Shopify Pros And Cons: All You Must Know About

Introduction

If you want to launch an eCommerce business, you’ve probably heard about Shopify – one of the most popular eCommerce platforms with millions of merchants. However, Shopify’s popularity doesn’t justify its quality. That’s why in today’s article, we’ll guide you through all you must know about Shopify pros and cons!

Here are the three main points we’re going to discuss:

• Shopify overview: all you need to know about.

• Shopify pros: fantastic things we love about Shopify.
• Shopify cons: unpleasant things we’re not into.

Without further ado, let’s dive right in!

Shopify Overview: All You Need to Know About

Before we dig into Shopify pros and cons, let’s first learn what is Shopify and how does it work?

• What is Shopify?

Simply put, Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform that empowers entrepreneurs like you to easily create and run an eCommerce website. The platform provides you with a user-friendly interface, customizable themes, and a range of built-in features so you can showcase and sell your products effectively.

Shopify takes care of the technical aspects of launching an e-store, such as Shopify hosting, security, and payment processing. This allows you to focus on building your brand and promoting your business.

• How does Shopify work?

When you sign up for a Shopify account by subscribing to one of its pricing plans ($39-$399/month), you gain access to a powerful dashboard to manage every aspect of your online store. 

You can easily add and organize your products, set prices, and create collections. Shopify integrates with various payment gateways, making it simple to accept secure payments from your customers. 

Additionally, Shopify comes with various marketing and analytics tools to help you drive traffic, analyze customer behavior, and optimize your store’s performance. 

Shopify Pros and Cons at a Quick Glance

In a hurry? We’ve wrapped up all the Shopify pros and cons under the table below for your sake:

Now let’s dive into the details of all Shopify pros and cons for your better understanding.

Shopify Pros: The Fantastic Things We Love About Shopify

#1 Shopify is well-known for its ease of use

One of the standout Shopify store pros is its exceptional ease of use. Whether a newbie or a techie, you will love Shopify’s user-friendly dashboard. 

Shopify’s intuitive interface allows you to quickly set up your online store, add products, customize your design, and manage your inventory without any coding or technical expertise needed. 

With Shopify’s drag-and-drop theme editor and clean navigation, you can build a professional-looking, on-brand eCommerce site effortlessly. Shopify also provides extensive documentation and helpful tutorials, ensuring you have all the support you need to navigate the platform confidently.

#2. Shopify themes are well-responsive 

When you create an online store, it’s crucial to ensure that it looks and works seamlessly across different devices. And that’s the next pro of Shopify we’d love to mention. 

Shopify Theme Store is crowded with a wide range of professionally designed themes optimized for mobile, tablets, and desktops. 

This means that regardless of whether your customers are browsing your store on their smartphones or laptops, they’ll enjoy a visually appealing and user-friendly experience.

#3. Shopify is packed with many robust sales features 

One of the key Shopify benefits is its arsenal of powerful sales features that can turbocharge your online business. 

With Shopify admin dashboard, you can access various built-in tools designed to help you drive more sales and scale up your online store effectively. Shopify has everything you need to run a profitable e-store, from discount codes and abandoned cart recovery to personalized product recommendations.

What’s incredible is that if you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can easily leverage Shopify POS to sell your products in person. From our experience, this is of great help since you can manage your omnichannel selling in one central dashboard.

#4. Websites powered by Shopify have fast-loading speeds

When visitors land on your online store, the last thing you want is to keep them waiting as pages slowly load. That’s where Shopify truly excels. With Shopify, you can provide your customers with a smooth browsing experience thanks to its impressive loading speeds.

So, one of the benefits of Shopify is that you don’t have to struggle with frustrating delays that could drive your potential buyers away. 

A fast website enhances user satisfaction and positively impacts your search engine rankings. Shopify’s infrastructure and hosting are optimized to ensure your store loads swiftly, giving you peace of mind that you won’t miss out on sales due to sluggish performance. 

#5. You will have access to an extensive App Store

When discussing Shopify pros, it would be a huge mistake to leave out Shopify’s extensive App Store. With over 8000 apps available, you have a treasure trove of resources to enhance and expand your Shopify store’s functionality. 

Whether you need to improve marketing efforts, streamline inventory management, optimize SEO, or integrate with other platforms, the app store has got you covered. You’ll find an app to suit your unique business needs, from handy tools that simplify social media advertising to robust analytics platforms that provide valuable insights into customer behavior. 

With such a vast selection, you can customize and tailor your store to match your specific goals and industry requirements.

With that being said, if you rely too heavily on apps, it might add up to your costs– which we’ll discuss more below.

#6. Shopify suits well stores with a large inventory

If you want to launch an e-store with a sophisticated product catalog, Shopify should be your top choice. As far as we know, when you sign up for a Shopify plan, you’ll have unlimited bandwidth with unlimited products. 

As your business grows, you can introduce many more products to your e-store in clicks (one by one or via CSV file). The awesome part is that Shopify allows you to add up to 125 variants per product (color, size, material, etc.)

Probably this is also one of the biggest reasons why top eCommerce sites like Gymshark or Allbirds choose Shopify to host their eCommerce store. 

#7. Shopify has fantastic globalization features

Regarding the advantages of using Shopify, one notable feature is the platform’s ability to support globalization efforts. By accepting multiple currencies, Shopify empowers you to expand your customer base and boost sales rates significantly. 

Shopify makes this process simple and convenient, unlike other popular ecommerce solutions like Squarespace and Wix. However, while visitors to your store can manually select their preferred location and currency through a country selector, a more seamless and automatic currency conversion process would benefit some users who may not prefer pop-ups. 

Additionally, applying duties and import taxes is limited to the ‘Advanced’ or ‘Shopify Plus’ plans and currency conversion is only available if you use Shopify Payments. 

Nonetheless, Shopify remains an excellent choice for merchants selling in multiple currencies. On top of that, Shopify allows you to build a multilingual website by offering up to 20 translated versions of your store, either through language folders or international domains. 

#8. Shopify websites are secured

If you are serious about scaling your online store, ensuring your website is secure and free from fraud is a must, not a plus. So, is Shopify safe?

Short answer: it is. With Shopify, both your and your customer’s data is well-protected. Security is one of the noticeable benefits you will enjoy when hosting your website with Shopify. Shopify gives you a free SSL certificate, ‘https://,’ which Google approves.

Also, Shopify is PCI compliant, meaning the platform meets all credit card companies’ security requirements and standards. 

#9. Shopify dropshipping is high-rated

Are you passionate about dropshipping? If so, Shopify is a platform that hits all the right notes among dropshippers. 

As we said earlier, Shopify comes with a beautiful suite of marketing, sales, and inventory features. What we haven’t mentioned is that Shopify has a wide range of literally world-class dropshipping apps. 

For instance, apps like DSers or Ali Orders can help you import thousands of dropshipping items from AliExpress to your online store, automatically fulfill orders, etc. 

Though Shopify competitors have their app stores with dropshipping apps, these apps don’t even come close to the power of Shopify dropshipping apps.

#10. Shopify has a splendid customer support team

Shopify is simple to use and navigate around. However, no matter how intuitive a platform is, you can’t avoid accidental tech issues. Hence, when those unfortunate scenarios happen, you must be agile and fix them ASAP to minimize the damage. 

And if you choose Shopify, you can sleep tight at night knowing you can always reach out to Shopify staff any time since they offer 24/7 support. Not to mention that Shopify also dedicates a whole help desk and learning center (aka Shopify Academy) to upskill users.

#11. Shopify regularly brings many cool updates

Last but not least, one thing we especially appreciate about Shopify is that they put their mind to improving their features, dashboard, etc., to improve users’ experience constantly. This is crucial since you don’t want to stick with a platform where they are reluctant to change and keep all things the old-fashioned way.

For instance, with the current practices of using AI-powered technology, Shopify has brought the so-called “Shopify Magic” – an AI tool that automatically writes product descriptions. And they integrate it into your dashboard for free.

Shopify Cons: The Unpleasant Things We’re Not Into

Every coin has two sides. Now that we have gone through all the pros that make Shopify a world-class eCommerce platform, let’s examine all the disadvantages of Shopify that many merchants (including us) find unpleasant. 

#1. Shopify websites aren’t fully customizable 

Shopify provides a user-friendly interface and numerous templates. However, you may want more flexibility and control over the design and functionality of your website– which is something Shopify seemingly fails to offer.

Though you can tweak the Liquid code, there are things you cannot customize. Plus, since most merchants like you aren’t tech know-how, it will swallow much of your time learning coding.

What we’re trying to say is that Shopify’s customization capabilities are somewhat restricted, especially for those with advanced coding skills or unique branding requirements. You may encounter limitations when modifying certain aspects of your site, such as the checkout process or the overall layout.

#2. Email hosting isn’t provided by Shopify

Shopify does not offer email hosting services. If you have a domain managed by Shopify and wish to send email messages using your custom domain email address, you must rely on a third-party email hosting service. This might add to your expenses, especially if you are just starting.

#3. You might have to pay for extra third-party transaction fees

One of the biggest problems with Shopify lie in the platform’s third-party transaction fee policies. Long story short, Shopify has its own payment gateway called Shopify Payments. If you choose not to use their payment gateway, you’ll be charged additional transaction fees for using third-party payment gateways.

From the way we see it, this isn’t fair because Shopify Payments is available in some specific countries only. This means you’ll be charged extra transaction fees if you reside in the regions where Shopify Payments isn’t supported.

So, check out the list of supported countries for Shopify Payments to see whether you’re valid. Otherwise, this is a fatal con of Shopify you need to keep in mind.

#4. It might get a little bit pricey when operating an online store with Shopify

When it comes to hosting your website, you’ll find numerous benefits in choosing Shopify. However, it’s noteworthy that running and scaling a Shopify website costs can get out of hand if you’re poor at planning your budget.

One factor to keep in mind is transaction fees. Shopify charges a fee for each sale you make, which can eat into your profits. Depending on your chosen pricing plan, these fees can range from 0.5% to 2% /sale (the higher tier, the lower this fee is). 

And well, don’t forget about the extra transaction fees for using third-party payment gateways we’ve just discussed above. 

Plus, if you rely on third-party apps to enhance your website’s functionality, you should also be prepared for additional expenses. Each app has its own pricing structures; therefore, the costs for apps can accumulate if you heavily depend on them. 

Additionally, if you require email hosting or other specialized services, Shopify might not offer the most cost-effective solution.

#5. Shopify has limited blogging features

One of the drawbacks of Shopify is its limited blogging, SEO, and content management features. While Shopify provides a solid foundation for eCommerce functionality, its blogging capabilities are relatively basic compared to dedicated blogging platforms. 

If content marketing and SEO are crucial to your business, you may find Shopify’s built-in tools lacking in-depth customization options. 

Although you can add a blog to your Shopify store, the platform’s primary focus remains on product listings and transactions. Consequently, you might face challenges optimizing your content for search engines and creating a comprehensive content strategy. 

To overcome this limitation, you could consider integrating third-party apps. However, the old story– this can add up to your costs.

Shopify Pros and Cons: FAQs

What are the disadvantages of Shopify?

Some of the disadvantages of using Shopify include:

• Limited customization options
• Potential additional costs for app integrations
• Transaction fees for certain payment gateways
• Reliance on a third-party platform for hosting and maintenance

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify?

Here is a summary of Shopify pros and cons:

• The advantages of using Shopify include ease of use, a wide range of built-in features, secure hosting, and excellent customer support. 
• However, the platform’s disadvantages include limited customization options, somehow unreasonable transaction fees, and potential dependency on third-party apps for specific functionalities.

Is Shopify worth it for beginners?

Yes, Shopify is worth considering for beginners. The platform offers a user-friendly interface, easy store setup, and numerous resources and tutorials to help beginners navigate the process. It also provides built-in features and integrations that simplify the management of an online store, making it a suitable option for those starting out in the e-commerce world.

Can I really make money with Shopify?

Yes, it is possible to make money with Shopify. The platform provides a solid foundation for launching and managing an online store, and many entrepreneurs have found success by leveraging its features and tools. 

Final Thoughts on Shopify Pros and Cons

In conclusion, Shopify offers a range of advantages and disadvantages to consider when building your online store. Its user-friendly interface, built-in features, and excellent customer support make it an attractive option for beginners. However, limitations in customization, potential additional costs, and transaction fees may impact your decision. 

By weighing Shopify pros and cons and aligning them with your specific needs and goals, we hope you can decide whether Shopify is the right platform for you!