There are now a lot of tools for creating online stores, and choosing the right one for your business can feel really difficult. Shopify is probably the most popular e-commerce solution on the market – but is it really the best solution for you?
In this post, I’m going to help you figure that out. I’ll go into detail about the pricing and the themes. By the end of this post, you’ll have a clear idea if Shopify is the right e-commerce solution for your project or if you’d be better off with an alternative.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a web application that lets you create your own online store. It offers you a large selection of themes that you can customize to your own branding, and allows you to sell either physical or digital products.
The platform aims to let beginners create an online store themselves – you don’t need to have programming skills to use Shopify. However, even with programming knowledge, you can further improve your theme and add features.
How does Shopify work?
Shopify is a hosted solution. This means that it runs on its own servers and you don’t have to buy web hosting or install software to use it.
You don’t own a copy of the product, but pay a monthly fee to use it – and as long as you have access to a web browser and the Internet, you can manage your store from anywhere.
With Shopify, the most important things you need to build and market an online store – like templates, a payment system, a blog, and even email marketing tools – are already included.
However, you can further customize your store by adding additional apps – more on that later – or by writing your own code.
Shopify costs
There are three Shopify plans with the following monthly fees:
- Shopify Basic – 27€ per month
- Shopify 79€ per month
- Advanced Shopify – 289€ per month
There are a few things you should briefly mention here: There is also a free trial that is valid for 14 days (and can usually be extended if you need more time to get your store ready).
You can access this free trial on the Shopify website.
What you should know about Shopify Themes
Shopify provides 9 free themes that you can use.
The free Shopify themes are 100% responsive and well designed. However, they do not have any additional features like a timer etc.
If you don’t like the free templates, you can buy a paid theme like Debutify.
In terms of aesthetics, Shopify templates all look professional, easy to recognize and very modern – nothing to complain about here. When choosing a theme, you should pay attention to whether it is officially supported by Shopify or not.
All free themes are officially supported by Shopify. However, if you use a premium template, you may need to contact the developer who created it for installation or customization questions.
All in all, Shopify’s template offering is of high quality – but if you’re not satisfied with the options provided and want to create something truly unique, you still have the option to create your own theme.
Accessing the Shopify theme code is easy, and there are plenty of tutorials to help you develop your own template.
Once you’ve launched a Shopify trial, chosen your theme, and decided on a plan, you can focus on selling through the platform.
If you want to see the comparison of WooCommerce with Shopify click here. And here I compare Shopify with Squarespace.
My Shopify experience
Shopify is a great choice for your online store. Because of the many apps, you can extend your store with important features like invoices and cookie banners. If you don’t have Shopify yet, you can try it here for 3 months for only 1€ per month.
