How well does Shopify work?

[TotalControl]

General question really. How well does Shopify work here in the UK and is it worth it for a web presence? I'm going to try a sideline business whilst trying to teach my eldest a little about how to run an eCom site but trying to weigh up the options of what's available out there.

Anyone have any "success stories" with Shopify or is there something else that I've missed that's out there?

[ymwoods]

All depends on what you want to be selling, how you want the process to work etc but yes Shopify would be one of the big ones for a light weight word press styled eCommerce site. Wordpress with the Woocommerce plugin is another.

Depending on budget and/or the amount of time to put into it you could buy the plugins for the above to also manage Ebay, Amazon etc or you could look at the 1&1 ecommerce shop, a lot more expensive in the long run but the initial cost is lower and it includes all of them.

[ctrph]

Another one you could look at is shopwired, they are a UK based alternative to shopify. I've been with them a few months, their support is fantastic and the sites work really well

[sufcfan1]

We have been using Shopify for about 8 months now to launch our webshop.

It really is an all in one system, you purchase the domain name through them if you want, they have their own payment gateway to handle card payments etc.

Listing products is easy, and there is good integration with Google Shopping/Analytics.

In the UK, there is integration with Facebook, Royal Mail Click and drop and a few others, but Ebay, Amazon Pintrest etc are only currently available in shops which use $ as their currency.

The only thing they dont do is a mail server, but we use Google Gsuite at minimal extra cost.

[DSLiverpool]

Slightly biased but I would highly recommend Shopify for DIY ease of use and quality of the end product.
Also if your stuck it has a facility to ask an expert to help you however the UK facebook group has a self help and lots of cheap freelancers.
Remember checkout is included and hosting is $29 a month with no hassle.
We just put this site live on Shopify Plus www.lavishalice.com which they are delighted with (it replaced a Magento site)

[silobass]

I've been using Shopify for a couple of years now and it's pretty good. We don't have any particular unusual things we need our site to do so standard apps seem to work well for us. It's good having built in payments and they pay out fast enough.

[davidd]

DSLiverpool said:

Slightly biased but I would highly recommend Shopify for DIY ease of use and quality of the end product.
Also if your stuck it has a facility to ask an expert to help you however the UK facebook group has a self help and lots of cheap freelancers.
Remember checkout is included and hosting is $29 a month with no hassle.
We just put this site live on Shopify Plus www.lavishalice.com which they are delighted with (it replaced a Magento site)

Interesting ....

[jammy-git]

As DS says, it's a really simple, "all in one box" solution - I'd say just about the best option out there to teach kids about ecommerce. In all my years in web design and development I don't think I've been able to put a good looking ecommerce store together so quickly.

[LDN]

Check out Ecwid - shop can be integrated with any existing site via embedding.

I use both BigCommerce and Ecwid.

[eco21]

I have used it for the florist part of our business and it’s ideal for what we need. www.bespoke-blooms.co.uk

Easy to update, easy notifications from orders, plenty of app integrations and if need something Bespoke then can get a Shopify expert to do it for you.

I think I bought it annually and got the shipping calculator(?!) part free and was cheaper than paying monthly.

[akirk]

Another here who has / is running a number of sites on it...
We use a mixture of BigCommerce / Shopify for clients - happy with both.

Rough guide is:
- BigCommerce / Shopify to get you going / establish the business
- Move to something else (e.g. self-hosted Magento etc.) once you hit a size where you are established and where you need a more bespoke approach (£2m turnover+?)

a very cheap way to get into learning to run an eCommerce business and allows you to focus on the business not the tech.

[DSLiverpool]

akirk said:

Another here who has / is running a number of sites on it...
We use a mixture of BigCommerce / Shopify for clients - happy with both.

Rough guide is:
- BigCommerce / Shopify to get you going / establish the business
- Move to something else (e.g. self-hosted Magento etc.) once you hit a size where you are established and where you need a more bespoke approach (£2m turnover+?)

a very cheap way to get into learning to run an eCommerce business and allows you to focus on the business not the tech.

Or Shopify Plus ;o) ok its £2k a month but its rock solid and has the checkout customisation you dont get with basic Shopify, I see the main advantage is cost of dev with Shopify, the sites need less hours to code them and to work on them. However Magento is the current daddy and Shopify / Big Commerce the young pretender.

[awlp16]

akirk said:

Another here who has / is running a number of sites on it...
We use a mixture of BigCommerce / Shopify for clients - happy with both.

Rough guide is:
- BigCommerce / Shopify to get you going / establish the business
- Move to something else (e.g. self-hosted Magento etc.) once you hit a size where you are established and where you need a more bespoke approach (£2m turnover+?)

a very cheap way to get into learning to run an eCommerce business and allows you to focus on the business not the tech.

This pretty much.

We briefly looked at Shopify when we were deciding on what path to go with out current Magento 1 Enterprise store. Ended up sticking with Magento, but moving to 2 Commerce. Shopify is great, but you can't do bespoke, it does 90% of what Magento will do, but you can't build on top of it.

I am however in the process of helping a mate out with a new brand, and am going down the Shopify route, start up, no presence as of yet, so it's a minimal outlay and teaches me the platform

[DSLiverpool]

awlp16 said:

Shopify is great, but you can't do bespoke, it does 90% of what Magento will do, but you can't build on top of it.

This is the problem Shopify has, people think it cannot emulate Magento. When you looked into this were you aware of Shopify Plus? we generally build fully bespoke sites on Shopify sites and that applies to normal or Plus, for some specific requirements we have to code an app.

[awlp16]

DSLiverpool said:

This is the problem Shopify has, people think it cannot emulate Magento. When you looked into this were you aware of Shopify Plus? we generally build fully bespoke sites on Shopify sites and that applies to normal or Plus, for some specific requirements we have to code an app.

Yeah we looked at plus, nothing below would of done anywhere near what we need. We had some quite in depth conversations with Shopify and dev agencies at the time.

Some of the bespoke our site uses which is coded on top of Magento, just wouldn't of worked on Shopify. I'm hoping my mate trusts me to go with it for him, as I'm keen to use it!

[loafer123]

LDN said:

Check out Ecwid - shop can be integrated with any existing site via embedding.

I use both BigCommerce and Ecwid.

I use ECWID, too.

Very easy to use and integrate into your own site.

It is free for up to 10 products, if you just want to show him how e-commerce works.

[LDN]

loafer123 said:

LDN said:

Check out Ecwid - shop can be integrated with any existing site via embedding.

I use both BigCommerce and Ecwid.

I use ECWID, too.

Very easy to use and integrate into your own site.

It is free for up to 10 products, if you just want to show him how e-commerce works.

Yes, and they are improving it constantly; it's relentless; their development. It's a great platform gaining traction.

[dartissimus]

silobass said:

I've been using Shopify for a couple of years now and it's pretty good. We don't have any particular unusual things we need our site to do so standard apps seem to work well for us. It's good having built in payments and they pay out fast enough.

Agreed,

They've been perfect for us to grow into, as the sales have grown so has our use of their facilities

All in all, I can see no reason to look anywhere else, the cost in time, inconvenience and expense to move would be prohibitive and damaging to our sales.

What more is there to life than a clear, easily managed and navigated website that hasn't crashed or given us heart failure in over two years ?

[loafer123]

dartissimus said:

Agreed,

They've been perfect for us to grow into, as the sales have grown so has our use of their facilities

All in all, I can see no reason to look anywhere else, the cost in time, inconvenience and expense to move would be prohibitive and damaging to our sales.

What more is there to life than a clear, easily managed and navigated website that hasn't crashed or given us heart failure in over two years ?

I think that is true for all reasonable e-commerce providers...if it isn't broken, don't move!

[russy01]

Bigcommerce here. Works well... had a few features shopify didn’t have when we first signed up hence choosing BC.