What is Shopify and is it Right for Your Online Shop?

Shopify is an ecommerce platform you can use to make an online shop and website without any coding or website design experience whatsoever. Shopify is one of our top-rated free ecommerce website builders – scoring 4.7/5 for business use – thanks to its effective inventory features.

We’ve tested more than ten competitor products, and found Shopify outperforms them on almost every count. It’s certainly not the cheapest option, but its superior sales and website features would likely deliver better ROI in the long-run.

We’ll break down what Shopify is, how it works in the UK, who should use it, and what exactly you can expect to pay.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is professional grade software for selling products (physical and digital) that lets you put together a fully functional, scalable web shop without needing to write code. Put simply: it’s a website builder that lets you create an online shop, market your products, and handle shipping all from one place. And you can link it to a real-world card reader and Point of Sale system.

It’s one of those online programs that lets you pick a template, and drag-and-drop design elements to put together a custom online shop. Our research found it’s got more effective sales features than similar software.

We’ve rated it 4.7 out of 5 overall in our recent independent testing – up from 4.2 in 2020. Shopify connects with more sales channels than competitors, and more of our test users said they’re likely to recommend Shopify compared with Wix, Bigcommerce or Volusion.

You don’t actually have to build a full website, though most people do. If it’s easier, you can just sign up for the cheapest Shopify plan (named “Starter”) and add “Buy” buttons to your existing social media channels, blog or website.

How does Shopify Work?

Shopify offers different subscription packages depending on how you’d like to use it; there’s three main plans that give you access to the website builder and product sales platform. That means you design your website (along with a tutorial), then add your listings for items, services or digital products.

Then you’ll connect payment service providers and any social media accounts you’d like to publicise or sell through. You can also connect your shop to other web marketplaces such as Google Shopping, Amazon and eBay.

When customers buy your items, you can arrange shipping through Shopify too. You can print shipping labels and take advantage of postage discounts.

If you already have a physical shop, market stall or vending truck you can use Shopify Point of Sale (POS) – a card reader – hardware to take contactless payments. A lite version is included in the main Shopify plans or you can upgrade to more in-depth reporting for an extra $89 (£74) per month.

When adding features to your Shopify website, you’ll soon encounter the Shopify App Store. Here you can download plug-ins that add extra functionality to your sales platform, such as marketing tools or dropshipping services. Some have free versions but many require extra payment.

Who should use Shopify?

Although its tools are powerful, Shopify is popular because it’s accessible for non-experts. While it’s really aimed at business-minded folk, this definition is very loose because there’s not one particular industry or sector it’s best suited to.

So Shopify is ideal for…

✔️Fashion, clothing and accessories retailers

Why: Connect with a wide range of web sales and social channels.

✔️Online consultants, coaches and counsellors

Why: Automated marketing templates keep followers coming back.

✔️Restaurants, coffee shops and beverage sellers

Why: Synch your inventory with sales online and offline.

✔️Electronic goods, motor parts or sports products

Why: Track analytics like average order value and top products by units sold.

✔️Financial services and crypto businesses

Why: Import customers, create segments and send personalised comms.

As the monthly pricing goes up pretty steeply, you’ll need to figure the platform cost into your overall business budget. Shopify is meant to enhance your online sales by making it easy for customers to find and pay you online (and offline).

But if you’re not really looking to bring in revenue through your website, we wouldn’t recommend Shopify for you at all.

For instance, if you need a website that gives details of your physical location, some customer reviews and an overview of your services but you don’t take payments online then Shopify is not the answer.

Shopify isn’t a great match for:

❌ Cash-based services such as casual DIY, babysitting or pet care

❌ Free video streaming or media hosting

❌ A portfolio

❌ Contract services such as legal representation or architecture

Shopify pros and cons

Shopify is better set up to connect with external shopping channels than many of its competitors. For example, you can link up your Shopify account to niche social media such as Pinterest, Discord and Twitch, as well as subscription platforms like Substack and Patreon. These options are far better than competitors BigCartel, Squarespace and GoDaddy.

It’s also quick and easy to get started; you don’t even need credit card or email verification. Customer support is available equally across all subscription levels, and there’s a user questions forum for personalised help.

Although there’s lots we love about Shopify, it was a little harder to use than similar providers – scoring only 3.5 out of 5 for ease of use. Our test users found Shopify alternatives Wix, Square and Squarespace easier to use than Shopify, with the latter scoring 4.2 out of 5 in this respect.

Finally, it should be noted that not all ecommerce platforms charge transaction fees like Shopify does. This can factor into your business costs, because 2% on every sale really adds up. Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce, Square and Wix don’t charge any transaction fees.

What does Shopify cost?

Shopify has five pricing plans in total, including the very basic “Starter” and enterprise “Shopify Plus”. We’ve written an in-depth guide on Shopify pricing, or you can check out this quick summary table and easily compare subscriptions:

You should note that payment transaction fees vary depending on your subscription level. Similarly, online credit card rates get cheaper as you upgrade to a more expensive Shopify plan.

The main differences in the price plans are increased staff accounts and more inventory locations. That, and the Advanced plan has the best quality reporting and third-party calculated shipping rates. Sadly you can’t get any automations on the Basic plan, and shipping insurance isn’t included.

How to start selling with Shopify online and in-store (for free)

It takes no time at all to get started with Shopify. Basically, you create an account, click a button and you’re ready to make a website. Like many of these products now, you’ll select some multiple-choice answers to guide the program to show you the tools you’ll need.

The basic steps are:

1. Create an account
2. Take a quiz to clarify your needs
3. Start setting up your online store

When you first sign up, you’ll go through a quiz where you select what kind of shop features you’d like to have. You simply select the answers that apply to you, and click “Next”. There’s even “I’m not sure” options if you don’t know exactly how you’d like to sell your wares yet. If you don’t feel like the third degree, feel free to click “Skip”.

The quiz helps Shopify prepare the right toolkits to show you, as not everyone is coming at the program with the same goals.

This gives you an idea of how flexible Shopify is going to be – you can connect your existing social media, website or blog to this platform with a “buy” button. So you don’t have to start from scratch with an entire website if you’ve already got an online presence you’re looking to monetize.

If you already know you want to connect with a physical POS as well, you can indicate this right at the beginning. The quiz shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two, and you can follow the progress bar at the top to see roughly how far you’ve got to go.

Next you’ll get into the website builder dashboard, where Shopify continues to guide you along the set-up process. The menu shows a list of helpful beginner tasks which you can work in any order. This section has straightforward low-tech language so it’s easy for everyone to understand, and each task has a colourful image for the visually-motivated among us.

We found it handy to be able to pick and choose the types of tasks we wanted to work on first. This enabled us to build up the sales platform according to preference and readiness, rather than feeling forced to go along a fixed construction pathway. For example, it’s just as acceptable to activate payment methods first as it is to choose the colour scheme and template.

You’ll find it’s easy to navigate the start-up tasks as you can click “Learn more about… X” on each section. This will open up a helpful article in a new tab that provides more specific guidance. We found Shopify much easier to use than the WordPress website builder, which opens its knowledge centre in the same tab, closing your web builder platform.

If you get stuck for design inspiration, we’ve put together this visual guide to our favourite Shopify web shops.

How We Reviewed Shopify

Verdict: Would We Recommend Shopify?

Yes, Shopify is a robust yet convenient platform for running an online shop. If you’re eager to give it a go yourself, why not sign up for a free trial with your email address?

You’ll have three days to build out your web shop – giving you time to chase up any extra info you need along the way. If, at the end of that time you want to move on, you’ve lost nothing but gained some experience. Or you can upgrade to a paid plan and start supercharging your product sales online.

We recommend Shopify for business leaders of all kinds, except for cash services such as pet care or at-home beauty services. But if you sell products such as gym equipment, dry food, clothing, furniture or just about anything else, then Shopify is a great sales platform for you.