Shopify Review 2020: Pros And Cons Of Using Shopify For Your E-commerce Store

Without a doubt, Shopify is an excellent e-commerce platform for brands and businesses that want to build an online store. But what is it exactly?

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that helps you set up your own online store and sell products through various channels. From marketing, inventory management, payments, e-commerce order fulfillment, and shipping, it handles everything that you need to build a successful online store.

This post will cover Shopify's pros and cons, as well as how you can gauge it to make it work for your business.

Pros of Using Shopify

Speed and Security

There are a lot of factors that you have to keep into consideration when it comes to website speed. Fortunately, the platform could handle speed and security at a "global" scale and does it particularly well.

Shopify provides 100% SSL so that it creates a fast loading site. You could integrate it with other payment providers as well to ensure that you will always get paid, and most users would never have to wait for the page to load.

Aesthetic Themes

Not only that the bundled Shopify templates are extremely attractive, but they are also very responsive. Meaning, they will display quite nicely on all kinds of devices.

If their free themes do not fit well with your taste, you could always opt for a paid or premium theme. There are hundreds of storefront themes that are specifically tailored for e-commerce and the Shopify platform.

Unlike WordPress, every theme is designed for the e-commerce industry, providing you with options for a variety of niches. Moreover, every theme comes with a few variants. The prices range between $140-180, and just like with the free themes, all of them are highly responsive.

Ease of Use

The first question that you should ask when picking an e-commerce platform is how manageable it is. Fortunately, Shopify is one of the most user-friendly e-commerce platforms out there, making it an excellent choice for both newbies and established businesses.

It is designed to be relatively easy to use, taking care of the tech needs of your store so you do not have to. Even the most tech-challenged people can still set up an e-commerce store online.

Cross-channel selling

The platform allows you to utilize other sales channels to boost sales. Here are a couple of sales channels that supports easy integration of products:

• Selling on Facebook: Sell your products on Shopify via the Facebook page.
• Selling on Pinterest: Sell your products directly through your pins.
• Selling on Amazon: Connect your Shopify with Amazon Professional Seller.
• Selling on Mobile Apps: Sell your products through the apps that you've developed.

Cons of Using Shopify

Payment for Shopify Apps

There is a fee whenever you use a Shopify app. Unfortunately, you cannot automate some of your e-commerce processed without these apps. And doing it manually can be a waste of time.

The next viable option would be to hire a virtual assistant who can do manual data encoding for you. However, that could be costly and prone to errors and discrepancies.

Pricing is Expensive

Back in 2014, Shopify has restructured its pricing plans to be more in line with other business models in the industry. Its Lite Plan used to cost $9 per month before the pricing went up.

Also, keep in mind that the Lite Plan is exclusively for Buy button sellers. So, the monthly cost of the platform starts for as low as $29 per month.

No Email Hosting

Another downside of Shopify is that it does not provide email hosting. So, it means that you could not host a domain-based email address such as info@myshopname.com.

You could use email forwarding instead. That way, when someone contacts info@myshopname.com, it will be automatically forwarded to the regular email you use on Yahoo! or Gmail. The same thing goes when you are replying to emails.

To utilize the email forwarding function, you need to set up first a third-party email hosting connection before replying to your own email.

Limited Support Option

If you are experiencing any technical issues, then support is usually limited. Instead, you might have to post or ask a question in a forum before you could get an answer from the developer.

While there are support numbers that are listed, it is only limited to countries like the UK, the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Over to You

There is no denying that Shopify is one of the biggest and most successful e-commerce platforms today. However, it does not mean that it is a one-size-fits-all business solution for those who would have an online presence.

It still has a few flaws here and there that might discourage businesses from choosing this platform. But it does not mean that it is inefficient, either. If you have the budget, Shopify is a viable online platform for both small and mid-sized businesses that are just starting out in the e-commerce world.