Shopify Pros And Cons – Is It Worth Using?

Shopify isn’t the only option for those who want to launch an online store. In fact, there are several ecommerce platforms available in the market today

But, why is Shopify the most popular standalone ecommerce platform amongst many others? With more than 2.4 million (source: storeleads.app) active Shopify stores to date, there must be something about it that makes it very compelling.

This Shopify pros and cons article will give you a fresh perspective on the features of Shopify. By the end of it, you’ll be able to answer the question, “Is Shopify worth using?” Let’s begin.

Shopify Pros And Cons – Overview

The list of Shopify pros and cons below is quite lengthy. So if you want a summary of everything we’ve tackled below, here’s a list:

Shopify Advantages And Disadvantages

Shopify boasts a lot of attractive features for both startups and seasoned ecommerce business owners. These features serve as major advantages in using Shopify over other ecommerce platforms.

However, it is worth noting that running a Shopify store isn’t a walk in the park. Shopify also has some disadvantages, albeit not major ones, but it’s important to understand them.

Here are some notable Shopify advantages and disadvantages that you need to know.

Advantages Of Shopify

Beginner-friendly

Shopify is designed to be beginner-friendly so that even a solopreneur can launch a Shopify store without hiring an agency to develop a website.

Take a look at The Paperhouse Ph’s online store:

Source: thepaperhouseph.com

The Paper House PH is owned by a solopreneur named Pat – an aspiring artist with no coding knowledge. But when you explore the website, it has its innate appeal that stems from its sleek and natural colors accompanied by great product quality.

She managed to pull off this well-designed store because of Shopify’s easy-to-use theme editor. This is proof that with the commitment to learn, you can design a beautiful online store with Shopify.

There are tons of Shopify resources online to help beginners wade through the first few challenging months of their ecommerce journey. Here are some of them:

• Shopify Help Center
• PageFly Ecommerce Blogs
• Learn With Shopify

Affordable pricing in the Basic Shopify plan

Shopify offers four pricing plans for beginners to enterprise-scale brands. It also offers discounted pricing for those who pay on an annual basis.

Here’s the monthly pricing plan of Shopify:

• Basic Shopify - $39 per month (or $348/year, equivalent to $29/month)
• Shopify - $105 per month (or $948/year, equivalent to $79/month)
• Advanced Shopify - $399 per month (or $3588/year, equivalent to $299/month)
• Shopify Plus - starts at $2300 per month

Based on the pricing above, the barrier for entry for a new online business in Shopify is very low. At only $39 per month, you’ll have an online store with all the functions needed to sell internationally.

In addition to the four primary pricing plans, Shopify has alternative plans for other types of merchants:

The Starter Plan, at $5 per month is best for merchants who want a simple ecommerce feature integrated in their social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. With this plan, there is no need to create an online store.

The Retail plan, priced at $89 per month, is best for existing businesses who want a more robust POS system to track their sales and inventory using the Shopify POS platform.

And lastly, the Enterprise Commerce plan with custom pricing is best for existing large-scale businesses who want to deploy an ecommerce platform for their brands.

Enhanced payment solutions with Shopify Payments

One crucial element of an ecommerce business is the payment gateway. In any Shopify plan, Shopify Payments is available for all merchants.

Shopify Payments includes major and popular platforms like Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx. This also includes other digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay.

One major advantage of using Shopify Payments is that you won’t be charged any additional processing fees for this payment gateway.

Enhanced shipping solutions

Shopify has an enhanced shipping solution called Shopify Shipping.

Shopify Shipping is the platform’s proprietary shipping solution that provides access to lower rates on major shipping carriers in the United States, UK, EU, and Australia.

These carriers include:

• USPS
• UPS
• DHL
• FedEx
• Canada Post
• Sendle
• Evri
• DPD
• Colissimo
• Mondial Relay
• Chronopost
• Poste Italiane
• Correos

Robust app ecosystem

Third party apps play a significant role in managing an online store in Shopify, and it is a huge advantages mentioned in every Shopify reviews.

Shopify has an extensive app store that houses more than 12,000 apps to date. This includes basic apps such as product reviews all the way to intricate ones such as CRMs and ERPs.

The Shopify app store is the largest app collection compared to other ecommerce platforms. With that, whatever you need, you can find a Shopify app for you.

Or if you’re managing a complex online store, you can commission Shopify experts to create custom apps for you using the Shopify API.

Well-designed themes

The Shopify theme store is home to some of the most stunning themes for every type of online store.

There are a total of 215 themes in the Shopify theme store to date. And the list is growing. Of these 215 themes, 13 of them are free.

These free Shopify themes are by no means mediocre as you can create a good-looking store out of them.

But if you want more functionalities, opting for a paid Shopify theme is not a bad idea. For that, we highly recommend the Shine theme.

The Shine theme is a mid-tier Shopify theme priced at just $210. Its in-built features could easily rival those that cost north of $300.

But if you’re not ready for a paid theme, we suggest starting with the Dawn theme.

Source: thepaperhouseph.com

Our previous store example, The Paper House Ph, uses the Dawn theme for their online store. And boy isn’t it beautiful?

What we also love about the Shopify themes is that they feature a one-page checkout that results in increased conversions according to studies by Shopify.

Sales and marketing features

Shopify’s sales and marketing features are top-notch.

Shopify can be integrated with Meta Pixel, Google Shopping, and even on YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program.

Additionally, your Shopify store can be integrated with other high-traffic, multi-vendor ecommerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Target.

But what stands out is the Shopify Shop app.

Shopify offers access to the Shop app for eligible merchants. Shop app is a multi-vendor marketplace that’s exclusive to Shopify merchants. With millions of potential customers, your business will definitely get the exposure it needs to its target audience.

In-store and online integration

Shopify isn’t just for online businesses. It’s also built for entrepreneurs who want to grow their brands in both online and physical channels.

All Shopify themes are equipped to be integrated with in-store selling. Even the free ones like the Dawn theme.

To integrate online and in-store operations, you can use the Shopify POS which works with Shopify Payments and  all Shopify themes.

Comprehensive reporting & analytics

Shopify offers a robust and intensive reporting and analytics system to help you manage your business and to formulate data-backed decisions.

With Shopify’s comprehensive reporting tool, you get inventory management that oversees your stocks (including stocks on multiple locations if applicable), sales on all channels, visitors, website performance, and more.

Additionally, Shopify Analytics, you can access the live view feature that allows you to monitor events in your online store in real time.

Moreover, this tool also provides insights about your store’s finances, including sales, returns, taxes, and more.

Scalability online and through physical stores

Compared to other ecommerce platforms, Shopify offers the most scalability features in ecommerce. Other ecommerce platforms rely on third-party apps for scaling on physical stores. On the other hand, Shopify has that integration (Shopify POS) completely built within its platform.

The best plan to use for growing enterprise-scale businesses is the Shopify Plus.

Although Shopify Plus starts at $2300 per month, it affords businesses access to every feature and infrastructure that Shopify offers.

With Shopify Plus, your store is unlocked for extreme flexibility, customizability, and scalability. You can create a headless ecommerce, different storefronts for different markets, and more.

A case study on Stoov shows the substantial impacts of having a capable platform like Shopify Plus. After just one year from using Shopify Plus, they have seen a 27% increase in their conversion rates between 2021 and 2022. What’s more mind-blowing is that from only selling 10,000 bed cushions in 2019, they were able to sell 500,000 bed cushions in 2022 when they started using Shopify Plus.

Another company that has seen a substantial improvement since switching to Shopify Plus is Willemse. In just 4 months since migrating to Plus, they were able to see a 10% improvement in their organic traffic. Additionally, from the day they launched their Shopify Plus store, they have noticed a 100% increase in site speed.

These case studies prove that Shopify Plus is capable of handling growing businesses.

Disadvantages Of Shopify

Pricing of Advanced & Plus plans can be too high

Although the Basic and Shopify plans are inexpensive, the Advanced and Shopify Plus plans can be pricey.

This may not be a deal-breaker at all as merchants are not compelled to choose a higher plan. As such, you only have to subscribe to a higher plan when your business necessitates.

Be that as it may, the monthly subscription is still worth the financial planning.

Can be complicated as your store grows

Shopify offers the most-advanced ecommerce platform in the market today. But because of that, operating it can become complicated as your business grows.

Take these following scenarios for example:

• Integrating an advanced inventory management system that isn’t listed in the Shopify app store.
• Editing the Shopify code to introduce more functionalities.
• Setting up shipping for multiple warehouse locations as well as integrating in-store pick-ups.
• Going for a headless CMS for various storefronts.

Shopify is more than what meets the eye. It has a multitude of features that are best implemented by experts.

Monthly operations can be costly with apps

One of the main advantages of managing an ecommerce business on Shopify is its modular system in that it comes bare with only the necessary features. But that also becomes a disadvantage when you look at the costs entailed in using Shopify apps.

There are few free apps in the Shopify app store. It is to be expected that if you want to use apps on your Shopify store, you need to spend money on their monthly subscriptions.

And when you use multiple apps on your store, their costs could easily add up.

Therefore, when creating a business plan for your Shopify store, research the apps that you might need to use and include them in your costing so you’re financially prepared when you come in.

Visual customization can be limited

There are more than 200 Shopify themes available for you. And each theme allows you to design your store in various ways for that unique look and feel.

Be that as it may, a Shopify store is not as malleable as a WordPress site out of the box.

But the good thing here is that there are page builders like PageFly that allows you to design your store the way you want to.

With these apps, you can design a unique online store like no other.

💡Check out these Shopify storefronts to see the design possibilities of a Shopify store.

Limited blogging capabilities

Shopify is primarily an ecommerce website builder. It offers a robust platform that can handle complex ecommerce operations.

What Shopify isn’t is a blogging platform. As such, if you want to run a blog in your Shopify store, you might find its blogging feature a bit lacking when compared to other purpose-made blogging platforms like WordPress.

One major limitation on Shopify’s blogging capabilities is the absence of advanced customization features that allow bloggers to implement visual elements. It also does not have SEO capabilities to implement do follow and no follow links.

But that’s not to say that you cannot be successful in blogging with Shopify. In fact, some large Shopify brands publish blogs on their Shopify stores.

Shopify themes can be expensive

Unlike other ecommerce platforms like Wix and Squarespace that offer their themes for free, most Shopify themes are paid.

As such, you need to take into account the cost of the Shopify theme that you want to use when budgeting your online store.

Take note that how the Shopify themes look in their demo stores are merely suggestive. You can still customize these themes to put your unique branding on them. Thus, the key here is to choose a Shopify theme that balances its price with in-build features.

Or as we said, if you’re not ready for a paid theme yet, you can choose a free theme for a start.

Transaction Fees

One of the main considerations when deciding to launch a Shopify store are the transaction fees.

Credit card transaction fees on Shopify are fees that are charged by the payment providers. If you’re using Shopify Payments as your payment gateway, these fees are waived.

But regardless of your payment gateway, Shopify still charges transaction fees against its merchants.

The fees are as follows:

• Basic Shopify - 2%
• Shopify - 1%
• Advanced Shopify - 0.6%
• Shopify Plus - 0.2%

As you move to a higher plan, the transaction fees get smaller.

Therefore, when planning your online business with Shopify, make sure to take into account the transaction fees on top of the fees charged by your payment provider.

After knowing the Shopify advantages and disadvantages, you now have a better understanding of the platform. This list will help you set the right expectations when using Shopify.

Is Shopify Any Good? - Conclusion

After having read the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify stores, the question is, “Is Shopify any good?”

We honestly think that Shopify is a good platform for those aspiring to launch an ecommerce business. And as explained above, Shopify isn’t just for startups. It also has the capability to handle brands with complex online and physical operations.

You might also wonder, “Does the cost of managing an online store on Shopify justify its benefits?

It can’t be denied that operating an online store on Shopify can be costly because of the monthly subscription on apps, the paid themes, and the transaction fees.

However, when you think about all the benefits you gain when using the platform, these costs can easily be compensated with the right pricing, and the proper marketing to hit your target sales.

We hope that you learned something from this Shopify pros and cons article. Don’t forget to choose your ecommerce platform wisely.