Shopify Reviews: At What Point is the Most Popular Store System aka Shopify Worth It?
Shopify has its roots in 2004: Back then, Canada-based Tobias Lütke, was dissatisfied with the user experience of his snowboard online store. Without further ado, he decided to develop his own system that would allow online retailers to easily create a well-functioning store without any major hurdles. Shopify has since become the top dog among cloud store systems. In this article, we highlight what online merchants / sellers report about Shopify – from their experiences, drawing from the multitude of Shopify reviews available.
Along with that, we describe the main benefits as well as disadvantages of Shopify. Concerning positive experiences with Shopify, the following aspects can be considered most relevant:
- Quick market entry
- Good usability thanks to drag & drop editors
- Intuitive backend
- Easy customization
- Advanced product management
- Large community and knowledge base
- Professional themes and designs
- Stable server performance
Difficulties with Shopify are reported by users especially in the areas of:
- Shopify app costs
- Familiar themes
- Email hosting
- SEO: URL structure
- Multilingual shops
- Service and support
- Transaction fees
In the basic version of Shopify, you certainly can’t map many features of your store without investing. But the possibilities increase greatly if you have a budget set asided for apps, themes and plugins. Among such plugins is our magnalister interface. When using it, you can expand your reach by selling your products through your Shopify backend on various online marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, OTTO Market and many more.
TEST MAGNALISTER IN A 30 DAY FREE TRIAL
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Taking a deeper look at positive Shopify reviews
Taking a deeper look at negative Shopify reviews
Checklist: Which requirements does it fit and who is Shopify for?
Multi-channel sales with magnalister for Shopify
Conclusion
Taking a deeper look at positive Shopify reviews
We would like to start with the positive experiences reported by Shopify merchants / sellers. We have divided these into different aspects.
Handling & Time-to-Market
One of the most frequently described positive aspects within Shopify reviews is the drag & drop functionality that can be used to design pages. Accordingly, what the many different themes all have in common, is that they can be created very easily. This means a great advantage overall, but it is particularly relevant for small businesses using Shopify, because they can certainly succeed in setting up a professional store without involving an agency or freelancer.
Accordingly, one can be very fast to create a store with Shopify – users report this unanimously. This benefit is accompanied by the advantage that a store created with Shopify is up and running comparatively quickly.
Backend & Customization
Many Shopify sellers report that the menu navigation in the backend is very user-friendly and intuitive. This also saves resources, as your employees don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for menu items hidden in complicated structures. After all, it is also more fun to work with a nice and simple user interface.
Regarding the customization of your store, a lot is possible with Shopify. It can be done in at least two ways. First, customization is supported by a large selection of themes that allow changes to varying degrees. Therefore, it is also worth it to invest a sufficient amount of time in researching Shopify themes. This makes it more likely to find a theme that meets your requirements and allows for the features and designs you want. Large parts of the source code can be customized. Another way to achieve custom designs is through plugins and apps. Features and layouts can easily be added and changed that way. For example, multichannel sales are easily possible when using our magnalister plugin for Shopify. We will go into this in more detail below.
Product management
The majority of reviewers praise the options available in Shopify product management. For example, it is very easy to create product variations. The Shopify Help Center serves as a step-by-step guide here.
Community
In addition, Shopify’s popularity makes it easier to work with freelancers or agencies when the need arises. This means that if more complex adjustments need to be made to your store, a large community is ready to help. And most users report the same – the community is experienced and very helpful.
Design
It will take a lot of effort to make a store designed with Shopify look chaotic. Because even the free themes are well and professionally designed. A lot of experience has gone into the rich treasure trove of themes, and many features have been optimized again and again over the years. This is how users see it: In terms of design, Shopify offers a very solid platform, the themes and their templates are well designed.
Terms & Conditions
The costs for creating a functioning store can be very low, depending on your requirements and the size of your company. You can get started with the store system for as little as $30 per month. And this is also supported by user reviews.
Another positive Shopify review: The marketing options are numerous. Both through automation with Shopify Flow, and with many different types of marketing campaigns (Social Media, Google, etc.), the reach can be increased and sales can be boosted.
Users are also impressed with the wide range of payment methods that can be offered to customers in next to no time. Shopify Payments eliminates transaction fees, while percentage charges and service fees vary depending on the type of plan you are subscribed to.
Stability of the cloud
Finally, some users praise the high stability of the Shopify Cloud. The key message here is: “It just runs”.
Taking a deeper look at negative Shopify reviews
Let’s move on to the more troublesome areas, namely the negative Shopify reviews from sellers. No store system can meet all requirements. And hence also Shopify is not suitable for the wishes and needs of every single merchant. So who is Shopify for, you might ask. Well if the below aspects are highly important to you, you might want to think twice before committing to the platform
Costs of Shopify apps
Some users estimate the costs for apps at Shopify to be comparatively high. However, it is possible that corresponding comparison values from other store system providers are missing here.
GDPR standards
Although Shopify is headquartered in Canada, the system still complies with the provisions of the GDPR. Whether every third-party plugin offered via the Shopify App Store is compliant with the GDPR cannot be confirmed across the board. Here, the respective plugin developers are to be consulted.
By the way: magnalister is operated by a German company based in Berlin on German servers. In addition, the app fully complies with all other regulations within the scope of the GDPR.
Known designs
Shopify themes are on a high level in terms of design. And yet, themes in which all features are designed to meet the needs of a large group of users, by definition, cannot be extremely fancy – this coincides with the experience of some users.
General requirements can be implemented very well with the themes and their templates. But when more specific requirements arise, themes and templates may reach their limits, or experimenting with custom source code and workarounds with apps may become necessary. For some themes users also criticize that in some cases the desired templates are no longer available for the subpages.
Email hosting
Shopify does not offer email hosting (as of June 2022). So if you want to use email hosting for your custom domain, you have to make use of other providers. Some users find this to be a disadvantage of Shopify.
Transaction fees
Some users criticize the transaction fees that are added to the service fees when using payment providers that are not listed with Shopify Payments. These are 2% for the Basic subscription, 1% for the Shopify subscription, 0.5% for the Advanced subscription, and 0.15% for Shopify Plus.
SEO: URL structure
For search engine optimization (SEO), it is considered disadvantageous that the URLs in Shopify cannot be changed entirely. A certain part of the URL is fixed by Shopify. For example, product pages always have /products/ in the URL.
Multilingual stores
(At least partly) it seems to be an obstacle for some users to set up their store with Shopify in multiple languages. In principle, this is possible on all subscription levels (except Basic) with the help of apps in up to 20 languages. If you want to be selling on Shopify in a country whose language is not English or German, you should inquire about it in advance, before committing to the store system.
Service and support
Providing good service and support for a store system is not a particularly easy task. Accordingly, critical voices can also be found in this department. For example, some users find that they have to wait too long for a response. But simultaneously many alternative store systems are criticized for their support too. It is important to mention that most of the Shopify support is in English. After all, it is up to each individual to decide which store system to give a chance.
Checklist: Which requirements does it fit and who is Shopify for?
You will now certainly weigh the positive against the negative Shopify reviews. For this purpose, we would like to provide you with a checklist. Shopify is not equally suitable for all businesses, so the question if Shopify is really worth it, cannot be answered immediately. Neither the experiences of users nor this checklist will help you decide for or against the shopify system. But maybe both will help you to make a decision that is well informed.
Among other things, the checklist refers to the complexity of your project. The main point here is to check whether Shopify Advanced or Shopify Plus can meet the requirements for you in the case of very complex and large projects. Related to this is the need for customization. Does your store need particularly fancy features?
In addition, the question is how much of a hurry you are in to enter the market and start selling on Shopify. In terms of scalability, thanks to the high server performance, expected peak loads or rapid growth in particular are an argument in favor of Shopify. Being not very tech-savvy or IT-savvy also tends to speak in favor of the system. You should also have some resources to ensure compliance with GDPR standards in your store. Finally, English language skills and sufficient budget for transactions and apps are an advantage.
- Project not more complex than average
- Manageable need for customization
- Quick entry into the market desired
- Scalability: Peak loads expected
- Few programming skills available
- Desire to hand over everything related to hosting the store
- Willing to invest in compliance with GDPR standards
- English not a problem
- Financial buffer for transaction fees, apps and themes available
The more check marks you have, the more likely you are to make a good choice for yourself with Shopify.
Multi-channel sales with magnalister for Shopify
We have already mentioned our interface plugin magnalister. It enables multichannel sales with Shopify and makes them particularly efficient at the same time. Depending on your wishes, you can use it to expand the reach of your Shopify store system to a greater or lesser extent. You manage everything from the Shopify backend while operating on various online marketplaces. Selling centrally on Shopify and all subsequent processes in one backend: If this appeals to you, our plugin is the right choice for you. You can integrate the following online marketplaces into your Shopify store system:
- Amazon
- eBay (worldwide)
- Etsy
- METRO Marketplace
- Kaufland
- Hood.com
- Check24
- Ricardo
- Idealo
- Cdiscount
With magnalister you can go even more global, thanks to many international Amazon marketplaces:
- Amazon Netherlands
- Amazon UK
- Amazon USA
- Amazon Canada
- Amazon Austria
- Amazon Italy
- Amazon France
- Amazon Spain
- Amazon Australia
- Amazon Singapore
- Amazon Poland
- Amazon Sweden
Do you want to enter international markets and grow? Then the combination of Shopify (Software as a Service, SaaS) and magnalister could lead you to your goal.
Conclusion
If you have already done your research on Shopify reviews, you know the advantages and disadvantages. We have shared other online merchants’ experiences with Shopify with you in this post. A crucial question now is whether you need access to the entire source code of your store for your purposes – that is, the entire core. This becomes necessary especially if you expect a lot of customizations. This could be the strongest argument against Shopify.
Beyond the described disadvantages, there are many factors in favor of the most popular store system. After all, it has achieved its popularity for a reason. It offers the possibility of a quick market entry. Thanks to drag & drop editors, the handling of pages is easy even for those who have little or no programming knowledge. The backend is designed intuitively. Customizations can be easily achieved within the boundaries of themes, but also with the help of apps and plugins.
The product management offers numerous options, which are well documented in the Shopify Help Center. There is also a large community available that one can turn to for questions. Finally, many users report that their shops run very stable – this is due to the solid server performance of the Shopify Cloud. There is little to be said against testing Shopify: After all, you can try out the system in a 14 day free trial.
One way to expand your Shopify store system is to sell on multiple channels with our magnalister plugin.
We have summarized the most important core features of magnalister here:
- Product upload: Upload products to marketplaces
- Price synchronization: Prices are matched fully automatically or individually (per marketplace)
- Inventory synchronization: Always up-to-date stock levels between store and marketplaces
- Automatic order import: Import and manage marketplace orders
- Attribute matching: Match product variations and features with marketplace attributes
- Order status matching: Automatically match order status (e.g. “shipped” or “canceled”) with marketplaces
- Interface customization: Customize the plugin via so-called hook points as you desire
- Invoice upload: Upload your own invoices or invoices generated by magnalister to marketplaces
If you want to start your ecommerce journey with Shopify and open up new markets at home and abroad, test magnalister during a 30 day free trial with full functionality. magnalister is also available for Shopware, WooCommerce, Magento, Gambio, xt:Commerce and many other store systems.
We wish you much success – whichever solution you decide for.
