Last Updated: December 21, 2024
In this article, we’re going to be reviewing Shopify.
For those that may be completely unaware as to what Shopify is, it’s simply a platform, also known as a content management system, which allows for entrepreneurs and business owners to create websites and e-commerce stores for their business’.
It is extremely popular due to its ease of use (no programming skills required) and is most notably used by successful brands like Nestle, Tesla, Kylie’s Cosmetics, Red Bull, and many more.
We’re going to be discussing several aspects of Shopify within this Shopify Review article, so we hope that you’ll spend time reading it thoroughly.
However, if you’re short on time, we’ve included an article summary directly below:
Article Summary: Shopify is a great content management system for those who either:
1. Don’t have computer programming skills to create a site, but want a solution which looks fantastic, and has the option to be highly customizable
2. For those who want a quick, reliable, and incredibly professional-looking website solution (either e-commerce store or blog style)
With that being said, as we discuss in our AliDropship vs Shopify blog post, AliDropship is a WordPress plugin to create WordPress-based E-commerce sites, and whilst costing a $40+ one-off payment to buy, WordPress does not have a monthly cost like Shopify does, and only requires hosting costs which are about $7 per month.
However, time is money, especially for business owners, and WordPress definitely takes more setting up than Shopify, and hence if you’re just looking for a simple, straightforward solution to getting your business online, then Shopify may be better for you.
It should be noted that Shopify includes website hosting within the monthly package, so you don’t need to worry about the technical setup. Also, Shopify includes 24/7 customer support, which WordPress does not provide.
Shopify does provide a 14-Day Free Trial (No card details required) of their service, which you can get access to here:
>>>Get Access to your 14-Day Free Trial of Shopify<<<
Table of Contents
⭐Shopify Overview
Shopify is an incredibly popular e-commerce solution for building, hosting, and managing e-commerce stores. This includes both the setting up of your store, I.E the front-end (UX, theme, and visual aesthetics) and the backend management (inventory, marketing, and product fulfillment).
Make no mistake, whilst Shopify is incredibly useful for building e-com stores, it can quite easily create normal websites (blogs, information-based sites).
As we’ve mentioned before, Shopify is extremely user-friendly, requiring 0 coding skills, due to it’s drag-n-drop customize functions.
Additionally, with the sheer number of available themes (pre-made aesthetic layouts), Shopify looks professional and ready-to-go almost immediately, with minimal customization. Although you can customize nearly everything if you so desire.
Shopify For E-Commerce
We realize that most people looking at this review article will be interested in running their own Shopify e-commerce or dropshipping store.
With that being said, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re holding your own stock or dropshipping, as Shopify supports both business models.
The platform allows users to install a wide number of specific apps that help to expand your store’s capability. One such app which is extremely popular is Oberlo.
Oberlo helps to transform your new store into a fully-capable dropshipping store, that automatically handles stock management and product fulfillment.
🥇Shopify Features
- All-in-one e-commerce solution, including the ability to purchase domain, hosting, and CMS access
- Plenty of E-commerce themes available
- Easy-to-use for those who don’t have coding experience
- Free SSL certificate (essential for e-commerce stores)
- 100+ payment gateways for customers
- CRO optimization elements – Highly optimized templates, Abandoned checkout recovery, multiple languages, flexible shipping rates
- SEO optimization elements – Such as metadata, structured data, sitemap, etc
- Store management & order fulfillment capability
- Marketing optimization elements – Discounts, email marketing, social media integration, Google Adwords credit
- Web hosting – Unlimited bandwidth, SSL certificate, email forwarding, instant upgrades & updates
- Analytics – Traffic, conversions, product-specific reports
- 24/7 customer support
Read more about Shopify’s features here.
🥇Shopify Store Examples
Currently, there are over 427,000 websites that use Shopify.
Here are but a few of those websites, and in particular, the successful brands that have done a great job in their design and marketing.
Shopify Store Example 1: Triangl
Website: https://triangl.com/
Triangl is an Australian swimwear company that was developed in 2012. When looking at analysis through SimilarWeb, the brand is getting most of its traffic through Google’s Organic Search (I.E SEO) and through Direct means, which suggests that they are using Email Marketing.
The homepage has a clean but retro/vintage vibe to it, with the brand choosing to have an image carousel that Shopify supports.
The collection pages also look incredibly clean and extremely professional.
Shopify Store Example 1: Triangl
Website: https://wpstandard.com/
WP Standard is a premium-quality bags store which happened to win the Shopify Design Award in 2013, so you can rest assured that this is a good site to model your own on.
As with a lot of Shopify themes, this particular theme has the collection page being designed in a very minimalist way.
It simply leaves minimal distraction, with all of the attention being on the hero image (banner) and the particular products.
⭐Shopify Free Trial
As we’ve talked about within this article, Shopify provides a 14-Day Free Trial (No credit card required) for its new customers, which means that you can try out the platform and get creating your own store/blog, with minimal risk and no money spent. Win, Win!
To get access to the free trial, all you need to do is simply visit the page on Shopify’s website which we’ve linked to below, and fill in the required details.
>>>Get Access to your 14-Day Free Trial of Shopify<<<
⭐Shopify Pricing
First of all, it should be noted that Shopify provides a 14-Day Free Trial (No Credit Card Required) that you can access here.
As we talk about in this article, Shopify has three main packages available:
- Basic Shopify – $29/Month
- Shopify – $79/Month
- Advanced Shopify – $299/Month
We’ve gone into detail below about what each package contains, and you can also read more about it on the Shopify website here.
Basic Shopify – $29/Month
- Online Store
- Unlimited Products
- Staff Accounts – 2
- 24/7 Support
- Sales Channels
- Locations – Up to 4
- Manual Order Creation
- Discount Codes
- Free SSL Certificate
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Gift Cards
- Shipping Discount – Up to 64%
- Print Shipping Labels
- Fraud Analysis
- Shopify POS Lite
Shopify – $79/Month
- Online Store
- Unlimited Products
- Staff Accounts – 5
- 24/7 Support
- Sales Channels
- Locations – Up to 5
- Manual Order Creation
- Discount Codes
- Free SSL Certificate
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Gift Cards
- Professional Reports
- Shipping Discount – Up to 72%
- Print Shipping Labels
- USPS Priority Mail Cubic® Pricing
- Fraud Analysis
- Shopify POS Lite
Advanced Shopify – $79/Month
- Online Store
- Unlimited Products
- Staff Accounts – 5
- 24/7 Support
- Sales Channels
- Locations – Up to 5
- Manual Order Creation
- Discount Codes
- Free SSL Certificate
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Gift Cards
- Professional Reports
- Advanced Report Builder
- Shipping Discount – Up to 74%
- Print Shipping Labels
- USPS Priority Mail Cubic® Pricing
- Fraud Analysis
- Shopify POS Lite
🥇Pros & Cons of Shopify
There are several pros and cons of using Shopify, and we’ve featured them all below:
Pros
- A highly reputable company, used by over 1,000,000 companies’ including Tesla, Nestle, Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics and so many more.
- Easy to use (No coding skills required)
- Clean and Professional look to the majority of Shopify Stores
- Integrates with Oberlo to easily automate a dropshipping store
- More affordable than other options like ClickFunnels
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Lots of options for payment gateways
- Shopify Stores rank well in Google
- Marketing optimization options, including discounts, email marketing, social media integration, Google Adwords credit
- CRO optimization options – Highly optimized templates, Abandoned checkout recovery, multiple languages, flexible shipping rates
- Free SSL certificate (essential for e-commerce stores)
Cons
- The monthly cost is higher when comparing against WordPress, But Shopify provides 24/7 customer support
Conclusion
Shopify is a great content management system for those who either:
1. Don’t have computer programming skills to create a site, but want a solution which looks fantastic, and has the option to be highly customizable
2. For those who want a quick, reliable, and incredibly professional-looking website solution (either e-commerce store or blog style)
With that being said, as we discuss in our AliDropship vs Shopify blog post, AliDropship is a WordPress plugin to create WordPress-based E-commerce sites, and whilst costing a $40+ one-off payment to buy, WordPress does not have a monthly cost like Shopify does, and only requires hosting costs which are about $7 per month.
However, time is money, especially for business owners, and WordPress definitely takes more setting up than Shopify, and hence if you’re just looking for a simple, straightforward solution to getting your business online, then Shopify may be better for you.
It should be noted that Shopify includes website hosting within the monthly package, so you don’t need to worry about the technical setup. Also, Shopify includes 24/7 customer support, which WordPress does not provide.
Shopify does provide a 14-Day Free Trial (No card details required) of their service, which you can get access to here:
>>Get Access to your 14-Day Free Trial of Shopify<<<
We hope that you’ve found this Shopify Review article helpful, and if you have any questions about Shopify, then please feel free to leave them below and we’ll do our very best to reply ASAP.
