Shopify Review 2022

Shopify Review

For

  • Detailed and Comprehensive Knowledge base
  • Comprehensive and flexible e-commerce builder
  • An extensive list of Free and Paid apps to add to your Store
  • 24/7 customer support
  • Secure server and No bandwidth limit
  • No revenue-per-year limit
  • Easy Sales channels Integration

Against

  • Unless you use Shopify Payment, Shopify charges transaction fees
  • Maximum 2 staff accounts
  • Transaction fees are only reduced in higher-paid plans.

Many reviews can be found online when it is a matter of Shopify, but none of them matter as much as this one. Shopify is the leading shop builder on an online platform in the whole industry. It has over 600,000+ shops online and generates over $40 billion in business. No matter what you need to do, whether it is to form an online shop or an offline one, to grow your business, Shopify caters to all your business needs.

One notable thing that Shopify has successfully done is invite vendors such as online tool providers and theme designers to come together and integrate their skillsets into Shopify to make it an even better platform for everyone who needs to create an online shop.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify Pricing

You get the option to choose between five plans offered by Shopify. The cheapest plan starts from $29 every month, whereas the most expensive method of Shopify costs somewhere south of $299 every month. With the most affordable plan, Shopify Lite, you get the freedom to sell an unlimited number of products on your online store.

  • Basic Shopify – $29/month
  • Shopify – $79/month
  • Advanced Shopify – $299/month

In terms of pricing, you can avail a massive benefit with Shopify as you pay only every month instead of on an annual or biennial basis. You also get a 20% discount if you choose to pay annually and a 20% discount if you choose Shopify’s biennial plans but only if you choose to pay the cost upfront.

The pricing plans offered by Shopify are pretty consistent, and in terms of competition, they are pretty competitive with the other big fish in the market like BigCommerce and Volusion. The only thing that separates Shopify is its Lite plan, which does not offer you a filly-hosted online store. However, it allows you to use several existing features of Shopify on your own website for a monthly stipend.

Shopify Features

Shopify Features

Storefront

With the option to choose between 100 themes, Shopify is mobile-friendly. You get full customer support on the blogging platform, the opportunity to customize your online store, edit HTML CSS and your domain name, and the chance to host your entire website on Shopify instead of the other way around.

Shopping Cart

Shopify automatically handles your tax rates based on location and features like flexible shipping rates, abandoned carts, multiple languages, free shipping offers, over 100 payment gateways, credit card payments, and SSL certificate security.

Store Management

In-store management, Shopify offers features such as customer profiles, customer accounts and groups, fulfillment centers, order fulfillment, dropshipping, refunds, and email templates to streamline your work even more.

Marketing & SEO

Features such as SEO, generated sitemap, XML, discounts, and gift cards may be essential. Still, they feel incomplete without social media integration, google ads, product reviews, email marketing, and Facebook selling which you get with Shopify.

Products

Features such as inventory management, product variations and organization, multiple images, SEO tags, import/export, and the chance to upload unlimited products make using Shopify so convenient.

Analytics

With the help of Shopify’s dashboard, product reports, export reports, google analytics, traffic, and referral reports, you can manage your business’s progress with better clarity.

Mobile App

With everyone using their mobiles to buy and sell everything, your store must have a functional mobile app. Shopify gives you features such as order fulfillment, mobile dashboard, inventory management, email/call customer feature, and data synchronization.

Shopify Payments, Gateways, and Transaction Fees

Shopify offers you payment options for credit card acceptance. Most users choose the simplest one, Shopify’s in-built payment system. With this option, you won’t have to pay any transaction fees. However, it would help if you considered your credit card rate, which in the U.S. alone is between 2.4% to 2.9% per transaction. The rate that you pay entirely depends on the plan that you are on. The lowest transaction fees only become accessible if you are on the most expensive plan.

The second option is a third-party payment gateway that allows you to process card transactions. Here you get to choose between a 100. Using this option will mean you need to set up a merchant account with its payment gateway provider.

Whether you choose a third-party payment gateway or Shopify Payments, it will all completely depend on which plan of Shopify you are on. There are a few notable things about Shopify Payments, however. The biggest one is that it is only available in a few countries.

  • Puerto Rico
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • Ireland
  • Hong Kong
  • Singapore
  • New Zealand

If you don’t belong to any of these countries, you will most definitely have to choose a different payment gateway provider with transaction fees that may be significantly higher.

However, Shopify does give merchants the option to integrate with more payment gateways than those provided by any of its competitors in the market. This means that if you are a merchant based outside the listed countries supported, you can easily find a payment gateway that suits your needs.

Ease of Use and Customer Support

Shopify may be easy, but it doesn’t magically give you the kind of store you want. You will have to invest a couple of hours learning the basics of the platform, and once you have done that, it is smooth sailing from that point. The bonus in this department is that you get round-the-clock online and phone support from Shopify’s customer support team, ready to help you whenever you are stuck in a rut and no doubt one of the best support services I have ever encountered.

Following is a list of tools you get access to with Shopify.

  • Insert descriptions, details, and pictures
  • Managing inventory
  • Organizing products by categories to help customers find what they need more easily
  • Discount code engines
  • Creating blogs and web pages with ease
  • Order and customer tracking
  • Up to 70 payment processors for different currencies
  • Customer accounts for customers so that they can log into their own accounts in order to manage information such as their address, credit information, and orders.
  • Sorting customers based on location, size of the order, etc. This gives you the possibility to categorize your customers based on their behaviors so it is easier for you to market your products to them better.
  • Managing multiple staff logins so that your staff can be provided with different permission levels to handle your online shop based on their experience and skillsets.

Hosting and Backup Options

Hosting and Backup Options

In the monthly package you choose, Shopify provides unlimited bandwidth so your online shop can run smoothly. This means that you can have up to 10 million visitors to your online shop in a month and will not be charged a dime over your package cost. In this department, Shopify beats big fish like BigCommerce, which does come with a bandwidth limit that can be pretty restrictive for you.

The best thing about Shopify is that it manages the entire hosting process for you so that you get a chance to oversee more critical aspects of your business, such as marketing and revenue turnover. Shopify ensures that all the necessary security measures are taken along with handling technical details to ensure that your online store keeps running without any online security threats like hacking.

The online store you run with Shopify is Level 1 PCI compliant, with an SSL certificate and 128-bit encryption technology, which banks mostly use to keep user information as secure as possible. Once your visitor’s information is on Shopify’s servers, it won’t go anywhere without your consent. You can also make this information visible to your visitors to form a bond of trust with them.

Shopify App Store

Shopify App Store

Shopify gives you an extensive list of apps that can be added to your online shop to automate your business tasks. You get the option to choose however many apps you need from 1200 offered to you on Shopify’s app store.

You don’t only get tools to ease sales and marketing tasks but also several additional devices that allow you to handle administrative tasks such as taking inventory, orders, shipping, customer service, and even bookkeeping efficiently.

Even though Shopify incorporates several essential functions to ease these tiring tasks, the applications available in the store make them even better to do, maybe even fun. This makes paying a monthly fee for these apps worth it if, in the long run, they save you both time, money, and effort.

Take the example of the live chat functions that allow your store to improve with the help of pre-sale questions, customer service, customer reviews, and rating widgets so that your visitors can see what other people have been saying about your services products. Positive reviews, in particular, help a business go a long way in terms of new customers.

You have the option to pick the apps best suited to your business. If you don’t think you need a particular app, there is no reason why you should add it to your store. You have complete control in this department. While apps will make it easier for you to run your business, too many of them might not also be a good idea.

Shopify Theme Store

Shopify Theme Store

With Shopify, you get to choose between 100 free and premium themes that you can use to make your online shop appealing to your visitors. Your online shop needs to reflect the products that you sell along with looking professional yet elegant enough to build credibility. Yes, it is a lot to ask, but wouldn’t it be great if you could get all that in one theme? Shopify gives you a hundred to choose from! If your customers feel like they can trust your store, they will also trust your products.

While some of the themes Shopify offers are free, others are paid. The paid articles range anywhere from $140 to $180. Though this may appear rather pricey, remember to only pay for it once. You don’t have to make monthly fees or pay any recurring charges for the theme in the future. This can easily count as an investment towards your online store as it ends up satisfying your customers, who then make a purchase, making you happy by increasing your sales.

If you are functioning on a tight budget, then there is always the option to choose from free themes, which offer you a lot of functionalities like paid themes. Once you start generating traffic onto your store and have some revenue collected, you can switch to a produced piece of your choice and benefit with even more visitors and sales.

Final Thoughts

Shopify proves to be a powerful e-commerce platform in the market. But two specific things piqued our interest the most.

  1. Premium Themes: These allow your store to look professional and attractive while only charging you a fee once. But the benefits are endless.
  2. Shopify Apps: Allow you to add more functionality to your store to handle administrative tasks better.

What Shopify does is it understands the needs of your business. The most significant benefit you get with this platform is unlimited bandwidth. With other e-commerce platforms, you get a specific limit of bandwidth which, if you exceed, you have to pay a certain amount per gigabyte of bandwidth your store uses in a month, which can be highly inconvenient.

What Shopify does is it understands the needs of your business. The most significant benefit you get with this platform is unlimited bandwidth. With other e-commerce platforms, you get a specific limit of bandwidth which, if you exceed, you have to pay a certain amount per gigabyte of bandwidth your store uses in a month, which can be highly inconvenient.

You get a lot in a package that barely costs anything. You earn storefront themes and completely integrated apps that give you ease in handling admin tasks, saving you a lot of time in the long run. Shopify is a unique option for any businesses out there due to the amount of flexibility it provides merchants regarding payment gateways. All in all, we think Shopify brings more to the table than it takes away.

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