Printful Review

What is Printful?

Printful is the leading Print on Demand (POD) t-shirt fulfillment company, perfect for drop shipping. They carry a wide range of products such as shirts, posters, and canvas. You design, market and sell the product, and they ship it out from their warehouses directly to your customer.

Source: Printful.com

The rise of print on demand services combined with e-commerce platforms like Shopify has lowered the bar to become an entrepreneur and made it easier for artists to monetize their passions.

Custom T Shirts Made Easy

Starting a clothing company five years ago meant that you needed to pre-order hundreds of dollars worth of inventory and deal with small-time printers. Then you had hundreds of units of products cluttering your house and you drove to the post office all the time to fulfill orders yourself.

Using Printful, you can design some products and launch a beautiful looking Shopify store with less than one day and fifty dollars. Printful takes care of everything starting from the minute you have your customers money until the day the customer receives their order.

Not to say you need Shopify, it’s just our preference. Printful also has an API and integrations with Amazon, Etsy, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Big Cartel and a few others.

We’ve had the opportunity to work with many clients leveraging a wide range of print on demand apps across a variety of platforms and our favorite combo is Shopify + Printful.

Why use Printful?

No Minimum Orders

No minimum order means it’s incredibly inexpensive to test and iterate on designs. If you’re doing your own design work, the total costs come outs to Shopify’s $29/month subscription fee.

Printful Is Free

Printful is free unless you’re selling products.

Printful Mockup Generator

Printful’s mock-up generator saves you hours and dollars by automatically generating product photos with your design products. For anyone who has done it the old way with Photoshop, they know how much this is a complete lifesaver. This allows you to avoid hours of tedious and unfulfilling Photoshop work.

Quick Setup

The deployment into Shopify is quick and painless. So is selecting your products, importing your designs, and launching the products to your storefront.

Printful Customer Support

Every time we’ve reached out to support on behalf of a client they’ve been very responsive with quick resolutions.

Printful By The Numbers

• 80+ employees
• 3,609 unique product SKUs
• 1,223 reviews on Shopify
• 38,000 Google searches per month (per Ahrefs.com)
• 52,000 FaceBook Likes
• 1,200,000 views on YouTube
• 23,000 followers on Instagram

Printful Customer & User Reviews

We also thought it was important to share insights from e-commerce entrepreneurs leveraging Printful to make money. Another blog review you might see while Googling around today for research is Arsha Jones over at Brand Build Sell, where she has some pretty scathing complaints about Printful.

That post was written several years ago, and Printful has come a long way in scaling their business to accommodate the insane growth in the industry. Products can change quickly, so we reached out to entrepreneur Matthew Donovan to ask him about his experience with Printful.

“After 10 years of building websites for local businesses, I fired my boss and went full-time entrepreneur. I’ve used Printful on several websites so far, and it’s a stellar service,” Matthew said.

“For example, my site Petrol Prints is completely automated because of how many tasks Printful takes care of for you. It still makes sales on its own every month and the only time I ever need to step in at all is for support issues, which Printful also makes very quick and easy.”

Matthew said that his research into competing print-on-demand fulfillment services showed that while Printful costs a little more, the quality is far and away superior. In fact, he personally owns and uses products from Printful.

Review Conclusion

Printful is an effective print-on-demand solution for anyone looking to start an e-commerce business. It makes it easy to get a business up and running by cutting out the tedious and time-consuming parts, leaving you to take care of the marketing and strategy elements. The robust features, support system, and higher product quality justify the marginally higher cost. Overall, Printful is a strong choice.

Need to build your e-commerce business? Having trouble with organic search visibility or converting visitors into customers? Logic Inbound is an SEO and web design marketing agency with e-commerce expertise that can help drive real sales with unmatched ROI. Fill out our discovery form and find out what we can do for your business.

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Best Shopify Live Chat App Reviews (2018)

In 2018, instant gratification is the norm. Consumer attention spans are shorter than ever, so highly responsive customer support can play a large role in converting the traffic you worked so hard for into actual revenue.

When consumers have a question, they don’t want to email you, and they don’t want to call you – they want and expect instant answers. Luckily, there are multiple apps to help you with this.

Besides providing growth consulting to companies ranging from start-ups to multinational organizations, we also run our own e-commerce stores. Throughout our journey, we’ve tried many different Shopify live chat apps to find out what works best for us.

We’re going to share our findings with you so that you can figure out what works for your store and maximize your revenue.

Best Shopify Live Chat Apps

App Name	Price
Facebook Chat by Beeketing	Free
Stitch Labs Order Management	Free to $15 / month
Chatra Live Chat and Cart Saver	14-day trial available. $15 / month

Facebook Chat by Beeketing For Shopify

Price: Free

Facebook Chat by Beeketing is the highest reviewed and rated chat app in the Shopify App Store. This app leverages Facebook to allow you to talk to and support your customers directly from Facebook Messenger, the same way as with a Facebook friend.

One of the benefits of leveraging Facebook Messenger is the familiarity of the experience for consumers. It feels natural and intuitive to the consumer, it re-affirms to them that they’re talking to a real person.

On top of that, it transfers some of the trust that consumers have in Facebook Messenger to your own business.

The only downside is immediately after a consumer submits a chat request, they are directed to check Facebook or Facebook Messenger instead of the app opening a chat window on the store page.

Tidio Live Chat

Price: $15/month

Tidio Chat has over 500 reviews on the Shopify App Store and boasts a 5-Stars overall rating. Tidio does not use Facebook Messenger; instead, it leverages its own proprietary mobile apps and desktop web app to facilitate communication.

Although Tidio isn’t free, if you’re making enough revenue $15 a month is absolutely worth it – there is a ton of extra functionality you won’t find in a completely free app like Beeketing.

Their feature list is quite extensive, so we’ll list our favorites (in order):

1. See Messages Before They’re Sent – Tidio shows what the customer is typing before they hit enter, so you know what they’re going to say before the customer sends their message. This allows you to get the jump on their issue and impress them with your ability to read their mind.
2. Automatic Messages – This feature allows you to automatically open a chat window with a visitor, displaying a welcome message such as “Are you finding everything alright?”
3. Offline Contact Form – Turn your chat box pop-up into a one-way contact form when you and your team are outside of business hours. When you arrive the next day, you’ll have an email with the visitor’s email address and messages sitting in your inbox.
4. Mobile App – Having a dedicated mobile app can be nice when Facebook Messenger is experiencing issues.
5. Multi-Language Support – Although Americans would have you believe otherwise, English isn’t the only language spoken online. Tidio has localized its app into hundreds of languages so you can support your customers in their native language.

Chatra Live Chat + Cart Saver

Price: $15/month with a 14-day free trial

Much like Tidio, Chatra uses a proprietary messaging platform with a mobile app and desktop web app to connect you to your customers.

Also much like Tidio, you can message your customers first, see real-time customer typing insights, and collect contact info while you’re offline.

However, there are a few other powerful features that make Chatra worth considering:

1. Cart Recovery – Chatra can proactively contact customers stuck at the shopping cart. This can have a profound impact on conversions by unsticking customers and convincing them to take out their card and pay you.
2. Fix Typos – Chatra allows you to fix typos after sending a message. This is a lifesaver, especially when you’re supporting your customer on the go from your mobile phone. If I published this article without being able to edit it first, everyone would think I’m illiterate there would be a few errors.
3. Real Time Visitor Insights – Chatra provides as much information about the person you’re talking to as possible – including what page they initiated the chat from, what page they are currently on, and what’s in their cart. You can even see what device they are using.

Tawk.To

Price: Free

Tawk.To has most of the same functionality as the other apps on our list, from having an app dashboard to cart recovery. The main selling point of Tawk.To is the sense among users and reviewers that ‘it just works.’

Deploying and setting up Tawk.To is quick, easy and painless, and we’re not the only ones who think so. Almost every review compliments Tawk.To’s simplicity. Here are a few:

• “Such a simple chat app…very small, but efficient. You guys have the right idea ”
• “Impossible to fault it. Works really well and looks really great.  We were using Zendesk but tawk.to is easily a match for it (much cheaper too) and much easy to integrate in Shopify.”
• “Installed the app now for a week, I must say that it works perfectly! Used a payed app before but now replacing all my shopify stores with this plugin! Works great.”

Tawk.to is another strong option for a Shopify live chat app. If one of the others doesn’t seem right for you, it’s worth considering whether Tawk.to is a good fit for your site.

Struggling to grow your e-commerce business as fast as you had planned? Logic Inbound is an e-commerce growth marketing agency that has generated millions of dollars for startups to multinational manufacturing organizations. Fill out our discovery form and find out what we can do for your business.

 

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Shopify vs Etsy: Comparison and Review of Online Shops

Are you looking to sell goods online but confused by the amount of platforms you can do it on? That’s understandable, given the amount of choices out there right now.

Etsy and Shopify are two of the most popular choices for selling online. Despite that, they are vastly different platforms. Jumping into one or the other will give you totally different options as a seller. Don’t try to pick one before you’ve got all the facts on these two very different e-commerce platforms.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world. It hosts hundreds of thousands of businesses and a thriving community of sellers. Shopify has been around for more than a decade and has become a standard among e-commerce platforms. It offers a lot of powerful e-commerce tools for large businesses all the way down to individual sellers. Shopify stores are very customizable. You can make them look exactly the way you’d like. You will also enjoy the prestige of being part of the Shopify network.

What is Etsy?

Etsy is a marketplace of individuals. This differs greatly from Shopify. Where shopify is a large network of stores and shops, Etsy is a marketplace where artists, designers and crafters display their wares. If Shopify is a mall, Etsy is a craft fair.

That doesn’t necessarily make one better than the other, but it certainly means they serve different audiences. Etsy has a huge amount of sellers, 1.8 million by its most recent count. It also claims 30.6 million buyers and hundreds of millions of monthly visitors. So while it sounds like a small indie production, Etsy can be hugely profitable for the right type of business.

How is an Etsy shop different from Shopify?

There are a few key differences between Etsy shops and Shopify stores:

• Domain name/URL
• Site design
• Pricing
• Types of visitors
• Marketplace rules
• Stock and inventory

Domain name/URL: Shopify gives you a temporary URL when you initially sign up. After that, however, you are free to change that URL to something more customized. You can also customize the URLs of internal website pages.

Etsy gives the same style of URL to all its sellers. Everyone selling products on Etsy gets an Etsy URL. It will appear as etsy.com/shop/YourStore. The only part you will get to customize is the “YourStore” piece of the URL. In this regard, Shopify gives you much more flexibility.

Site design: Shopify offers a lot of customizability with themes and templates. You can choose free themes or paid templates. You can also use HTML, CSS and other coding languages to customize your design. Etsy, in contrast, applies a global design to all Etsy stores. Your Etsy shop will look very similar to all other Etsy shops.

Pricing: Pricing will be described in more detail below, but the short answer is that Shopify has a higher up-front fee, where Etsy changes per transaction. Etsy can get expensive as those fees add up, but at first glance Shopify is the more expensive option.

Types of visitors: This is a metric that is easy to overlook, but the types of shoppers who search Shopify and the type who search Etsy are very different. Shopify stores almost require marketing plans to make them successful. While some of the apps within Shopify can help with that, you will be responsible for driving most of the traffic you get.

Etsy, however, is well-known as a hub of artists and crafters. People already like Etsy and scour it for certain types of goods. If you are selling those sort of goods (mostly handmade craft items), you can benefit from the overall popularity and site traffic of Etsy.

Marketplace rules: Shopifty allows sellers to sell whatever they like, for the most part. It doesn’t matter what kind of store you run, you can put it on Shopify. Etsy, however, has marketplace rules that limit who can sell and what they can sell. Etsy built its reputation and popularity by narrowing its sellers only to people selling handmade items made by the sellers themselves. They also accept vintage goods and craft supplies.

Stocks and inventory: Shopify has systems built into it to manage inventory and process payments. Etsy, by contrast, requires you to take care of inventory elsewhere. It merely lists the products you have to sell.

Etsy Pricing vs Shopify Pricing

Shopify’s pricing differs depending on the complexity of the services you require for your online store.

Plan:	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Monthly Pricing:	$29/month	$79/month	$299/month
Credit Card Rates:
Online	2.9% + $0.30	2.6% + $0.30	2.4% + $0.30
In person	2.7% + $0.00	2.5% + $0.00	2.4% + $0.00
Transaction Fees
Using Shopify Payments	None	None	None
Using external payment gateways	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%
Features:
Staff accounts	2	5	15
Number of products	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
File storage	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Retail package	+$49	+$49	+$49
Shopify shipping discount	Good	Better	Best
Print shipping labels	Yes	Yes	Yes
24/7 support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fraud analysis	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manual order creation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Discount codes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Website and blog	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free SSL certificate	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gift Cards	No	Yes	Yes
Professional reports	No	Yes	Yes
Abandoned cart recovery	No	Yes	Yes
Advanced report builder	No	No	Yes
Third-party calculated shipping rates	No	No	Yes

Shopify also offers ShopifyPlus for entrepreneurs. This is a good option for large businesses. For smaller sellers and individuals, Shopify has Shopify Lite. It costs only $9 per month and offers simple services that are good for a single person selling only a few items.

Now let’s take a look at Etsy.

Etsy has no monthly fees like Shopify, which can make it cheaper to get started. Each of your listings on Etsy cost your $0.20. In addition, all payments will go through Etsy Payments. You will pay a 3.5% transaction fee, as well as 3% + $0.25 payment processing.

The advantage to Shopify is that their payment structure is more straightforward. If you are a small seller you will almost certainly save money by going with Etsy, but it’s hard to say exactly how much you’ll pay to sell on Etsy because it will change for every seller based on how much they’re selling and the fees involved.

Etsy Look and Feel vs Shopify Themes

As mentioned above, all Etsy shops look the same. They are all branded with Etsy’s look and feel. For some, this might actually be a benefit. You won’t have to worry about designing a website. You can just get down to selling your products while benefiting from Etsy branding.

Those who want more freedom to customize should go with Shopify, however. With Shopify you can choose free and paid Shopify themes. These come with styles that you can apply. That alone offers a lot of options for customizing how your store looks. You can even use HTML and CSS to customize the finer details.

However, this customizability certainly comes at a cost. Some Shopify themes cost nearly $200, on top of the monthly fee you already pay. If you are on a budget, Etsy will save you a lot of money.

Etsy Coupons and Coupon Codes

A nice feature of Etsy is that the site itself can offer Etsy coupons and Etsy coupon codes to customers. However, sellers can also offer coupons and sales on Etsy.

Etsy has built-in tools that allow sellers to make special offers. You can customize the details of your discount or coupon and view statistics about your sale while it is running. Etsy even offers some promotion tips for people who are new to selling online.

Etsy Login vs Shopify Login

Etsy has a pretty standard login. You can even choose to link your Facebook or Google+ account directly to Etsy to make logging in simpler.

Shopify has a similar login on its main website. However, Shopify also offers an app. If you download this app and log in to it, you can check up on your store’s performance no matter where you are. This is a good feature for sellers with higher volume who need to constantly keep an eye on how their store is performing. Those who don’t need this constant checkin will find Etsy’s login sufficient.

Etsy Stock vs Shopify Stock

Recently, Etsy stock has been valued around $21. This has been fairly consistent for a few months. However, stock prices are very fickle and can fluctuate wildly at any time. While it is tough to say with much certainty what will happen to stock prices, Etsy’s has been fairly stable.

Shopify stock is much more valuable, which is no surprise given that Shopify Inc is a larger brand that hosts larger sellers than Etsy. They are valued around $105. In the past five years, Shopify stock has generally trended upward, though it’s hard to definitely say how any stock will do in the long-term future.

Etsy Store vs Shopify Apps

One of the trades you will have to weigh when deciding between Etsy and Shopify is the Etsy store vs Shopify apps.

Etsy shops are all Etsy branded. They don’t come with a lot of flexibility. However, the Etsy brand is well-established and broadly popular. Etsy as a brand can help boost your sales. If you are willing to trade flexibility, you can benefit from Etsy even as they benefit from having you as a seller.

But Etsy does not come with the bells and whistles that Shopify offers. Those bells and whistles include dozens of apps that can integrate with your store to help you run it and help customers use it. Many Shopify apps are free, including things like MailChimp that help with organizing email and Google selling apps. The paid apps are generally inexpensive and serve specific purposes. If you do end up using Shopify, it is definitely worthwhile to check out the apps they offer and see which ones work with your store.

How to Sell on Etsy vs How to Sell on Shopify

Etsy is an easier place to get started selling items. Because there is so little customizability, you can quickly get a site up and running and start selling your products. You don’t need to design an entire website in order to start selling with Etsy. If you have products and images of those products, you’re good to go.

Shopify, while more complicated, is still very easy to set up. You will need to invest more time and money in order to get started, but once you have your store up and running you will not need to spend much time maintaining your Shopify store.

Etsy Support vs Shopify Support

Shopify has many support options. Because it has so many users, it can offer a thriving community where users help each other out. This is sometimes quicker and easier than dealing with support staff. However, Shopify also has a support helpline that you can call if you need help. Another interesting feature of Shopify support are the video tutorials it offers as a way to help people troubleshoot problems.

The Etsy support center can assist with most questions you’ll encounter using an Etsy shop. Like Shopify, Etsy has a support community where you can go to ask questions. However, Etsy’s support site can be a little confusing. The help center serves both seller and buyers, so finding an answer to your particular question can take some digging. It can also take some digging to manage to contact Etsy itself. There is no obvious phone number available for Etsy support, if you want to get help from an actual person.

Our Pick

Shopify is a massive e-commerce giant while Etsy is a smaller company tailored specifically to artists and creators. Both have advantages and ultimately the right choice comes down to what you are selling and how much you are selling.

Choose Shopify if:

• You have a lot of inventory
• You sell a lot of products
• Most or all of your products are not crafts, vintage or art
• You want your store to be fully customizable

Choose Esty if:

• You have a smaller budget
• You are an artist or crafter
• You want the benefit of Etsy’s brand
• You aren’t concerned with customizability

 

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20 Top Shopify Stores to Inspire Your Own e-Commerce Design

Like it or not, people always judge a book by its cover. This is true for websites, food, clothes, people, and actual books. Online stores are especially in the line of fire. If you want a successful e-commerce business, you have to make sure your design is attractive, neat and easy on the eyes. Here are 20 Shopify store designs that will inspire you to create your own unique and awesome online store!

Top Shopify Stores for Design

1. Au Lit Fine Linens

Au Lit Fine Linen’s design reflects the crisp freshness they advertise for their products and gives the warm and comfy sense essential to a successful home furnishing business.

2. Beardbrand

Wherever you go on the Beardbrand website, the trademark mustache-and-beard icon along with the brown and black theme keep the purpose of their main products (beard grooming) prominent and maintains a strong, earthy atmosphere.

3. Ratio

Whether it be the actual grain or any related house ware, coffee is featured everywhere on Ratio’s modern and minimalist web page.

4. The Ghostly Store

Although The Ghostly Store deals in a vast number of product categories, the trademark ghost face clip art is present everywhere, keeping the website rounded and giving it a dash of cuteness.

5. Telegramme Paper

Telegramme Paper’s unique prints are featured in all product categories and arranged in a way that maintains vibrancy and a positive feeling across the platform.

6. Uproot

Uproot’s modern page design mixes a sense of reliable technology with idyllic vineyard scenery, which matches their miscellaneous wine palette.

7. Old Faithful Shop

True to its name, Old Faithful Shop’s page design features a rustic sense of home and cozy autumn warmth in all sections, be it pantry supplies or home decor.

8. Cultiver

Cultiver’s shop design matches its motto; the homepage gallery selection gives off a sense of subtle elegance and rich texture.

9. Jane Motorcycles

Jane’s Motorcycle‘s webpage features a dynamic and powerful design, just like the vehicles it deals in.

10. Pop Chart Lab

Pop Chart Lab’s design is as varied as its offer, and each section reflects the overall feeling of the given product category.

11. Kaufmann Mercantile

Mixing attractive snapshots of its merchandise with bold, plain backgrounds and playful slogans, Kaufmann conveys a feeling of elegance and professionalism sprinkled with a hint of adventure.

12. Sugarfina

Befitting a candy store, the whole website is sugary and cute, featuring cheerful pastel colors and playful photos, which adorably stand out on a simple white background.

13. Pencil by 53

True to its mother brand, 53’s Pencil store features a simple, strong design with friendly nods to technology at every turn.

14. Tori Murphy

Keeping with its offer of woven merchandise, Tori Murphy went for a warm, homey design, and kept it minimal, to bring its merchandise fully to the forefront.

15. Leif

Leif’s choice of soft pastels and neatly arranged elements goes perfectly with its nature-themed products.

16. Helm Boots

Helm’s homepage features a slideshow, and each photo represents a different style they have on offer while maintaining simplicity and elegance.

17. Ugmonk

Although they might seem boring, Ugmonk’s plain white pages are a clever move, because they allow the merchandise to command full attention.

18. Common Deer

The whole Common Deer website keeps to a rustic, woodsman sort of atmosphere brought on by the choice of photos and emphasized by the plain white background.

19. Victoire Boutique

Everything, from the name to the color palette, to the patterns and fonts, comes together to give Victoire Boutique’s website a wonderfully rich atmosphere of vintage glamour perfect for attracting customers.

20. Death Wish Coffee

The Death Wish Coffee homepage form has all the information about the brand, all you need for ordering the product, as well as links to the rest of the selection, while the minimalist, bold color theme emphasizes their main selling point.

We hope this roundup of stellar Shopify stores was useful to you. These brands are out there making customers happy with pleasant on-site experiences that feel connected with the brand. Has this inspired you to design your own store in a more strategic and compelling way?

Need to build your e-commerce business? Having trouble with organic search visibility or converting visitors into customers? Logic Inbound is an SEO and web design marketing agency with e-commerce expertise that can help drive real sales with unmatched ROI. Fill out our discovery form and find out what we can do for your business.

 

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The ULTIMATE Guide to Managing Multiple Shopify Stores in 2018

You would think it would be easier to manage multiple Shopify stores from a single login. While Shopify has certainly made progress in this regard, it’s still not easy.

Logic Inbound manages dozens of stores for clients, as well as 3 of our own e-commerce stores. Today we’re sharing our knowledge on how we handle so many stores with minimal friction.

Before we talk about what we do, and why we do it, let’s quickly recap the issue.

Shopify Only Allows One Store Per Username

Ideally, you would be able to manage multiple stores from a single login. Signing in and out of accounts all day isn’t fun, and can feel like a frustrating waste of time.

Unfortunately, this feature isn’t yet available – although Shopify knows it has been an issue as far back as 2013.

Shopify customer Khan Von sums up everybody’s frustration nicely:

Maybe one day, Khan, maybe one day.

How Does Shopify Allow You To Manage Multiple Stores?

The closest we can get with the default Shopify functionality is to have one login email address and multiple stores associated with that email. For security reasons, you should use a unique password for each store; for pragmatic reasons, many users will reuse the same password. It’s tough to remember multiple passwords and keep track of which one is for which account. 

To avoid this problem, we suggest using a password manager, like LastPass. This allows you to store and quickly fill login screens with unique & secure passwords without needing to remember them yourself.

So, How Do I Manage Multiple Shopify Storefronts?

This is the easy way. Depending on your need, third-party apps can help cover this functionality. If your stores are completely separate verticals and aren’t sharing inventory you can use this method.

1. Log in to your store fronts
2. Favorite the pages you land on immediately after signing in (https://yourshopname.myshopify.com/admin)
3. Organize your favorites
4. Download LastPass
5. Try to Login
6. Wrong email/store selected
7. Correct store/email
8. Attempt to login
9. Got it!

3rd Party Apps to Manage Multiple Shopify Stores

There are more than a few 3rd party app developers who saw the demand from customers for a solution to their multi-store management woes. The lack of action from Shopify prompted developers to take care of it themselves.

Rewind

This app doesn’t allow you to manage multiple stores directly, but it plays an important part in the process.

When you are logging in and out of Shopify accounts all day, it can be easy to lose focus and modify the wrong store. Depending on the action taken while not paying attention this could lead to an unintended removal of data.

Shopify doesn’t have any concept of ‘undo’ or ‘recycle bin’, meaning anything modified or deleted in Shopify is permanently modified or deleted.

To mitigate potential disaster, or avoid many tedious hours of cleaning up the disaster you created, you should check out the Rewind App in Shopify’s App Store.

Rewind is a completely automated backup system that allows you to retrieve deleted or lost data. It’s great insurance against human errors, especially when dealing with multiple stores.

Stitch Labs

One of the biggest headaches from managing multiple stores is managing your order flow from each store. Stitch Labs provides a centralized order management dashboard to help you manage returns, fulfillment, and drop shipping.

As a Shopify store grows, most business owners will delegate the tedious, lower value work like order fulfillment and returns to an employee or contractor. Your team has a cost associated with the work they do, and they can only do so much work in a day. Leveraging an app like Stitch Labs allows you to multiply their efficiency, handling more order fulfillment than they could without it.

Increasing the size of your team adds cost, risk, and administrative overhead, so if you can empower a team member to do more, you should. It’s easier than hiring an additional person to do the same tasks.

nChannel

nChannel is similar to Stitch Labs in enabling you to manage multiple store fronts, but it takes it a step further by covering multiple platforms. nChannel’s centralized dashboard allows you to manage your Shopify, Amazon, Ebay and New Egg stores. 

Once you’ve deployed nChannel to consolidate your inventory and push it to multiple e-commerce platforms, you’ll probably begin to realize you need help in other areas such as accounting integration, supply chain management, and vendor management.

nChannel has you covered with functionality there too.

For drop shipping businesses, nChannel reconciles the payment and shipping info to make sure your orders are legitimate. It helps you with real-time invoicing and shipping notifciations, and lets you manage sales and supplier channels from the same place.

Supply chain management can be a difficult task particularly for entrepreneurs without a large staff. nChannel helps you split orders to multiple fulfillment locations, work with multiple suppliers to ensure the most efficient sourcing, and automatically route your orders to the best supplier available.

Managing vendors is easier as well. nChannel makes it easy to integrate several suppliers on one platform, route orders intelligently, and keep data flowing between suppliers, distributors, and wholesalers in real time.

There are even more features the further you delve into this app. nChannel is an important part of any process for managing multiple Shopify stores.

What is The Best App To Manage Multiple Stores On Shopify?

As you’ve no doubt heard before, the devil is in the details. Your business is different than ours or our clients’. Your best bet to really find the best fit is to contact each organization’s pre-sales teams to set up a time to walk through a demo and discuss your specific pain points. They’ll be happy to explain how their solution could solve your problems.

Large growth goals this year? Logic Inbound is an e-commerce growth marketing agency that has generated millions of dollars for startups to multinational manufacturing organizations. Fill out our discovery form and find out what we can do for your business.

 

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Outsource Marketing: When You Should Do It and Which Tasks to Start With First

Building a business has potential to be your greatest accomplishment, but it can take a lot of your time, especially when it comes to outsourcing marketing. From sending out sales emails to keeping customers happy to managing social media channels, it can start to take up a lot of your time quickly.

These are just some of the tedious marketing activities you have to do on your own to get your business going and growing. As your business grows, you need to make the decision of where to spend your time. Do you keep all of the work on your plate or do you find other competent people to delegate it to?

What do you think?

If you’re thinking long term for your business and your own sanity, it may be time to think about outsourcing some of the marketing work on your plate. Outsourcing your marketing can be a scary thought and we completely get that.

What if the content produced isn’t written in your voice? Will you lose full control?

How will outsourcing marketing impact your overall brand appearance?

These are some understandable fears. But when you outsource marketing the right way, you shouldn’t have to worry. Outsourcing can save you a lot of valuable time and put projects in the hands of marketing experts that know what they’re doing.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Marketing

It’s actually become a common practice to outsource certain aspects of your marketing efforts to professionals around the world.

It’s not just about saving time, it’s about creating efficiency and increasing your overall marketing output.

Just think of it as a win-win-win situation for your time, your company’s growth, and the long term viability of your business.

Before we dive into the areas of marketing that you can outsource, let’s look at the benefits of outsourcing in general:

 

 

•   Cost: You can get the job done at a lower cost and with better quality as well.
•   Access: You can still get complete access to all of your data and learnings.
•   Time and Efficiency: You will receive high quality deliverables and decrease the lead time it takes to reach your target customer.
• Experience: The marketing team you put together will bring in new ideas that will give your business more opportunities to grow faster.

Are you ready to start outsourcing your marketing?

It’s a clear sign that you’re ready to start outsourcing your marketing when one of the following occurs:

1. You run out of hours in the day to work on everything that is needed for your business.

2. You want to get started on a new aspect of marketing that you don’t have the expertise to handle. A common example here is Facebook advertising or Google Adwords.

When you reach one of these two points, it’s time to take a serious look at how you’re spending your time so that you can take it back and stay focused on where you add the most value to the business.

Below are 5 common tasks to consider when you outsource marketing:

1) Bookkeeping

This is a very commonly outsourced task for small businesses and is a task that businesses tend to neglect and struggle with managing in their operations.

Hire a bookkeeper who is experienced in accounting; they can work a lot faster and more accurately than you can, not to mention you save time and money.

Having a bookkeeper on hand can help you to make better financial decisions when it comes to marketing spending and advertising investments.

2) Administrative Support

Hiring a virtual assistant to help you with tedious tasks such as scheduling and booking appointments, answering calls, checking your email and sending follow ups and organizing your calendar is a good call.

When you grow as a business, these little tasks should be outsourced. Find a virtual receptionist that can do more than just take calls to really save yourself time.

On top of the daily admin tasks that you have on your plate, this individual can also help you with your sales efforts as marketing work brings in new customers.

3) Social media and blogging

Every business is expected to have an Internet presence; a.k.a. be active on social media – and better yet, have a blog.

Though it may seem easy to set up a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter page, maintaining an ongoing presence can really take a good chunk of your time!

There are many steps to take when handling social media – from finding high quality and relevant content to editing and sharing your posts consistently.

It’s best to consider outsourcing it to someone who is experienced. Easily find a freelancer who has experience and a background in social media and blogging to help free up several hours of your week!

Don’t let the social media and blogging game stress you – when you find someone to outsource this part of your business, it will be very rewarding afterwards!

4) SEO

SEO is definitely something you should outsource. It’s way more complex than you think, and very time-consuming to learn.

Hire skilled freelancers to help you with the basics of SEO such as keyword research and generating sitemaps. If you’re looking for someone to deal with the complex side of SEO, consider finding a highly qualified SEO expert who has a track record of success.

5) Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most important aspects of your business; and to be honest, is one of the most time-consuming and tedious parts of it all.

It’s absolutely necessary to want to keep your customers happy. But if you don’t think you have enough time to properly handle your customer or technical support side, you should hand it over to someone who does.

Providing excellent customer service can really make a positive impact on your business. It’s plain and simple. A happy customer means an increase in sales because they will come back over and over again. An unhappy customer means a decrease in sales and bad reviews that can destroy your company’s reputation.

Hire freelancers to assist your business with great customer service skills on the phone, email and live chat.

Conclusion

Outsourcing marketing for your small business may be scary, but it doesn’t have to be if you do it right. You can find experienced freelancers on FreeeUp and similar platforms within 24 hours of putting in your request.

You’ll be introduced to a freelancer from the marketplace who matches your needs and all you need to do is conduct a short interview then make the hire.

FreeeUp is home to freelancers whose skill sets range from virtual assistants to digital marketing, website design, customer service and so much more! FreeeUp was established to “free up” time and let you focus more on high-level strategy of your business.

Outsourcing is a small move that starts the cascade of great benefits. It’s smart to take advantage of it now. Find someone who’s skilled, give them a task and see what happens. Click this link to get started today!

 

Connor Gillivan is the CMO and co-owner of FreeeUp.com, a rapidly growing freelance marketplace making hiring online simpler. He has sold over $30 million online, has hired hundreds of freelancers to build his companies, is a published author, and is the owner of ConnorGillivan.com. He currently lives in Denver, CO.

http://www.facebook.com/freeeupcom

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqoq7EGvwLQXgiYuIG8_iMg

http://www.linkedin.com/in/connorgillivan

http://twitter.com/connorgillivan   @ConnorGillivan

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The Best Shopify T-Shirt Fulfillment Apps in 2018

Shopify t-shirt fulfillment, also known as print-on-demand (POD), is one of the most exciting strategies for selling on Shopify today. Brands like Iconic are using the print-on-demand business model to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

Why Shopify T-Shirt Fulfillment is a Great Store Strategy

1. No Inventory Costs

Source: Printful.com

As a store owner, there is zero upfront cost to purchase inventory. This is fantastic because you don’t know what t-shirt designs are going to sell before they sell. Up until a couple of years ago, if you wanted to design a t-shirt you had to invest hundreds or even thousands of dollars for dozens of shirts in a variety of sizes. This made it expensive to iterate on designs that resonate with your customers.

2. Iterate Quickly

Shopify t-shirt fulfillment apps allow you to design hundreds of unique t-shirts, allowing you to test which designs resonate most with your target audience. Instead of guessing, create dozens of variations and test.

3. No Cash Flow Challenges

In the old days before POD, there was a large delay between your payment to the supplier, receiving the product, and selling to your customer. Even if your t-shirt was a smashing success, this delay hurt your ability to re-invest back into your business to increase inventory and double down on marketing and other things you need to do to grow your business. 

Print-on-demand t-shirt fulfillment smooths out and accelerates your cash flow. While you still have expenses – such as Shopify’s monthly fee – and the monthly fee of the POD app of choice, it’s a significantly smaller cost than carrying inventory.

How Does Shopify T-Shirt Fulfillment Work?

For the most part, Shopify t-shirt fulfillment apps all work the same way, with minor nuances and variations.

After integrating the app and building out some designs, your POD app will sync the designs to your store. When a customer purchases a t-shirt, the order is sent directly to your POD supplier where they print and ship the shirt to your customer.

This all happens automatically behind the scenes without any manual order processing. This allows you to focus on higher value responsibilities like marketing your store to increase traffic, improving conversion rate, increasing average order size, and raising customer lifetime value.

The Best Shopify T-Shirt Fulfillment Apps in 2017

1. Printful

Printful has the most reviews out of any POD on the Shopify App Store for good reason: Printful is also the most comprehensive solution. Besides all of the normal features and functionality you can expect from a t-shirt fulfillment service, you get access to a marketplace of designers and photographers.

Additionally, due to their massive scale, Printful has fulfillment centers in multiple locations across the US and Europe, including California and North Carolina. This reduces shipping times to less than 3 days on average.

2. Printify

Printify boasts over 20,000 stores and shines due to their wide selection of print-on-demand products. Besides carrying dozens of different types of t-shirts, they allow you to print designs on hoodies, kids clothing, baby clothing, iPhone cases, laptop sleeves, mugs, posts, and wall decals.

3. Teelaunch

Teelaunch has the least reviews of the print-on-demand product apps we’re reviewing, but don’t let that stop you from testing them.  Over 32,000 business owners have deployed their app, which is more than Printify, and store owners are creating more than 1,500 products every minute of every day.

Teelaunch has more competitive margins, so you make more money on each sale. This allows you to spend more on marketing, and invest more back into your business to grow faster.

Here is a quick breakdown of margins across a few of Teelaunch’s products:

Teelaunch Product	Your Price	MSRP	Profit	Profit Margin
T-Shirt	$8.50	$24	$15.50	65%
Poster 24’’ x 36’’	$16	$36	$20	56%
Poster 18’’ x 24’’	$12	$28	$16	57%
Hoodies	$18.50	$44	$25.50	58%
Phone Cases	$11	$35	$24	69%
Mug 11oz	$3.50	$13	$9.50	73%
Tumbler	$15	$30	$15	50%

 

So Which is the Best Shopify T-Shirt Fulfillment Drop Shipping Company?

You’re not going to go wrong with any of these apps, so it simply comes down to preference:

• What margins do you need?
• What level of quality do you want?
• What types of products do you want to brand?

Your best bet is to do research into each of these subjects. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours and will prevent any need to migrate to another solution in the future.

Want to accelerate your e-commerce revenue? Logic Inbound is an e-commerce growth marketing agency that has generated millions of dollars for startups to multinational manufacturing organizations. Fill out our discovery form and find out what we can do for your business.

 

Click Here to Book a Marketing Strategy Session

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Is Shopify Safe?

The answer is simple: Shopify is one of the most popular, safest ecommerce platforms in the world.

Every month, hundreds of people search Google using ‘Is Shopify Safe?’

Let’s put that question to bed by confirming once and for all that yes, Shopify is safe. Shopify is the probably safest ecommerce platform to launch your business by almost every measure. In this article, we cover the most important aspects of security from an e-commerce business owner’s perspective.

Shopify’s Bug Bounties Program Promotes Security

One of the most important ways companies can show customers they are serious about security is by providing a ‘bug bounties’ program.

Bug bounties are monetary rewards paid to ‘white hat hackers’ – also known as security researchers – for finding and reporting program vulnerabilities to a company in a responsible manner.

Shopify’s bug bounties program rewards white hat hackers generously

Shopify’s bug bounty rewards range from $500 – $12,500 depending on the vulnerability discovered, and they have paid out over $180,000 over the lifetime of the program.

This means that instead of trying to exploit these vulnerabilities at the expense of Shopify users, hackers who find a weakness can simply report it to Shopify for monetary rewards. This arrangement is much better for everyone involved.

Shopify is a SaaS Platform

Shopify is a hosted, SaaS platform as opposed to a platform like WooCommerce or Magento, which are open source platforms. 

Here’s an easy way to think of why this difference matters: anytime Shopify makes a security update, it’s rolled out to all of their customers immediately, without any customer interaction or involvement.

On the other hand, anytime a WooCommerce security update is released, it’s the responsibility of the site administrator to apply the patch and upgrade their web server. Without taking this extra step, the site’s security is compromised.

If you’re using an open source platform with many plugins for additional functionality, your risk increases, as each plugin also needs to be maintained and updated separately.

This can quickly become an overhead many people don’t keep up on, while malicious attackers are scanning millions of online stores with out of date software. Once they know who to attack, they attempt to take over the site, commit fraud, or spread malware to the site’s visitors.

Failure to update software can also cause a Google search penalty which can kill your organic search revenue unless your site is quickly fixed by security experts.

Shopify’s Best In Class Risk Analysis Tools

Fraudulent orders are extremely damaging to an ecommerce business. When a customer initiates a charge-back, not only are you charged a charge-back fee and lose the cost of the product and shipping, you can be suspended from processing payments by your payment processor – unable to take your customers money thereonwards.

Obviously, it’s impossible to run a functional business when you can’t get paid.

Shopify makes it simple to assess the risk of a fraudulent order and will automatically cancel it if anything looks suspicious. If you’re experiencing issues with Shopify’s built-in risk assessment, you can supercharge this feature by upgrading to a 3rd party app in the App store.

Here at Logic Inbound, besides providing rock-star-level services for our ecommerce clients, we run our own ecommerce sites. Here are a couple of orders we received recently:

Shopify has identified that this order is very likely a legitimate order based on characteristics like billing address and card information.

This order has many red flag factors correlated with fraudulent orders: the billing address doesn’t match the country the card was issued in, and the card has been used in fraudulent orders before.

 

Shopify Is Incentivized To Keep You Safe

Shopify is a publicly traded company with 500,000 customers, $150 million revenue, and a $10 billion dollar market cap, making it the most valuable ecommerce platform company in the world. A significant percentage of their revenue comes not from monthly fees, but by taking a percentage of gross sales your store earns.

Security risks impacting your ability to generate and grow revenue directly impact Shopify’s bottom line, and as such, they have to take security very seriously.

Ecommerce business growing slower than you planned? Logic Inbound is an ecommerce growth marketing agency that has generated millions of dollars from companies ranging from startups to multinational manufacturing organizations. Fill out our discovery form and find out what we can do for your business.

 

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Best eCommerce Platform for your Business

There is a daunting number of ecommerce platforms to choose from when starting your online business and picking the best one for your startup or business requires some research.

To help you with this decision, we’re comparing the best ecommerce platforms for startups and other businesses in 2018 and beyond. After reviewing some of the top platforms out there for ecommerce, we’ll pinpoint where certain platforms excel in terms of pricing, themes, ease of use and other important factors.

If you already have a platform in mind, check out our head to head comparisons of Shopify and Etsy, Shopify and Volusion and WooCommerce and Magento.

Best Ecommerce Platform in 2018

In order to pick the right ecommerce platform for your business, take a look at some of the top choices out there (Shopify, WooCommerce etcetra). It is likely that business owners moving into ecommerce have already heard of many of these platforms, but simply haven’t dived any deeper into learning about them.

Many of these platforms offer different levels of pricing in order to cater to a wider range of ecommerce businesses. Some even have free versions. However, lower cost often means fewer special features and add ons. Businesses with very specific needs may find that they need to pay a little more to ensure they get all the features they require for their ecommerce business.

Another major consideration is how much effort and time a business can put into their ecommerce platform. Some platforms come with themes and apps to make the work of website construction and management minimal. Others benefit from some amount of coding and website building knowledge. Those who are comfortable with that additional work will get more customized experiences from their ecommerce platform, though. This is often worth the extra work.

The top ecommerce platforms that we’ll review here are:

1. Shopify
2. Wix
3. BigCommerce
4. SquareSpace
5. WooCommerce
6. OpenCart
7. BigCartel
8. OSCommerce
9. Volusion
10. LemonStand
11. 3dcart
12. SparkPay
13. Magento
14. UltraCart
15. CoreCommerce

Shopify

The big picture:

Name	Shopify
Price	Plans range from $9/month to $299/month
For small businesses	Has scaled down options
For large businesses	Advanced Shopify and ShopifyPlus are designed for high-volume merchants
Themes	Free and Paid
Customer Service/Support	24/7 support available
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	High if you have some coding knowledge

Shopify is one of the most successful and best-known ecommerce platforms available right now. It powers more than 500,000 businesses and has more than 1 million active users. A huge amount of business is conducted on Shopify, with more than $46 billion sold on the ecommerce platform.

As a platform, Shopify offers a lot of flexibility. You can fully customize your online store and manage your products and inventory. Shopify also has a thriving community where shop owners share tips and knowledge. There’s also a dedicated mobile app so you can keep track of your store anywhere at any time.

While it is one of the most customizable platforms you can find for ecommerce, it does come at a price. Aside from the monthly rate for a plan, many of the themes on Shopify come at an additional cost, though there are some free ones available.

Wix

The big picture:

Name	Wix
Price	Plans range from $5/month to $25/month
For small businesses	The popular “eCommerce” plan is only $17/month and tailored for small business
For large businesses	The VIP plan is better for large businesses but may not meet all their needs
Themes	Free and Paid
Customer Service/Support	It’s difficult to reach an actual person for help, but there is a support center
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	High

Wix is all about ease of use. It has a huge amount of free themes and templates you can use to build an ecommerce platform. It even has an artificial design intelligence feature that builds the site for you via Wix’s AI program. It’s harder to find an easier ecommerce platform builder than Wix.

Wix is also very affordable. The baseline plan is only $5/month. Even their most expensive plan is only $25/month. Of course, with this low price and high ease of use comes a cost. Wix isn’t going to have the bells and whistles that fancier platforms boast, but it should be able to satisfy the needs of most small businesses looking for an ecommerce platform.  

BigCommerce

The big picture:

Name	BigCommerce
Price	Plans range from $29.95/month to $249.95/month
For small businesses	The standard option should suit small businesses
For large businesses	There is an Enterprise option that is tailored to large businesses
Themes	Free and Paid
Customer Service/Support	Live support available
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	High if you have some coding knowledge

BigCommerce is most easily compared to Shopify. Both platforms offer a similar experience when building an ecommerce platform. Like Shopify, BigCommerce offers a range of prices and packages tailored to different types of businesses. The platform is highly customizable if you are comfortable with some light coding. It is also possible to use themes and templates to build your website, but some of these will come at an additional cost.

SquareSpace

The big picture:

Name	SquareSpace
Price	Plans range from $12/month to $40/month
For small businesses	“Professional” version offers a straightforward way to get started
For large businesses	“Advanced” version has more features but may not be as powerful as you need
Themes	Usable once you have an account
Customer Service/Support	24/7 support available
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	Medium – customize within templates

SquareSpace is used by everyone from individuals to businesses. It is on the simpler end of platforms and not right for large businesses. It is better for personal websites, blogs, portfolios and small businesses.

SquareSpace is comparable to Wix and WordPress more than a dedicated ecommerce platform like BigCommerce. However, it offers many features that are attractive for smaller websites. If your ecommerce business is on the smaller side and you’re not looking for advanced features, SquareSpace will make setting up an online store pretty simple and painless.

WooCommerce

The big picture:

Name	WooCommerce
Price	Price is hard to pin down. You will need a domain and other tools as well as the plugin. Cost can be high.
For small businesses	Because it connects to WordPress, it’s great for small business
For large businesses	Can be customized to suit larger businesses’ needs, but requires extensive coding knowledge
Themes	WooCommerce-optimized themes are aplenty
Customer Service/Support	Users have to rely on documentation and forums
Ease of Use	Medium – you need to understand WordPress as well
Customizability	High

WooCommerce is different from all the other ecommerce platforms on this list because it is a WordPress plugin. This comes with some challenges as well as benefits. In order to use WooCommerce you will need to have some knowledge of how to use WordPress. Because it plugs directly into WordPress, understanding that platform as well is essential.

Also, WooCommerce pricing is a bit hard to pin down. There are costs associated with hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce that can all fluctuate within a range. One user’s costs are going to be different from another user’s costs.

OpenCart

The big picture:

Name	OpenCart
Price	Free to download and install
For small businesses	Depends on how you use it
For large businesses	Depends on how you use it
Themes	None
Customer Service/Support	Documentation and forums
Ease of Use	Low
Customizability	High if you have coding knowledge

OpenCart is a free piece of software that anyone can download and use. It is meant to adapt to any operating system or ecommerce requirements. It does not have much built in to its basic form, though.

OpenCart requires a fair bit of work to use. Many books are available on how to use the platform. If you do have the knowledge and skills to use it though, OpenCart is a fantastic ecommerce platform. It enjoys success around the world and is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms available.

BigCartel

The big picture:

Name	BigCartel
Price	Price ranges from free to $29.99/month
For small businesses	Designed specifically for small, creative ventures
For large businesses	Probably not ideal
Themes	Free
Customer Service/Support	Help Center
Ease of Use	Very High
Customizability	Medium

BigCartel is a great platform for small businesses and creative independent ventures. They aim to make selling easy for small stores, with a “quick setup” feature that can get an ecommerce store up and running extremely quickly. They also have a range of free themes. Customizability isn’t super high, but apps and add-ons do allow for some flexibility.

The free version is very limited, but even the most expensive paid version is very affordable. While BigCartel is coder-friendly, using the platform does not actually require any coding.

OSCommerce

The big picture:

Name	OSCommerce
Price	Free (open source)
For small businesses	Good
For large businesses	Good
Themes	None
Customer Service/Support	Support Center
Ease of Use	Low
Customizability	Very High

OSCommerce is free open course software that anyone can download in order to set up an online ecommerce store. About 21,000 live ecommerce stores currently use OSCommerce. OSCommerce also offers more than 8,500 free add-ons that you can download in addition to the platform itself.

Like other open source software, there’s a learning curve associated with OSCommerce. But those who are willing and able to learn the software can get a surprisingly robust ecommerce platform that is genuinely free. Hosting and other costs will fall on you, but once you’re up and running it should be smooth sailing.

Volusion

The big picture:

Name	Volusion
Price	Ranges from $15/month to $135/month
For small businesses	The mini and plus options should be appropriate
For large businesses	The premium package may suit your needs
Themes	Free
Customer Service/Support	Free 24/7 customer support
Ease of Use	Medium – some customers have expressed frustration
Customizability	Medium – customize within themes

Volusion compares to platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce. For a monthly subscription, you get themes, support and an all-in-one ecommerce platform that is fairly customizable.

As a platform, it is fairly robust. However, some users have complained about being confused by the user interface and having some difficulty figuring out how to build their store. Volusion does offer lower priced plans than some of the bigger ecommerce platforms however, and offers 24/7 customer support.

LemonStand

The big picture:

Name	LemonStand
Price	Price ranges from $19/month to $199/month
For small businesses	Ideal
For large businesses	Probably not appropriate. The “professional plan” only allows up to 1,000 orders per month
Themes	None
Customer Service/Support	Difficult to use
Ease of Use	Medium – you will have to create your own themes
Customizability	Very high

LemonStand targets developers who want to fully customize their ecommerce experience. Such users will find a lot to like in LemonStand. It is fully customizable, top to bottom. Those who want to touch every button and blank space on their site will enjoy this platform.

However, there is a price associated and developers could use open source software to get nearly as much customizability at no cost.

3dcart

The big picture:

Name	3dcart
Website	https://www.3dcart.com
Price	Ranges from $19/month to $229/month
For small businesses	Appropriate
For large businesses	Can scale
Themes	Free and Paid
Customer Service/Support	24/7 support available
Ease of Use	High – professional web design packages available
Customizability	High

3dcart offers a wide range of options for whatever sort of business you run. Its most basic plan is literally called a “startup plan” and is great for small businesses trying to get established in the ecommerce realm. 3dcart does not limit the number of products you can sell, no matter the size of your business.

One unique feature of 3dcart is its powerful design capabilities. 3dcart offers a range of themes to get you started and the flexibility to customize those themes using CSS is also there. However, if you don’t have CSS training or the time to customize your site, you can use any of their design experts to customize your website.

SparkPay

The big picture:

Name	SparkPay
Price	Defunct
For small businesses	N/A
For large businesses	N/A
Themes	N/A
Customer Service/Support	N/A
Ease of Use	N/A
Customizability	N/A

SparkPay is a lesson in the fickleness of ecommerce and business in general. SparkPay was set up by Capital One bank but has since been shut down. SparkPay will only exist until Jan. 31, 2018, after which it will no longer be supported.

Many things in ecommerce come and go. Platforms that are a hit for a few months soon fall by the wayside. SparkPay is a great example of why stability is important. Platforms like Shopify that have been around a decade or more have proven they can withstand the test of time in the difficult world of ecommerce.

Magento

The big picture:

Name	Magento
Price	Community Edition is open source. Enterprise Edition starts from $2200/month
For small businesses	Too expensive and complicated
For large businesses	Modular design ensures any ecommerce requirements can be fulfilled
Themes	A lot of premium themes available at third-party marketplaces
Customer Service/Support	Third-party support services available
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	Medium

Magento is similar to platforms like WooCommerce and OpenCart. Its Community Edition is completely free and open-source, but you will be responsible for setting it up and paying for the hosting and domain. Magento also comes with a steep learning curve, and Magento developers are noticeably more expensive to hire than rival platforms. For smaller businesses, setting up an ecommerce shop using Magento can be needlessly expensive. 

Really, Magento’s robust platform is meant for enterprise businesses. These businesses typically want the best in functionality and security, which Magento’s modular nature can ensure. Development costs for Magento can be downright astronomical, but for enterprises it’s a fair price to pay for extensibility, robustness and security.

UltraCart

The big picture:

Name	UltraCart
Price	Price ranges from $49.95/month to $229.95/month
For small businesses	The small business package is customized for startups
For large businesses	The large plan is right for most bigger businesses
Themes	Available
Customer Service/Support	Support and tutorials available
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	High

UltraCart tailors its plans for the type of business using them. Starting with small businesses, it offers more features and sales until you reach the large business level.

UltraCart is also easy to use, with a visual builder that doesn’t require any coding knowledge. You can design visually in a way that is intuitive to most people. UltraCart also has video tutorials and documentation available in its support center to help you learn how to use its website builder.

CoreCommerce

The big picture:

Name	CoreCommerce
Price	Price ranges from $19/month to $600/month
For small businesses	Has many lower-cost plans for smaller businesses
For large businesses	The higher end plans can suit large businesses
Themes	Responsive themes available with all plans
Customer Service/Support	Phone number for support readily available
Ease of Use	High
Customizability	Depends on plan

CoreCommerce has a huge range of plans available, more than most other platforms. This makes it suitable for just about any business looking to break into ecommerce and start up a store. The amount of choices can be a bit dizzying, though, and CoreCommerce’s own website is not the most appealing. This reflects poorly on the options it can give to its customers.

However, if you are willing to sort through the massive amount of information and difficult formatting on their website, you are almost sure to find the plan that is right for your business.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Business

Small businesses have different needs than larger businesses and individuals. There is a tough balance to strike between getting all the features you need to grow your business while not breaking your budget right away.

In our opinion, some of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses are:

• Shopify
• BigCommerce
• WooCommerce

Shopify has been in the business for a very long time. It is one of the most successful platforms out there and still gets good reviews from users. It offers light and reduced cost plans for small businesses that aren’t too expensive. And Shopify’s themes allow for a large amount of customizability.

BigCommerce is similar to Shopify in that it offers a range of powerful ecommerce features packaged in an easy-to-use SaaS platform. It’s almost neck-and-neck with Shopify in terms of pricing too, and currently enjoys a decent amount of popularity with users. Ultimately, it’s Shopify’s superior app developer support that keeps BigCommerce from being the best ecommerce platform for small businesses.

WooCommerce is an interesting option for small business. It connects right into WordPress. Small business owners who already use WordPress for their website will find a lot to love with WooCommerce and there is a lot of flexibility when the requirements of the business grow.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Startups

Starups have slightly different needs than small businesses. While there is a lot of overlap in between the two, startups are more likely to be innovators and risk takers. We recommend the following platforms for startups:

• 3dcart
• LemonStand

3dcart literally offers a “startup plan” that is aimed at startup businesses. They are focused on startups and other small businesses and tailor certain experiences toward this.

LemonStand is a platform for web developers who want to fully customize their web development experience when it comes to their ecommerce business. This is good for startups who are trying to innovate and customize. Many startups who are breaking into the business world with something new and creative will appreciate the openness of LemonStand.

Of course, the needs of all startups are different. The big players like Shopify can still work for startups who have the budget for more standard platforms.

Best Ecommerce Platform for Small Budgets

When cost is the determining factor, you may need a free ecommerce platform in order to get started. Try one of these:

• WooCommerce
• OpenCart
• OSCommerce

WooCommerce does not come without costs, but if you have a keen grasp over coding you can get a decent ecommerce store up-and-running at not much cost without sacrificing anything in the way of functionality.

OpenCart offers a basic package for free that you can further customize in order to fit your needs. The OpenCart marketplace offers add-ons if you do find you need more features and have some money to spend on them.

OSCommerce not only offers a free platform, but free add-ons as well. The app marketplace allows you to build a lot of features into your website. As far as a free platform goes, OSCommerce offers a lot of additional options.

Best Ecommerce Platform for SEO

SEO is often the job of you, the business owner, but there are platforms that help you with SEO as you build. Here are some of our picks:

• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• Magento

WooCommerce, because it integrates into WordPress, comes with a lot of strong SEO features built right in. WordPress will give you feedback on your SEO right in pages and posts. This makes it easy to visually judge if your SEO on any given page or post is strong and also takes the pressure and thinking out of SEO. It will soon become second nature.

Shopify and Magento are similar when it comes to SEO. They both offer tools, add-ons and apps that can help you figure out your SEO.

However, how successful your SEO is on any of these platforms comes down to some extra work on your part. None of these platforms can do SEO perfectly for you. You will have to invest some of your own time and resources in order to get the best SEO possible out of any ecommerce platform.

So What is the Best Platform for an Ecommerce Website?

That depends on how you plan to use it.

For general use, Shopify is hard to beat. It has been an ecommerce leader for a long time because it has been easy to use, customizable and affordable for more than a decade. There is a reason it is so popular.

For startups and small businesses, WooCommerce has a lot to offer by integrating with WordPress.

For those who need to save money, OSCommerce is completely free to use and offers free add-ons to further customize your ecommerce platform.

For SEO, Shopify and WooCommerce both have a lot to offer, but the ultimate success of SEO will still come down to your knowledge and resources.

 

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