Shopify
Commerce-first website builder for online stores of any size.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a commerce platform for building online stores and selling across web, social, and in-person channels. It provides hosting, storefront design, checkout, and inventory tools.
Best known for: Building and running online stores
Key features
- Online store builder
- Checkout and cart
- Inventory management
- Multichannel and POS selling
- App marketplace
- Themes and templates
Who Shopify is best for
- Businesses whose website is primarily an online store
- Merchants selling across web, social, and in-person (POS)
- Brands that need a large app ecosystem and reliable checkout
Ideal team: Ecommerce merchants of 1–500 who want a dedicated storefront, inventory, and payments platform over a general site builder.
Shopify pricing
Starter
$5/flat / mo
- Sell via links & social
- No full storefront
- Simple checkout
Basic
$29/flat / mo
- Full online store
- 2 staff accounts
- Basic reports
Grow
$79/flat / mo
- 5 staff accounts
- Professional reports
- Lower card rates
Advanced
$299/flat / mo
- 15 staff accounts
- Custom reports
- Third-party shipping rates
Costs to watch before you commit
- Using a gateway other than Shopify Payments adds a 0.5–2% transaction fee per sale.
- Many essential features come from paid apps that stack monthly charges.
- Advertised prices assume annual billing; monthly billing is ~25% higher.
Shopify pros and cons
Pros
- The most reliable checkout in ecommerce, and checkout is where lost sales actually happen
- App ecosystem is the largest in the category: whatever you need, something exists
- Sells across web, social, marketplaces and in-person POS from one inventory
- Handles hosting, security, PCI compliance and scaling so you never think about infrastructure
- Every developer, agency and freelancer already knows it, so help is easy to hire
- Starter plan at $5 lets you sell via links and social without a full storefront
Cons
- Using any gateway other than Shopify Payments adds a 0.5-2% transaction fee on every sale
- Essential functionality often lives in paid apps, and monthly app charges stack quickly
- Advertised prices assume annual billing; monthly is roughly 25% higher
- Themes and deep customization typically need developer help beyond the basics
- Blogging and general content management are weak next to a real CMS
- Costs scale with success in a way flat-fee platforms don't
Shopify review: a closer look
What Shopify is
Shopify is the default hosted ecommerce platform: storefront, catalog, checkout, payments, shipping and POS in one subscription, with infrastructure entirely managed. It is not a website builder that also sells; it is a commerce platform that also has pages, and that distinction determines whether it is right for you. If the store is the business, Shopify is usually the answer. If the store is a small part of a content site, it is likely more platform than you need.
Checkout is what you are actually paying for
Everything else in ecommerce can be imperfect and you still make money; if checkout breaks or feels untrustworthy, the sale is gone and you rarely find out why. Shopify's checkout is the most tested in the industry, converts well, and stays up under load, Black Friday included. Shop Pay's saved details lift conversion further for returning shoppers. That reliability is unglamorous and it is the real product. Assess alternatives on that basis first, because a cheaper platform that loses a percentage of carts is not cheaper.
The two costs that surprise people
First, transaction fees. Shopify charges 0.5% to 2% on top of your processor's rate if you use anything other than Shopify Payments: at $50,000 monthly revenue, a 1% fee is $500 a month, several times the subscription. If Shopify Payments is available where you operate, use it; if it is not, add that fee to your comparison. Second, apps. The ecosystem is genuinely a strength, but the practical result is that reviews, subscriptions, advanced shipping and email each arrive as a $15 to $50 monthly app, and a working store commonly runs $100 to $300 a month in apps on top of a $29 plan. Budget the whole stack, not the plan.
Where it is not the right tool
Content-led businesses feel Shopify's weakest edge quickly: blogging is basic, content modeling is limited, and a brand whose growth comes from publishing will fight the platform. B2B selling with price lists, quotes and credit terms is possible but sits on higher plans or behind apps, where dedicated platforms include it cheaply. And a business selling a handful of products alongside a service site may find a general builder with a light store, or a zero-transaction-fee platform, a better fit than paying for commerce infrastructure it barely uses.
How it compares
Against WooCommerce, Woo is free software with total flexibility and hosting, security and maintenance as your responsibility: cheaper in license, more expensive in attention. Against BigCommerce, BigCommerce charges no platform transaction fee and includes more natively, at the cost of a smaller ecosystem. Against Zoho Commerce, that takes no platform cut at all and includes B2B features at accessible tiers, which makes it a genuinely cheaper option for a straightforward catalog, with a far smaller app library. Against Squarespace or Wix commerce, those suit content-first sites with a modest store. Against Etsy or Amazon, those are marketplaces you rent an audience from rather than platforms you own.
Who should use Shopify?
A good fit
Shopify fits merchants of roughly 1 to 500 people whose website is primarily a store, who sell across several channels, and who want infrastructure and checkout to be somebody else's problem. It is the strongest choice where conversion reliability matters more than platform cost, where you will draw on apps or agencies, and where the store is the business rather than an add-on.
Look elsewhere if…
Content-led businesses that sell a little should use a general site builder or WordPress with WooCommerce. Merchants with a simple catalog and tight margins should price Zoho Commerce or BigCommerce, where there is no platform transaction fee. Businesses that cannot use Shopify Payments should model that 0.5-2% carefully before committing. And anyone whose selling is genuinely B2B-first will find dedicated platforms include quoting and price lists far more cheaply.
The verdict
Shopify is the default for good reasons: the checkout converts, the infrastructure never becomes your problem, and the ecosystem means you are never the first person to need something. For a business whose store is the business, that reliability is worth paying for. Go in with the full cost modeled rather than the plan price: the 0.5-2% fee on non-Shopify Payments gateways and $100 to $300 a month in apps are where real budgets land, and both scale as you grow. If your catalog is simple and your margins are thin, a zero-transaction-fee platform deserves a serious look first.
Top Shopify alternatives
Popular Website Builders tools teams evaluate alongside Shopify.
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PagecloudPagecloud is a drag-and-drop website builder that lets users design and publish custom sites with freeform, pixel-level control and no coding.
ZaapAll-in-one link-in-bio with digital product sales and email marketing built in.