystrokes.
2. Mobile-friendly
Even the most delicate things will struggle to sell in an unappealing shop or platform. Shopify is a contemporary website builder that is well-known for offering a huge number of mobile-responsive templates and styles geared toward various sectors.
Subscription themes, as well as a variety of free themes, are offered for sale. You may anticipate your site to appear fantastic because all its themes are appropriately designed for mobile devices.
Nevertheless, don’t expect to be able to tailor your site as per your preferences. You must be satisfied with what Shopify provides for you; after all, it maintains uniformity for all its users!
3. Scalable And Flexible
It is essential to be sure that the platform you select will evolve with your company so you never have to fret about switching providers.
Shopify offers a strong developer community and marketplace to assist businesses in meeting their objectives.
Free and premium themes are available, which may be customized using the built-in theme editor.
Shopify provides flexible pricing and functionality to businesses of all sizes, from startups to corporations.
It is a sophisticated eCommerce solution ready for the future owing to ongoing development, maintenance, and third-party integration to increase selected features.
Users may personalize their stores to meet their demands, which is critical for standing out in a saturated market.
4. eCommerce And Third-party Integration
Shopify’s most crucial feature is eCommerce. To create an eCommerce platform, you should look at this website builder.
It contains everything, including the ability to sell items, manage inventory, taxes, and shipping, select payment methods, and sell across different channels. Bonus: Shopify has its payment gateway, which you may use for free.
Third-party interfaces with Shopify allow for more shop customization. The Shopify app store offers free and premium apps, even a Shopify lite.
Shopify also features a rich API that offers several possibilities for creating bespoke storefronts and interacting with other platforms.
5. Customer Support And Account Management
Shopify Plus provides unparalleled customer service! You get a diligent launch manager who oversees your account from development through deployment and any bug patches or technical challenges that arise.
Users also receive a reliable merchant success manager that works with them to help their business flourish.
Customers may access the Shopify support staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by live chat, email, and phone.
6. SEO features for Marketing
The marketing campaigns on Facebook ads, google ads, and emails can help construct landing pages on Shopify.
Users may also generate discount coupons for products for sale on the platform, but for more complex marketing strategies, you can visit Shopify’s app marketplace.
Using Shopify, you can easily change and customize site content characteristics like title tags, picture alt text, and descriptors and optimize SEO.
Forget about the 404 error because the redirect system seamlessly redirects old URLs into new ones.
You may add keyword phrases and spec sheets to your web pages to create unique product content.
The advanced Shopify plan with advanced features acts as a robust marketing tool that provides insights into your business performance.
Cons Of Shopify
It is hard to summarize Shopify’s benefits and drawbacks without mentioning its shortcomings. Here are some of the significant cons of Shopify.
1. High costs pricing plan
Shopify is an excellent solution for many startups and small company owners, but it is not always the most cost-effective alternative.
Shopify includes many free features, but you must pay if you want a fully functional website. The basic package is $29 (monthly price) and may be upgraded to $299.
This platform has several methods to save expenses, such as employing free applications or searching online for inexpensive developers.
Most of the features in their regular plans have an extra fee that can soon stack up and cut into your revenues unless you generate them back appropriately.
2. Manually Intensive
While themes and third-party applications offer usefulness, there is always the risk that a specific application may not operate with your theme or that it will necessitate theme tweaks to operate. Many of the most helpful app integrations have a monthly cost.
It might get much more pricey if your shop hires a developer to make the necessary changes to incorporate a new app or construct other bespoke capabilities.
3. Content Management Limitation
The main strength of Shopify is not publishing and blogging; this is merely an added feature.
Although we can create a website with plenty of information, brands searching for a content management system with many features can feel that Shopify Plus misses the mark.
Shopify is designed specifically for eCommerce, so if you are switching from a WordPress blog, this may seem uncomfortable.
4. Inflexible Exit Strategy
Recognize this as a caution if you wish to switch your Shopify business to a different platform: it won’t be easy!
Hence, picking a dynamic eCommerce platform can be challenging because you need to think ahead and not only about expenses today.
Shopify is a terrific platform for expansion, but switching to a self-hosted platform is likely worthwhile for a more significant business that wants absolute authority.
Furthermore, Shopify offers consumers extremely few data points if they decide to move, compared to other platforms.
Any hosted e-commerce platform has the same issue. This is a crucial factor when choosing a sales or marketing platform.
5. Payment Gateways
Every online shop needs payment gateways to accept payments from customers and must abide by its terms and conditions that might not be accessible in every nation.
This might complicate the checkout process for users with variable transaction fees. The most convenient method for both users and online stores is credit cards.
Shopify supports third-party payment gateways or payment processors such as stripe, Payoneer, Paypal, Opayo, Verifone, etc., as payment options.
Additionally, Shopify payments charge chargeback fees, which might abruptly stop your cash while they look into the mistakes.
6. No Email Hosting
Even the Basic plan, the cheapest price plan, offers web hosting, but Shopify does not provide email hosting. This implies that you cannot host a domain-based email address like [email protected].
However, you can configure email forwarding as a solution. Doing this will automatically route every email sent to [email protected] to your primary email accounts, such as Gmail or Yahoo. The same holds for email replies.
The email campaign can only be accessible if you set up a third-party email hosting connection.
Summary Table for pros and cons of Shopify
| Pros of Shopify |
|---|
| Ease of use |
| Mobile-friendly |
| Scalable and Flexible |
| eCommerce And Third-party Integration |
| Customer Support And Account Management |
| Marketing & Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |
| Cons of Shopify |
|---|
| High Costs |
| Manually Intensive |
| Content Management Limitation |
| Inflexible Exit Strategy |
| Payment Gateways |
| No Email Hosting |
Things to know about Shopify for online store builders
- Shopify provides value-for-dollar sort of discount codes. These discounts are in the form of buy A to get a discount of B, which can be stored as codes.
- If you are starting a dropshipping business, you can do this in five simple steps building a store, signing up for a free trial, selecting a monthly plan with at least basic features, looking for discounts, and adding your products.
- You can add a sales channel from platforms like Amazon to your Shopify store.
- The built-in feature, called POS, lets you set up your sales features in physical stores.
- It is best to align your eCommerce store with social media platforms and Email marketing for the sales campaigns.
Shopify is undoubtedly the most refined online e-commerce platform for someone to launch a small business quickly.
It offers consumers a straightforward manual and all the necessary resources to launch and run their businesses.
But, Shopify isn’t the most incredible option if you want to start a blog or build a website for your business.
After examining Shopify’s features, benefits, and drawbacks, it would appear that the former outweighs the latter.
Overall, Shopify is a fantastic platform for eCommerce, but the choice of a platform depends on the specific requirements of each business.
If you are starting an online business, e-commerce is a must-know technology and if you are looking for open source platforms, check out our article on the pros and cons of Woocommerce.
(Last Updated on September 5, 2022)
