Launched in 2006, Shopify has established itself as one of the go-to ecommerce platforms for building a high-converting website. It’s used by businesses of all sizes from solopreneurs to small businesses and all the way up to multinationals like GymShark.
But, with the annual price of Shopify’s plan aimed at small businesses close to £600 and the list of close alternatives larger than ever, we thought it useful to ask the question: Is Shopify worth it? In this review, we cover everything you need to know when deciding if Shopify is worth it; from pricing to the need for apps, and Shopify’s keen focus on user-friendliness. As a digital marketing agency specialising in SEO, we’ll also give our expert assessment of Shopify’s SEO capabilities
Jump to
- Pricing: How much does Shopify cost?
- Ease of use: Is Shopify user-friendly?
- Customisation: How customisable is Shopify?
- Marketing: Is Shopify SEO-friendly?
- Scalability: Is Shopify suitable for growing businesses?
- Summing up: Shopify — is it worth it?
Pricing: How much does Shopify cost?
Shopify operates a subscription-based pricing model with three plans that are broadly designed to meet the needs of most businesses. These plans can be paid monthly or yearly basis, with a 25% discount applied if you pay the annual fee upfront. The prices listed below are based on annual billing with the new customer discount where the first month costs just £1.
1. Basic | £210 in year one, rising to £238 in year two
Designed for solopreneurs, the Basic plan restricts account access to one user only.
Transaction fees:
- 2% + 25p GBP online
- 1.7% + 0p GBP in-person
- 2% 3rd-party payment providers
2. Shopify | £540 in year one, rising to £588 in year two
Designed for small teams this mid-level plan is accessible by six users.
Transaction fees:
- 1.7% + 25p GBP online
- 1.6% + 0p GBP in-person
- 1% 3rd-party payment providers
3. Advanced | £2849 in year one, rising to £3107 in year two
Designed for medium to large businesses, this plan is accessible by sixteen users and includes additional internationalisation features. For example, the duties and import tax feature gives customers more clarity on total cost by estimating and collecting duties and import taxes at checkout rather than the payment page.
Transaction fees:
- 1.5% + 25p GBP online
- 1.5% + 0p GBP in-person
- 0.6% 3rd-party payment providers
Understanding Shopify pricing
You’ll notice that there isn’t too much difference in terms of additional features between the three plans. The key difference between the plans is the number of account users and the transaction fees aka card rates.
There’s also a Shopify Plus plan, but this is targeted at large enterprises and doesn’t warrant mentioning here. For the full breakdown of each of the three plans mentioned above, including individual features, see Shopify’s pricing page.
Ease of use: Is Shopify user-friendly?
Whether you’re setting up your first online store, redesigning the layout of your ecommerce site, adding new items of inventory, or getting to grips with post-sale analytics, managing an ecommerce website takes a lot of work. You’ll want a platform that you’re comfortable using on a daily basis and isn’t going to give you constant headaches.
User experience is at the core of successful ecommerce, and it’s clear that Shopify understands the business they’re in. Shopify is used by businesses of all sizes because it offers excellent functionality in a user-friendly way.
Intuitive website builder
One area where this user-friendliness is immediately apparent is the Shopify website builder. Although it will certainly help, you don’t need previous web development experience to create a powerful ecommerce site on Shopify.
There’s a straightforward setup guide, but Shopify’s website builder uses a drag-and-drop system that’s particularly intuitive. This straightforward builder removes the need to watch endless video tutorials or parse through technical documentation every few minutes. As long as you have an idea of what you want your ecommerce site to look like, and are prepared to do a bit of experimenting, you can get started on building your online store immediately.
Keep in mind that Shopify has a strong focus on building powerful ecommerce websites. Other Content Management Systems (CMS) allow for far more comprehensive builds. For example, in our comparison of 6 of the leading CMS we found that WordPress can be customised to add extensive functionality without the need for bespoke development.
All-in-one platform
Another of Shopify’s strong points is that it brings together multiple commerce activities on a single platform. As well as maintaining your online store, the Shopify admin dashboard allows you to manage tasks like inventory management, shipping and post-sales content marketing.
Shopify does this through a combination of built-in tools and integrations with third-party apps and services. By bringing the entire sales and marketing process onto one easy-to-use platform, Shopify streamlines workflows and saves you time.
Customisation: How customisable is Shopify?
Customisation on Shopify can be thought of as two levels. The first level is the approach that the majority of users take, i.e. the non-technical utilisation of the drag-and-drop website builder ‘as it is’ straight out of the box.
This approach offers a decent level of customisation and it’s definitely possible to build an online store that reflects your brand. There’s a huge number of free and paid themes, many of which give you some degree of control over the design elements within your chosen theme. You can also use additional integrations to further customise your store’s appearance and functionality.
The second level is a more technical approach that involves utilising the Liquid template language. Written in the Ruby programming language, Liquid is an open source language that is used in Shopify themes. Users who are familiar with Ruby or comfortable with programming can use Liquid to alter every aspect of their theme’s design. This allows for a much deeper customisation of their store’s design and functionality.
Integrations and the Shopify app store
The Shopify app store has a growing catalogue of apps, numbering in the thousands, which can be used to customise your online store. The app store can be used to add a specific function that isn’t available as standard, or for linking your Shopify site to a digital service that you already use.
You can think of apps like plug-ins. They enhance your Shopify site by adding functionality. Some apps are free whilst others are paid, either via a one-time fee or subscription. Although apps can add value, adding paid apps obviously increases the monthly cost of using Shopify. Don’t rush into adding loads of apps. Instead, be wary of recently released apps, read customer reviews or seek out the opinion of digital marketing experts.
Marketing: Is Shopify SEO-friendly?
All of Shopify’s packages come with basic marketing features such as the ability to integrate social media, email marketing, and certain social media advertising campaigns. There’s also Shopify’s own analytics tool called ‘Insights’ which is designed to help you build an understanding of how users are interacting with your store. Our guide to ecommerce websites explains why PPC and ecommerce go hand in hand.
But in this article, we’re more interested in the built-in marketing and SEO tools that are available on Shopify.
SEO on Shopify
A key SEO feature on Shopify is the ability to add a blog to your store. This means you can publish written content that targets specific keywords, increasing the chance of your store being discovered on Google Search.
Shopify also allows you to optimise the meta titles, descriptions, and URLs of the pages that make up your site, further improving your keyword targeting.
Another crucial SEO feature on Shopify is the use of responsive design. Responsive websites adjust to the size of the screen that they are being viewed on, meaning your site will look good on all desktop and mobile devices. As more and more people use mobile devices to search and shop online, Google has reiterated the importance of responsive design to the overall user experience.
Scalability: Is Shopify suitable for growing businesses?
Shopify is highly scalable. Beyond Shopify Basic, the other Shopify plans offer additional features to suit the needs of growing businesses. For example, additional user accounts allow colleagues to collaborate and manage the admin dashboard simultaneously, then there are the features designed to aid the internationalisation process. The localised global selling feature allows you to tailor your store to customers located in your main export markets.
Shopify Capital gives businesses access to various types of funding that can be used to drive growth, such as inventory, marketing, and payroll financing.
Summing up Shopify: is it worth it?
Now approaching its third decade of operations, Shopify’s brilliance lies in the way it is both a comprehensive ecommerce platform whilst also being extremely easy to use. This makes it suitable for use by businesses of all sizes. It’s also maintaining its market leader position through the regular addition of new features, many of which incorporate the latest technology —see Shopify Magic for a prime example of this innovation.
Shopify is suitable for scaling businesses. In fact, by taking transaction fees Shopify is incentivised to encourage business growth. Its plans seamlessly scale up with your business, with additional and more complex features available as and when you need them. Shopify is also cultivating a healthy ecosystem of apps and integrations to further enhance the functionality of your online store.
However, an honest assessment of whether Shopify is worth it must at least consider its comparative weakness. That weakness is the pricing and level of customisation. Although the base price of Shopify plans seems reasonable, keep in mind that Shopify charges transaction fees and many of the add-on apps are also subscription-based. Factor in that Shopify doesn’t offer the same level of customisation as using the WooCommerce plugin to build a bespoke ecommerce site on WordPress, and the price of Shopify can seem especially high.
Ultimately, your choice of ecommerce platform or CMS will be based on your business’s circumstances. Outside price, your decision will likely revolve around user-friendliness and the objectives of your business.
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At WebHummel we know how to build ecommerce websites that help you sell more. We build bespoke websites for our clients, implement effective SEO strategies to ensure those websites rank, and drive more sales through ads.
If you’re ready to ‘bee’ found online, give us a ‘buzz’ and let’s get a discussion going about your business objectives.
