Woocommerce vs Shopify – Finding the Best eCommerce Platform

Anyone looking for an easy-to-use store builder would do well by choosing either WooCommerce or Shopify. Both of these are popular ecommerce platforms, however, they do differ significantly in crucial areas such as running costs, setup requirements and customizability.

WooCommerce is the biggest shareholder in the global ecommerce market. It powers a staggering 23% of all online ecommerce websites and there are no signs of it slowing down in terms of growth. It is even taking away customers from established ecommerce platforms such as Magento.

But Shopify is swiftly shaping up to be a serious competitor for WooCommerce. It has seen steady growth in recent years and now powers more than half a million ecommerce websites. Offered as an all-in-one ecommerce “software-as-a-service” (SaaS) solution, it provides everything you need to open a full-fledged online store.

The reason why we’re comparing WooCommerce vs Shopify is that both are direct competitors.

And Shopify isn’t just for small-to-medium businesses either. It is being used by industry giants like Mondelez International, makers of Oreo. Modelez uses Shopify to power a world-class eCommerce operation that involves complex integrations with advanced systems such as ERPs.

WooCommerce on the other hand is being used by electronic appliances maker Singer, who uses it to sell products through a website and Facebook. The WooCommerce for Facebook module has allowed Singer to reach additional customers and thus increase sales.

Clearly then, both WooCommerce and Shopify can be used for a variety of requirements, no matter the size of the business. But which one should you choose for your online business? In this WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison, we’ll take a deeper look to help you find the answer.

WooCommerce vs Shopify Overview

	Shopify	WooCommerce
Platform transaction fees	Up to 2% of each sale (Exempted by using Shopify Payments)	None
Number of Products	Unlimited	Unlimited
Themes (on official marketplace)	62 (10 Free)	14 (1 Free)
Apps and Plugins	2000+	274
Supported Payment Gateways	70+	Supports most gateways
Number of Stores	500,000+	22,00,000+
Bandwidth Restrictions	None	Vary according to hosting plan
Pricing	Starting at $29 (excl. Lite plan)*	Free

*The Shopify Lite plan is excluded as it is does not include store-building tools.

WooCommerce Templates vs Shopify Themes

The design of a website is part of its identity – it’s what makes the first impression on a visitor. A well-designed website inspires confidence and trust with its audience and shows that the company is willing to go the extra mile to enhance the customer experience. In competitive industries such as eCommerce, every detail matters and good design is certainly enough to give a business the edge.

A badly designed website will not only be unpopular with visitors, but also with search engines.

First of all, it will increase the bounce rate which means the store is losing potential sales and customers.

Secondly, because of the high bounce rate, Google will start to favor websites that retain visitors better. This is an important factor to consider for eCommerce businesses.

What’s more, a website shouldn’t just be well-designed but it should also be optimized for mobile devices. A major part of web traffic comes from mobile devices these days, and a mobile-optimized website makes it easier for those customers to navigate around and make purchases.

Comparing website design on WooCommerce vs Shopify, it is important to note that the latter allows you to implement theme changes in a very convenient manner. In WooCommerce, you’re expected to tinker here and there to get things working.

WooCommerce Templates

The official WooCommerce template stores offers 14 templates. These are called “child themes” for WooCommerce’s Storefront template which is the default for every store made using the platform. These child themes offer a variety of attractive designs and cost just $39. That’s a pretty good price for themes that are officially supported by the platform.

But 14 choices of design might not be enough for many users. Fortunately, there are other options available when it comes to paid templates.

Third-party Templates

Template marketplaces such as Template Monster and Theme Forest allow third-party designers and developers to put up their own paid WooCommerce templates. The prices of these templates are quite reasonable, ranging from $59-$99.

All of the templates available on these platforms have been code-checked and offer a great choice of designs that cater to a variety of businesses and industries.

Keep in mind that buying a template from non-official sources means that official WooCommerce support won’t help with any support requests unless you deactivate the template.

Shopify Theme

The Shopify template store offers a selection of 62 templates, out of which 10 are free. All of the templates on offer here have been designed by professionals and are fully mobile responsive. Even the free templates offer a decent variety to users who’re on a tight budget.

The individual templates come in 2 or 3 variations, so there are multiple looks for a given design structure.

The only concern here is that Shopify’s paid templates are considerably more expensive than their WooCommerce counterparts. Prices start at $140 and go up to $180. But these templates are a one-time investment, so it’s not exactly a deal breaker but does add to the cost of starting a Shopify store.

Third-party Templates

Shopify’s popularity extends to support from third-party designers as well. Theme Forest and Template Monster host more than a thousand high-quality Shopify templates which gives users even further options when it comes to design.

What’s more, these premium templates cost around $29-$69, significantly cheaper compared to the official paid templates. Just make sure to inspect a theme to see if it’s mobile responsive and if its author offers after-sales support.

WooCommerce vs Shopify Customer Support

Having access to responsive customer support is essential for many reasons. Maybe you just want someone to walk you through on how to use a particular platform feature or maybe, your store just isn’t functioning in a routine manner.

WooCommerce Customer Support

WooCommerce is an open-source product that’s free. Hence, support is just limited to a basic ticketing system. What’s more, it isn’t very responsive and median response time for support requests is around 48 hours.

Needless to say, if you’re stuck with WooCommerce but short on time, Google will be your best option.

If prompt support is a necessity, you can opt for firms that offer WooCommerce development and support services such as Logic Inbound.

Shopify Support

Shopify offers multiple ways to reach customer support

Being a paid product, Shopify offers online support for all its customers. Phone support is available for customers who choose the Shopify plan ($79-per-month) and up.

Shopify’s support personnel provide swift answers to any platform-related questions

We found Shopify’s live support personnel to be very responsive to any kind of queries. The support rep will provide you precise instructions and even screenshots if you want help with any of the platform’s features.

If you have any sort questions related to Shopify, the service’s live support are always there to answer and assist you.

WooCommerce vs Shopify in terms of customer support is pretty clear: Shopify has far better resources at its disposal to help its customers.

WooCommerce vs Shopify Pricing – Is Woo Actually Cheaper?

On the face of it, WooCommerce takes an easy lead when it comes to pricing. It’s open-source so it’s completely free to download. Plans for Shopify on the other hand start at $29-per-month.

But that’s without factoring in the running costs such as domain name and web hosting and you’ll realize that building a WooCommerce site is far from free.

If you’re deciding WooCommerce vs Shopify on the basis of cost, play close attention to the following section.

WooCommerce Pricing

You don’t have to pay anything to for WooCommerce, it’s completely free. But it’s what’s called a self-hosted platform, so you’ll have to arrange the domain name and web hosting for it.

WooCommerce Cost

• Domain name: Domain names are relatively cheap and can be bought for $10-per-year.
• Web hosting: Depending upon the traffic requirements of your website, web hosting costs range from just $4-per-month to thousands of dollars each month. For most users though, it’ll be less than $10-per-month.
• SSL Certificate: Any legitimate eCommerce site has to have an SSL certificate to show that it’s trustworthy and secure. Prices for SSL certificates start from around $69-per-year.
• Template: The included free Storefront template is great but for store owners looking for better design, paid templates are a great option, and start from $39 (one time cost).
• Extensions and Custom Development: Users who want greater functionality for their WooCommerce store have two options:
  • Use plugins (free or paid)
  • Hire a WooCommerce developer

There are plenty of free plugins available but they might not fulfill every need. In that case you’ll have to opt for a paid plugin or hire a developer who’ll do the required customizations.

Shopify Pricing

Users can choose from 5 Shopify subscription plans based on their requirements:

1. Lite: $9 per month. Basically a Shopify widget for websites. Does not include store builder.
2. Basic Shopify: $29 per month
3. Shopify: $79 per month
4. Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
5. Shopify Plus: For high-volume merchants. Custom pricing for every customer. Prices vary according to requirements and reportedly hover around $2000 per month

An overview of the salient features of each subscription plan:

	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Cost	$29/month	$79/month	$299/month
Transaction fee	2% (exempted by using Shopify Payments)	1% (exempted by using Shopify Payments)	0.5% (exempted by using Shopify Payments)
File storage	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
24/7 support	Online only	Online and phone	Online and phone
SSL certificate	Free	Free	Free
Advanced reports

 

One thing that isn’t included in any one Shopify’s plans is the domain name. The platform provides a unique store web address but it’s linked to the company’s website (yourstore.shopify.com).

Users can buy a domain name from Shopify but there might be problems with transferring it if they choose to migrate to another platform. For this reason, it is recommended to buy a domain name from other providers.

Platform Transaction Fees

WooCommerce does not charge its customers with transaction fees. Instead, customers will be dealing with just the credit card rates.

WooCommerce users can opt for popular payment processors such as Stripe

A reliable and popular option is Stripe, which charges 2.9% (of sale) + 30¢ for each transaction.

Shopify does levy users with transaction fees if they choose a third-party payment processor. In this case, transaction fees start range from 2% – 0.5% of each sale depending on the subscription plan.

	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Shopify Transaction Fees (per sale)	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%

This means that users are expected to pay the platform’s transaction fees and the fees associated with credit card processors such as Stripe.

A comparison of Shopify Payments credit card fees (Shown in image under ONLINE RATE)

Shopify transaction fees can be avoided if users choose Shopify Payments as the payment processor. This also has an added advantage in the form of lower credit card processing rates (as low as 2.4% + 30¢).

Which is More Popular WooCommerce or Shopify?

Both WooCommerce and Shopify enjoy immense popularity in the eCommerce industry. They’re great options for anyone looking for an easy-to-use eCommerce platform that can cater to a variety of user requirements.

eCommerce platform marketshare (Source: builtwith.com)

Because of this, it’s very likely that these platforms aren’t going to be disappearing anytime soon. To the contrary, they’re actually growing in market share.

WooCommerce currently powers a staggering 2 million websites around the internet. Even more impressive is that WooCommerce appears in 3.5% of the world’s top million websites.

Shopify on the other hand is being used by around 700,000 websites. Predictably, its appearance in the world’s top million websites is also lower than WooCommerce, at just 1.3%.

By now it should be quite evident that WooCommerce vs Shopify in terms of popularity favors the former. WooCommerce takes a huge lead when it comes to popularity. Being free certainly has its advantages, after all.

Notable eCommerce sites using WooCommerce:

• Singer Australia
• Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
• Airsteam

Notable eCommerce sites using Shopify:

• MVMT Watches
• Hawkers
• Beard & Blade

Shopify Apps vs WooCommerce Plugins

For users who want additional functionality beyond the platform’s own feature set, app and plugins can be useful. Users simply have to search for an app that will cover their requirements, install and configure it and that’s about it. The store now has additional functionality without any extra money spent (in the case of free apps).

This also means you don’t have to hire a developer to make the required customizations. Apps and plugins can often do the job in a better manner for free or at a lower cost.  

WooCommerce Plugins

The official WooCommerce Extensions Store has a selection of 289 extensions that fulfill a variety of purposes. 47 of these are free extensions that deliver important functionality such as:

• PayPal and Stripe integration (payment processing)
• Traffic analytics
• MailChimp integration (email marketing)
• Live chat and service help desk

Can’t find an extension for your requirements? Try CodeCanyon, a huge plugin marketplace that hosts over 1000 WooCommerce extensions.

It’s a part of Envato, a trusted marketplace for digital products with strict quality control policies. All of the extensions here are paid, but they often have a year’s worth of support included in the price.

Shopify Apps

The Shopify App Store is a beautifully designed marketplace that has more than 2000 apps for the platform. What’s more, hundreds of these apps are completely free and cover important areas such as:

• Traffic analytics
• SEO optimization
• MailChimp integration (email marketing)
• Live chat and knowledgebase (customer support)

The Shopify App Store itself deserves a mention because of its user-friendly design. It’s quite reminiscent of a mobile app store and makes browsing and navigation very easy.

Ecommerce Features

The features that come with an eCommerce platform can be a contributing factor to the business’s success. A good set of features means that the user doesn’t have to fiddle around with hiring developers or installing plugins to get the required functionality.

Marketing

Marketing is an essential part of the overall business strategy for any eCommerce site. Without effective marketing, the store will struggle to attract reasonable amounts of traffic. In fact, inadequate marketing can oftentimes be the reason for an eCommerce website shutting down completely.

WooCommerce and Shopify do not come with any notable marketing features of their own. But both platforms have a large library of free extensions that make up for this.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways of conducting an eCommerce business. It typically requires a lower amount of initial investment as there is no need to have a stocked inventory that’s being kept at a storage facility/warehouse.

There are no dropshipping features included with both these platforms. But again, there are a variety of plugins available that will cater to this functionality.

WooCommerce Dropshipping is a popular choice for this as it’s easy to integrate and use. It does cost $49 and that adds towards the total ownership costs of the business.

Shopify users who want to sell products through dropshipping can opt for apps such as Oberlo (free).

Point of Sale (POS) Support

Many eCommerce sites grow their customer-base by starting a brick and mortar operation. For this, POS support can be hugely beneficial as it allows the business to have a synchronized inventory for easier management.

Shopify lists point of sale support as one of its main features. What’s more, it offers official Shopify POS hardware that includes a barcode scanner, a receipt printer, a till and a label printer. Shopify users can even order a basic credit card reader for free.

There’s no official support for POS on the WooCommerce platform. However, users can opt for the highly-regarded WooCommerce Point of Sale (POS) extension which is being used by thousands of merchants and received a “featured plugin” spotlight on CodeCanyon.

It should be noted that users will have to buy their own set of POS hardware for this and then hire a WooCommerce expert for necessary integrations.

Blogging

Content marketing is usually part of any successful business plan. A blog is the company’s mouthpiece, and allows it to establish itself as an authority in its business by putting out quality content that resonates with audiences. It’s also a great way to convert visitors into paying customers.

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can add a blog to your WooCommerce website with great ease. What’s more, WordPress is a world-class content management system (CMS) with many advanced features, so you’ll be covered for all your blogging needs.

Shopify allows users to easily add a blog to their store

Shopify comes with a blogging feature as well that allows users to effortlessly setup a blog within minutes. That said, it is missing some advanced features such as categorization and tagging – features that WordPress offers.

ERP Integration

For larger businesses with complex eCommerce-related operations, ERPs are almost a necessity. They allow a business to be highly agile by offering advanced analytics and inventory management solutions, among other benefits.

In a WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison, ERP integration is a crucial feature to look at.

Because of WooCommerce’s inherent nature as an open-source platform, integration with almost any ERP system is possible. The platform can be customized for virtually any customer requirements. With the right development team, WooCommerce can be integrated with an ERP without much hassle.

Shopify can also be integrated with virtually any ERP system, provided that you are a Shopify Plus customer. With the Shopify Plus plan users get access to the platform’s RESTful API, which allows for developer access to all eCommerce-related functions within Shopify.

Is Shopify Easier to Use than WooCommerce?

For smaller businesses with limited development resources, or individuals who want to create an eCommerce site, ease of use is an important factor to consider.

Shopify Login vs WooCommerce (Store setup)

Because WooCommerce is a self-hosted solution, it requires its users to deal with technical things such as:

• Setting up the domain and web hosting
• Deploying WordPress
• Installing the WooCommerce plugin itself.

For the non-developer, these can pose quite a challenge.

Shopify on the other hand takes care of everything. All you need to do is sign up for a free trial, and Shopify will walk you through some basic steps to collect essential information.

Once it has that information, you’ll be immediately taken to the Shopify back-end where you can get started with setting up your online store.

Site Editor

Both WooCommerce and Shopify come with a site editor that allows users to make quick and easy customizations to the look and feel of their eCommerce store.

A side-by-side comparison of the Shopify (L) and WooCommerce (R) site editors

In practice, both site editors are fairly easy to use, perform at an equal level and offer a decent set of customizations. Both offer a “live view” of the website as the user makes customizations, meaning, the user can view the effect of the changes as they make them.

Dashboard

Shopify offers a well-designed dashboard that is very easy to navigate. It allows swift access to important features such as product management and reports.

WooCommerce doesn’t have a dashboard of its own. Rather, it appears as a menu item on the WordPress dashboard. More confusingly, adding products is done through the WordPress dashboard as well. This isn’t that big of an issue as the user will quickly become familiar with this practice.

Adding a product WooCommerce looks similar to how you would add a blog post in WordPress

Other than that, common tasks such as adding products are done fairly easily within WooCommerce. Anyone already familiar with how WordPress works will definitely get to grips with WooCommerce quicker.

WooCommerce vs Shopify – Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform

Choosing between these platforms will come down to your own requirements and limitations. Both are great options for small businesses and individuals as they’re relatively affordable and in Shopify’s case, extremely easy to use.

Reasons to Choose WooCommerce over Shopify

Control over costs

For people wanting to setup a basic eCommerce store on a budget, WooCommerce is hard to beat. Its running costs per month are very affordable and the owner can always choose to scale the business (and associated costs) according to requirements.

Flexibility

With the right development expertise, WooCommerce can be customized to fit virtually any requirements. If you have innovative ideas for how an eCommerce store should work, WooCommerce is a great platform to start.

Ease of use

As an eCommerce solution, WooCommerce takes much more time and effort on the part of the user. But once it’s up and running, it’s fairly easy to use and operate.

Reasons to Choose Shopify over WooCommerce

Packaged, easy to use, all-in-one eCommerce solution

As a packaged eCommerce product, Shopify is hard to beat. It allows anyone with basic computer skills to have an online store up and running within a matter of minutes. There are no hosting providers to worry about nor is there a need to actually setup the website.

Simply sign up at the Shopify website and you’ll be taken through some simple steps to start your eCommerce business.

Faster site response times

Every Shopify store is hosted on the company’s world-class application servers. They offer swift load times and thus better website response. This can be crucial because fast page load times contribute to a better user experience, which in turn leads to better SERP rankings.

Customer support

Each of Shopify’s price plans offer access to 24/7 online support. That means you can always avail professional help if you’re having troubles with your Shopify website.

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Shopify Pricing – Shopify Price Plans Explained

Shopify is one of the best tools to create an online store with. If you’re looking to start an eCommerce business using Shopify, you’ll have to opt for a paid subscription plan. But there are several Shopify pricing plans to choose from, and you might be wondering which one will suit the needs of your online business the best.

To help you make an informed decision, we’ll be looking at Shopify pricing plans in depth; delving into their associated costs and the features they offer. Before we start however, let’s take a brief overview of the Shopify platform.

What is Shopify and How Much Does it Cost?

Simply put, Shopify is a web tool that helps you create a professional eCommerce store from scratch. It runs from a web browser so there’s no need to download and install any software. It’s a paid software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, meaning it runs on Shopify’s own application servers and you simply pay a monthly fee to use it.

Shopify simplifies a lot of the technical aspects of creating an online store. You don’t have to buy hosting for a start, and there’s no need to fiddle around with software installations either. Users just have to go to the Shopify website, sign up for a free 14-day trial and get cracking with creating their web store.

Once the 14-day trial is over however, Shopify will ask you to choose one of its pricing plans.

Shopify Pricing Plans

There are currently 5 Shopify pricing plans. If you’ve already decided on using Shopify and are ready to invest in it for the long-term, you can actually save up to 10 – 20% by opting for annual or biennial billing on 4 of these price plans.

Shopify Prices – How Much Does Shopify Cost?

Shopify Pricing Plans	Monthly Billing ($/month)	Annual Billing ($/month)	Biennial Billing ($/month)
Shopify Lite	$9	$8	$7
Basic Shopify	$29	$26	$23
Shopify	$79	$71	$63
Advanced Shopify	$299	$266	$239
Shopify Plus	Variable pricing	Variable pricing	Variable Pricing

 

The above Shopify pricing fees are the charges users have to pay for access to the platform and its various tools and features. Let us dig deeper into each of these price plans and what they have to offer to online sellers.

The Shopify Lite Plan – Affordable Shopify Pricing Plan

What is Shopify Lite?

At just $9 per month, Shopify Lite is the cheapest way of gaining access to the platform’s popular features. But you might be wondering about the wide price gap there is between this and the higher-up ‘Basic’ Shopify plan.

That’s because the Lite plan doesn’t give you access to the platform’s store creation tools. Rather, it allows users to sell through existing websites, Facebook Pages, or a physical location.

How to Use Shopify Lite: Sell on an Existing Website

Shopify allows its users to embed a widget on an existing website that contains the picture and price of a product along with a buy button. This can be done quite easily by adding a snippet of code to any page of a website.

This makes Shopify Lite a great option for users who already own a website, but would like to sell a few products on it. Users still get access to Shopify’s feature-rich store management system so they can stay on top of the sales that are generated through these widgets.

How to Use Shopify Lite: Sell on Facebook

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of creating an online store, selling on Facebook using Shopify Lite might be a good option. Setting up a Facebook store is quite straight-forward, and anyone can do it with the help of Shopify’s documentation.

How to Use Shopify Lite: Manage a Physical Store

If you’re running a physical store and would like to introduce some management through software, Shopify Lite can be a great cost-effective option. Lite users even can avail official point of sale (POS) hardware directly from Shopify and integrate it into their physical store’s operations.

The hardware includes a card reader, receipt printer, barcode scanner and a cash drawer. Sales that are made using the Shopify POS system are automatically recorded in the backend system as well.

Staff Accounts

The Shopify Lite plan also allows the user to create 2 staff accounts if there are several people responsible for running the eCommerce operations. This is certainly useful, as the user (admin) can restrict the staff accounts to not get access to sensitive information (sales data, for example).

Who is the Shopify Lite Plan For?

Shopify Lite is a great option for users who:

1. Want to sell products on an existing website
2. Want to sell products through Facebook
3. Want a digital store management system for their physical store

Like all Shopify plans, users of the Lite plan get 24/7 access to live chat, email and phone support.

Basic Shopify Plan

Costing $29 per month, the Basic Shopify plan is a solid $20 more than the entry-level Lite plan. The significant jump in pricing is due to the fact that this plan gives users access to the platform’s store building tools. Basically, users who want to create an online store from scratch using Shopify will have to opt for at least the Basic Shopify plan.

Basic Shopify provides all of the features of the Lite plan, with some additional key features such as:

• Fraud analysis (Shopify will help you spot fraudulent transactions)
• Manual order creation
• Discount / promo codes
• Store building tools
• Free SSL certificate for your web store
• Blog creation tools

Judging by the features listed above, it’s easy to see that the $20 premium over the Lite plan affords the user with many benefits and important eCommerce features.

Staff Accounts

Like the Lite plan, users of the Basic Shopify plan can create 2 staff accounts.

Who is the Basic Shopify Plan For?

Basic Shopify is a great option for users who:

1. Want a simple and affordable way of creating a professional online store
2. Want basic features such as sales reports and access to Shopify’s fairly extensive app library

Shopify Plan

Shopify’s $79-per-month plan is simply called the ‘Shopify Plan’, perhaps hinting that it is the ‘standard’ plan amongst the various paid subscription options. The cost per month is more than double the amount users pay for the Basic Shopify ($29 per month).

This plan is for people who’re looking to invest a not-insignificant amount of money for better eCommerce features as compared to the affordable Lite and Basic Shopify plans.

As such, the Shopify plan gives users access to all the features found in lower price plans, with some additional features such as:

• 5 staff accounts
• Gift cards
• More detailed reports
• Abandoned cart recovery

The features listed above are absolutely essential for online sellers who want to maximize their profits. Let’s take a deeper look into the value these features provide to users.

Staff Accounts

The Shopify plan allows store admins to create 5 staff accounts, as opposed to lower priced plans which only allow 2 staff accounts. This is necessary for eCommerce businesses with a larger workforce.

Gift Cards

Gift cards allow customers to purchase – you guessed it – gifts for people. The gift cards have a value associated with them so it’s up to the recipient to select a product that will cost as much or below the value of that gift card.

This feature can come in handy for creating increased brand awareness of an online business as well as potentially winning the store new customers by introducing them to the product line.

Advanced Reporting

The cheaper Basic Shopify plan does come with a reporting feature, but it’s fairly rudimentary in its nature. The Shopify plan however, brings with it much more detailed reports that are meant to provide deeper insights into an online store’s performance.

Reports regarding the following are available for users of the Shopify plan:

• Finances
• Sales
• Payments
• Taxes
• Traffic

It’s also a good idea to pair up Shopify’s reporting system with Google Analytics, as it provides a lot of additional insights regarding the incoming traffic of a website.

Shopify Abandoned Cart Recovery

There are instances where an online shopper will add items to their cart, but will not go through with the purchase (due to any number of reasons). But since they added items to the cart, it shows a strong intent of purchasing those items as well.

The abandoned cart recovery feature aims to maximize an online store’s sales by notifying customers – through email – who abandon their shopping cart without completing the purchase. This is a great way of generating sales that would have simply been lost. Since this feature can prove to be fairly beneficial regarding sales, it’s quite natural to see it not included in the cheaper price plans.

Who is the Shopify Plan For?

The Shopify plan is a great option for users who:

1. Want to maximize their sales profits by using advanced features such as gift cards and abandoned cart notifications
2. Want to optimize their sales through detailed reports

Shopify Advanced Plan

The Shopify Advanced plan costs $299 per month, more than ten times the amount users pay for the Basic Shopify plan. Does that mean it comes with ten times more features?

Not quite, but the features it does include – in addition to those offered by the lower price plans – make it a sound investment for merchants with high volumes of traffic and sales.

Advanced Shopify comes with all of the features offered by the lower priced plans, with additional features such as:

• 15 staff accounts
• An advanced report builder
• Third-party calculated shipping rates

Below we’ll be talking about why these features are important and how they aid in justifying the Advanced plan’s $299-per-month bill.

Staff Accounts

The Advanced Shopify plan allows store admins to create up to 15 staff accounts. This gives us an idea that the Advanced plan is geared towards eCommerce operations with a significant workforce.

Shopify Advanced Report Builder

The advanced report building feature allows users to manipulate reporting-related data, and even create custom reports.

The advanced reporting features are impressive, and anyone who’s used data analytics software will certainly appreciate this. Users can create custom reports that provide them with a better understanding of the store’s performance than the standard reports built into Shopify.

It should also be noted that this feature is best used by users who’re familiar with advanced report building techniques.

Calculated Carrier Shipping

Calculated shipping allows users who integrate with a third-party shipping service (such as USPS or FedEx) to provide real-time and updated shipping rates to customers. The shipping rates are calculated in real-time when the customer places an order so they get an accurate final price.

This helps stores build trust by not ‘surprising’ their customers with unexpected shipping rates which may dissuade them from making future purchases.

In fact, if you are planning on using a third-party shipping service, you pretty much have to avail this feature in order to give your customers the best possible buying experience.

Who is the Advanced Shopify Plan For?

The Advanced Shopify plan is best suited for users who:

1. Are prepared to invest heavily into their eCommerce business
2. Want complete control over reports
3. Want to integrate with a third-party shipping service

Shopify Plus Plan

This is Shopify’s answer to enterprise-grade eCommerce solutions such as Magento 2. Shopify Plus allows its customers to integrate with internal systems (such as ERPs and CRMs) through an API along with priority account management by one of Shopify’s customer solutions engineers.

This plan is not aimed at individuals or small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), but at big businesses who are preferably making a million dollars in sales each month. Also, these big businesses are likely to hire help from an Shopify development agency to aid in the development of their online store.

Pricing figures for this plan are a bit of a mystery, since Shopify customizes each Plus plan according to the customer’s requirements. However, monthly pricing for this plan usually starts at around $2000.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the pricing of the Shopify Plus plan, we’ve done a full analysis of the costs involved in it.

Who is the Shopify Plus Plan For?

Shopify Plus is aimed at large eCommerce businesses that require:

• Full integration with internal systems such as ERPs and CRMs
• Full control over reporting and analytics
• Priority support

Shopify Transaction Fees

There are additional costs to consider when choosing a Shopify price plan. Above, we discussed the base price that users will have to pay for using the Shopify platform. However, there are additional fees that are incurred once a Shopify-powered store starts making sales.

Shopify charges users with what it calls ‘transaction fees’ on each sale their store makes. Transaction fees vary according to the various price plans:

	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Shopify Transaction Fees (per sale)	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%

 

As you can see from the table above, Shopify charges a set percentage of each sale as transaction fees. Basically, the more sales your store makes, the more Shopify earns as well.

These transaction fees can be avoided if you choose Shopify Payments as your payment gateway. In addition to completely waiving off the transaction charges, Shopify Payments also offers lower credit card rates as well.

Cash on Delivery / Offline Payments and Shopify Transaction Fees

If you’re going to use Shopify but won’t be using an online payment method, the service will not charge you with any transaction fees.

This means that for merchants who’re using Shopify to display and sell goods online but are collecting payments offline, there are no transaction fees.

Shopify Credit Card Fees – What is Credit Card Rate on Shopify?

If you’re going to collect online payments from your customers, you’ll need to use a payment gateway in order to do so. Shopify integrates with more than 100 payment gateways, so there’s certainly no shortage of choice.

However, bear in mind that the payment gateways all charge a specific amount from each sale as credit card fees. It’s just a cost for the convenience online payments afford you and your customers.

Using Shopify Payments as the Credit Card Processor / Payment Gateway

As discussed above, Shopify comes with its own payment processor as well – Shopify Payments. If you choose not to use Shopify Payments, you’ll have to pay the Shopify transaction fees (discussed above) and the credit card fees to your chosen credit card processor (PayPal, for example).

As well as waiving off transaction fees, Shopify Payments can also – in many cases – offer cheaper credit card rates. Let’s compare it with PayPal, the most popular payment processor in the world.

Shopify Payments vs PayPal Credit Card Rates

Credit Card Processor	Shopify Payments	PayPal
Monthly Fees	None	$30
Credit Card Rates	2.9% + $0.30 (Shopify Lite and Basic Shopify) 2.6% + $0.30 (Shopify) 2.4% + $0.30 (Advanced Shopify)	$2.9% + $0.30

 

Shopify Pricing – Our Thoughts

We hope this breakdown of Shopify pricing plans has helped you better understand the costs involved in using the platform. Many users will often search for “Which Shopify plan is best?”, but the simple answer to that is that no Shopify plan is best. Each plan has its own target audience and is created to fulfill a certain set of requirements.

Shopify pricing will play a huge role in your decision making process when choosing the best ecommerce platform for your business. Carefully analyze your requirements and pick the Shopify plan which suits your needs in the least budget.

Shopify is a great platform to sell online but users may find themselves confused with the various price plans on offer. To come to an informed decision, analyze your requirements and see what each plan has to offer. Also, don’t forget to take advantage of the 14-day free trial that Shopify offers to get first-hand experience with the platform.

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Volusion vs Shopify – Picking the Right Ecommerce Platform

Volusion and Shopify are two of the biggest names in e-commerce, offering a robust “software as a service” (SaaS) package which allows anyone with minimum technical knowledge to create full-fledged online stores.

A quick glance of at Volusion vs Shopify reveals that both of these services function in a similar manner – they’re web-based ecommerce platforms designed for ease-of-use so you don’t have to hire any web developers or designers.

But when looked at closely, both of these tools differ greatly in crucial areas such as features, payment gateway support, third-party integrations and pricing.

Getting your head around the differences in Volusion vs Shopify can be confusing so we decided to provide a comprehensive comparison in the areas that matter to online merchants.

Volusion vs Shopify – Is Shopify Better than Volusion?

	Shopify	Volusion
Transaction fee	Up to 2% of each sale (Exempted by using Shopify Payments)	None
Number of Products	Unlimited	Unlimited with Premium Plan Only
Themes	62 (10 Free)	47 (11 Free)
Apps and Plugins	2000+	72
Supported Payment Gateways	70+	Less than 40
Number of Stores	500,000+	185,000+
Active Users	1,000,000+	40,000+
Bandwidth Restrictions	None	35GB for top-tier plan ($7/GB fee for going over the limit)
Pricing	Starting at $29 (excl. Lite plan)*	Starting at $15

*The Shopify Lite plan is excluded as it is does not include store-building tools.

Shopify Themes vs Volusion Templates

Design has always been an important component of a website. But it’s now more important than ever. Not only does good design instill confidence and trust in customers, it also helps your online business’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Websites with bad mobile design have been especially penalized by Google in recent years.

Both Shopify and Volusion realize the importance of good design, and offer a pretty extensive catalog of professional-looking templates. Fortunately, all of these templates have also been designed with mobile users in mind so they look great regardless of the device on which they’re being accessed.

Let’s take a look at some key differences between the templates offered by the two platforms.

Free Templates – Which Platform has Better Free Themes?

Shopify and Volusion offer a small selection of free templates for sellers on a budget. Volusion’s selection is only slightly ahead in this area with 11 free themes as opposed to Shopify’s 10.

However, it should be noted that Shopify offers its templates in 2 or 3 distinct versions so the user has some design options while keeping the template’s structure.

Shopify’s free ‘Simple’ template in its ‘Beauty’ variation

The quality of the free templates offered by both platforms is certainly up to par, with modern and professional design elements giving them a fresh look. The themes also vary greatly in appearance so there’s a fair bit of choice even for users on a budget.

Paid Templates – Does Premium Come with Quality?

Volusion has almost caught up with Shopify’s selection of 51 premium templates by offering 48 of their own. Shopify’s paid templates start at $140 while Volusion has a fixed $180 price for any of its premium templates.

Volusion’s paid templates have a fixed $180 price

Generally speaking, the premium templates offered by both these platforms feel similar in quality and cover a wide range of industries. That said however, finding the right template to suit your business is much, much easier on Shopify’s theme marketplace thanks to the extensive filtering options.

Shopify has a powerful filtering system for its templates

There are no template filters on Volusion’s template marketplace, but the service does allow consultation with its live chat experts on which template will best fit your business. We still prefer Shopify’s filtering system as it’s just more convenient.

Which has Better Customer Support Volusion or Shopify?

Shopify and Volusion both market their platforms being easy to setup and use even for users with minimal technical knowledge. However, getting to grips with the interface can still prove to be a challenge for some users and they’re very likely going to need some help from customer support.

Volusion vs Shopify Customer Support

Online support is available on all plans by both of these services. However, Volusion offers phone support starting from the $35 ‘Plus’ plan and up while Shopify’s phone support is available on its cheaper $29 ‘Basic’ plan and up.

Shopify’s live support serves swift and helpful responses

Here’s something to consider in Volusion vs Shopify: while contacting Volusion customer support, we found that live chat support was generally unresponsive to queries even after 20 minutes. Shopify’s live chat on the other hand responded within a minute and the ‘guru’ (support expert) was extremely helpful, going as far as to provide screenshot examples to simple questions.

Volusion offers a convenient way of scheduling a call with customer support

One aspect of Volusion customer support really stands out – its phone support and call scheduling. Accessing Volusion’s phone support is extremely easy by clicking the “Get Help” link located at the top-right corner of the Volusion dashboard. From there you can choose to schedule a call with customer support by using the service’s intuitive scheduling interface.

Is Volusion More Affordable Than Shopify?

Shopify and Volusion both offer tiered pricing plans that suit a variety of budget requirement options. Investing in either of these services will be a long term commitment due to the nature of online businesses. Switching services down the road poses a severe risk to your business due to the cost and time involved as well as the potential hit your website will take when it comes to search engine rankings.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify currently offers the following 5 subscription plans:

1. Lite: $9 per month
2. Basic Shopify: $29 per month
3. Shopify: $79 per month
4. Advanced Shopify: $299 per month

Shopify Plus: For high-volume merchants. Prices vary according to requirements and reportedly hover around $2000 per month

The Shopify Lite plan isn’t listed in the table pictured above. That’s because this plan doesn’t really allow you to use the platform to create an online store. What it provides is the ability to use Shopify’s powerful backend features to sell products on your own website, app or Facebook page.

Volusion Pricing

Volusion currently offers the following 4 subscription plans:

1. Volusion Mini: $15 per month
2. Volusion Plus: $35 per month
3. Volusion Pro: $75 per month
4. Volusion Premium: $135 per month

While comparing Volusion vs Shopify on pricing, it seems that Shopify has Volusion beat when it comes to entry-level pricing. However, dig deeper and you’ll find that Volusion offers you access to the whole suite of store building tools with its $15-per-month Mini plan.

This plan is ideal for testing and to check out market response to the online store or for people who’re simply on a very limited budget. To get access to Shopify’s store-building tools you’ll have to pay nearly twice as much.

Volusion Bandwidth Restrictions

An important point to note here is that there are bandwidth restrictions in each of Volusion’s subscription plans, while there are none even for Shopify’s entry-level plan. If your online store is likely to get a huge amount of traffic Volusion’s bandwidth restrictions could prove to be troublesome.

While comparing Volusion vs Shopify, this really stood out to us as it means budget users are going to be unduly restricted.

To put this into perspective, here’s how bandwidth is consumed for a typical online store and why these restrictions cannot be overlooked:

• The typical visitor is likely to access your home page and open a 3 to 4 product pages
• A high quality home page ‘banner’ image will be within 250-400kb in size. The home page will also contain products with images around 75-100kb in size
• Assuming there are at least 4 of such images, and some body text as well, the typical home page visit will consume up to 1000kbs.
• A product page visit will yield 3 to 4 images that have a 100kb size each. Taking into account body text and other website resources a product page visit will consume up to 1000kbs as well
• Assuming the visitor opens the homepage (1000kb) and then 4 product pages (4 x 1000kbs), this will consume around 5000kbs
• Each customer will take 5000kbs of your bandwidth in a single visit
• The most basic of Volusion plans allows 1000,000kbs of bandwidth a month, which amounts to 200 typical visits to your websites including those where no purchases are made
• The most expensive Volusion plan ($135/month) allows 35,000,000kbs (35GB) of bandwidth, and that accounts for 7000 typical visits to your website

Judging by the use case above, it’s obvious that Volusion’s bandwidth cap will become a severe limitation for merchants with large customer audiences.

Volusion vs Shopify Transaction Fees

Volusion makes a point of advertising their service as being completely free of any sort of transaction fees.

If you’re considering Volusion vs Shopify, this could be a huge point in favor of the former.

That’s because most online store builders including Shopify charge you a small fee for each transaction.

Shopify Transaction Fees – An Unforeseen Overhead

The cheapest Shopify pricing package will deduct 2% of each sale as transaction fees. The percentage of deduction drops as you opt for more expensive pricing plans, at 0.5% for Advanced Shopify ($299/month).

	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Shopify Transaction Fees	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%

Shopify does give its customer a way of avoiding transactions fees and that is by using its own payment processing system called Shopify Payments.

This option isn’t however as it’s only available to merchants operating from United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Puerto Rico.

Popularity

Shopify was responsible for as much as half a million dollars worth of transactions per minute during Black Friday 2016 (Source: Shopify.com)

The popularity of any product speaks volumes of its appeal to the end user. If people are using a product, there must be something that it gets very right.

But that popularity should be backed by a history as well. There are many cases in which popular products or services simply fade away after the initial hype has died (Twitter’s video-sharing app Vine is a prime example).

The Important Figures

Number of stores using Volusion vs Shopify

Both Shopify and Volusion have a long history as online store building platforms. But Shopify definitely has the edge as it’s proven to be far more popular, with more than half a million stores in the world. Volusion’s numbers in this regard are less impressive, with around 185,000 stores.

Active Users

Shopify reports having more than 1 million active users, significantly more than those reported by Volusion with just 40,000 users.

Shopify Revenue vs Volusion Revenue

Shopify’s large customer base is generating impressive revenue. The company reports that their platform is behind $46 billion in sales, far more than Volusion’s $28 billion.

Even though Shopify is the younger company, it has managed to accelerate its product development to meet the demands of store owners. Volusion hasn’t been as quick to adapt to market trends and that is one of the reasons it is now lagging behind despite being the older company.

Which is why, considering Volusion vs Shopify in terms of popularity produces a clear winner: Shopify.

Shopify Apps vs Volusion Marketplace

Third-party integrations such as apps, widgets and plugins play an important role in extending the functionality of your online store beyond the base platform tools. This factor cannot be overlooked by store owners who want lots of additional functionality to support complex business processes.

A common phenomenon in the tech industry is that the most popular products and services get the most amount of support from third-party developers. The reason for this is simple – the more popular a service is, the more buyers there are for apps and plugins.

As discussed in the previous section, the popularity of Shopify far outstrips that enjoyed by Volusion. And the number of apps and plugins available in the Shopify App Store reflect this. There are more than 2000 Shopify apps available, all which are meant to extend the functionality of the platform. Volusion’s Marketplace on the other hand hosts only 72 apps.

What’s more, there are hundreds of free apps available on the Shopify App Store but only around 10 on Volusion’s Marketplace. The bottom line is that if you see your company growing in the future and requiring additional functionality or third-party integration, there’s a greater chance that Shopify’s rich app ecosystem will accommodate it.

Volusion vs Shopify Apps

The Shopify App Store looks lively and well managed

A visit to the Shopify App Store makes a clear impression of it being a central part of the business. It has a lot of useful apps all purpose-made to take your online store to the next level. There’s a curated selection of apps at the top and the rest of the apps are listed categorically in a very well-designed interface.

The Volusion Marketplace looks fine but not nearly as well-designed or well put-together as the Shopify App Store. The selection of apps is obviously limited, but they’re laid out in an extremely prosaic manner that gives the impression that the Marketplace is more of an after-thought than a real part of the Volusion platform.

Which has Better Ecommerce Features Volusion or Shopify

Both Shopify and Volusion provide their users with a comprehensive toolkit to create a fully-fledged online store. But that’s not the end of it. To save customers the trouble of finding and implementing third-party solutions, both these services provide value-added features that are useful in taking your online business to the next level.

Marketing Features

An important process after the creation of an online store is its marketing. Without any strategic marketing, traffic flow to the store will be at a minimum and it’ll take a long while to grow. Low traffic automatically means lesser sales, and that’s not really in any business’s best interests.

Volusion Marketing Tools

Volusion features an impressive roster of basic built-in marketing tools

Volusion provides some promising marketing features within its set of tools. These include a tool that allows for the creation of affiliate programs for your online business, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and an email marketing tool that allows you to send newsletters to your email list.

These features are a great place to start but that’s as far as they’ll go. The affiliate marketing tool works well but the CRM tool is not fully realized and doesn’t support email providers that require SSL integration (Gmail, for example), which is a huge let-down.

As discussed earlier, the Volusion Marketplace has a limited number of apps. The basic nature of the Volusion marketing toolkit will mean that most users will turn to the Marketplace, which might not yield the best results due to its small selection of apps and plugins.

Shopify Marketing Tools

Shopify doesn’t have any built-in marketing tools, but that’s where you can leverage the huge selection of apps and plugins available for the platform.

Volusion vs Shopify Dropshipping

Many online sellers are interested in dropshipping as it doesn’t involve a lot of capital and the hassle of keeping inventory in a storage facility. Instead, the store’s orders are redirected to a supplier who will then take over and deliver the ordered goods to the customer.

Thanks to Shopify’s expansive marketplace, there are a lot of options for sellers wanting to open a dropshipping business. With Volusion, the choices are a bit limited as there are only two dropshipping apps to choose from.

Point of Sale Support

Point of sale support is available for both Shopify and Volusion. However, Shopify treats this as an important feature of the overall system whereas with Volusion, this is more of an extension of the platform. This is clearly reflected in the way both of these platforms handle this feature.

Shopify offers its own point of sale hardware (Source: Shopify.com)

Shopify allows you to purchase the complete set of hardware that’s required for operating a typical point of sale system. This includes a barcade scanner, receipt printer, a till and a label printer. And since you’re buying the hardware directly from Shopify, it’s fully supported by the platform and is thus easy to integrate. All of the transactions carried out on the point of sale system are synced with your store’s database so that inventory and sales data is accurate and up to date.

With Volusion, implementing a point of sale system is more complicated. You’ll have to buy the appropriate hardware from a third-party and because it’s not officially supported by the platform, spend quite some time integrating it into your Volusion-powered store.

Blogging

Content-marketing is a great way of generating traffic to any website. The same holds true for online stores as well as regular blog posts are a great way to get attention on social media networks (via content sharing) and this can ultimately lead to an increase in sales.

When comparing Volusion vs Shopify, definitely take into account whether or not you’re getting the content management capabilities that you need.

Adding a blog to your online store in Shopify is very easy

Shopify offers its users the ability to build a blog from within the system. The blogging system in place here isn’t anything complex and is even missing some basic features such as content tagging. But it’s still a great place to start and a great way to test if content marketing will benefit your online store.

Volusion does not offer a blog feature, and this is a huge oversight. Its users have to resort to other blogging solutions such as WordPress and then attach them to a subdomain or a completely different section of the website. This has clear drawbacks. Firstly, this can be a complex process that is far beyond the technical grasp of the average store owner. Secondly, the blog is very likely not going to have a design that is consistent with that of the Volusion store.

Ease of Use – Is Shopify Easy to Use or Volusion?

Live Editor in Volusion vs Shopify

A live editor is a web tool that allows users to customize a website and see the changes in real time. They’re built for ease of use and convenience and are mostly targeted at the average user.

 

The Shopify live editor features a slick interface

Shopify and Volusion both include a live editor which lets you customize the look and feel of your online store. In practical use we found the Shopify live editor to be more intuitive to use as it has a clutter-free and easy-to-use interface.

Volusion allows users to add products through its live editor

Volusion’s live editor features a lot of icons that need to be clicked in order access the different customization options available. Icons obviously save a lot of screen real estate but they’re not very descriptive and we had a hard time figuring out what they stood for the first time we used the Volusion live editor.

Dashboard

The dashboard is the central part of a web service where most of its features can be accessed. Shopify and Volusion have distinct but very well laid out dashboards and their user-friendliness will ultimately depend on the user.

In general, Shopify’s interface looks to be better designed for readability and makes good use of screen real estate. The menu system is easy to follow and most users won’t face any confusion regarding to the different options available.  

Volusion’s interface also features modern design and is relatively easy to use. Comparing Volusion vs Shopify in terms of usability, there might be some extra clicks to accomplish the same tasks but it’s generally not an issue. What we don’t like is how big all of the interface elements are. This is great for readability but it also means you will have to scroll a lot to get where you want.

Volusion vs Shopify – The Key Points You Should Know

Before we decide on which platform is better, let’s take a look at some of the important pros and cons of these platforms.

Shopify Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Easy to use and well-designed user interface	Phone support can be tricky to reach
Huge number of apps and plugins	As much as 2% transaction fee on each sale
Modern and responsive templates (even the free ones)	Relies on apps and plugins for some basic functionality (product reviews, for example)
Easy point of sale system integration
Live chat support is easy to reach and helpful

 

Volusion Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Well-designed user interface	Live chat support is unresponsive during off-peak hours
Useful marketing tools included out of the box	Point of sale system is tricky and requires expert help
Entry-level plan is affordable and gives access to most platform features	Website editor lacks some customization options
Good selection of free and paid templates	Bandwidth restrictions on every subscription tier
Intuitive support call scheduling system

 

Why We Think Shopify is Better Than Volusion

As you might have guessed, Shopify offers a superior package when it comes to comprehensive e-commerce solutions. It’s been around for a long time and enjoys huge popularity within online merchants.

Shopify’s easy to use and intuitive user interface means that even novice computer users can get a web store up and running without any major hassles. The app store is chock-full of useful apps and plugins that extend the functionality of the platform so that it can accommodate even the needs of serious online businesses.

What’s more, the entry-level pricing plans are relatively affordable and offer most of the features of the platform. Shopify makes it easy for anyone to build a robust e-commerce store.

The Case for Volusion

There’s no denying the fact that Volusion lags behind Shopify considerably as being a complete e-commerce solution. Shopify is better designed and has a rich ecosystem of apps and plugins. But there are some people out there who’re simply not looking for that sort of sophistication. They just want a simple e-commerce solution that will let them sell products from a website.

These are most likely to be people who have budget constraints and the $15-a-month Volusion Mini plan is perfect in this regard. It offers all of the capabilities of the Volusion platform but at a price that undercuts the cheapest Shopify plan (excluding the Shopify Lite plan, since it’s severely limited) by almost 50 percent.

 

 

 

 

 

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Shopify Support: All About Where You Go for Help with Shopify

Shopify is one of the best platforms for creating professional and beautiful online stores. It has a fairly advanced feature set but the basics are simple enough for nearly anyone to understand. Its ease of use certainly has been a contributing factor to its impressive popularity. Currently, there are nearly 600,000 Shopify-powered online stores on the internet today.

But as easy and intuitive it can be to use, the fact remains that some people will still require expert help in figuring it out. And it doesn’t have to be novice users who need help. Experienced users may also have questions about the more advanced features of the platform (such as custom reports), and for times like these it’s very important to have access to reliable, responsive and helpful customer support.

Online Shopify Customer Support

All Shopify price plans feature 24/7 online customer support

Shopify offers round-the-clock online support for all of its price plans. Shopify’s support personnel can be contacted via the following ways:

• Live chat support
• Email support
• Phone support
• Twitter

24/7 access to customer support should definitely be considered a favorable aspect of the Shopify platform.

Similar products such as Wix and Squarespace only offer customer support during specific hours.

Shopify Live Chat Support

Live chat support is perhaps the most convenient way of getting in touch with Shopify’s support ‘gurus’. Live chat comes with some advantages as well. Firstly, from experience, the wait times for Shopify’s live chat support are virtually non-existent.

Secondly, Shopify’s live chat personnel are extremely helpful. They tend to answer questions about everything regarding the Shopify platform, rather than just the technical aspect of it. If you’re having trouble understanding instructions, they’ll usually supplement the instructions with a screenshot to help.

How to Contact Shopify Live Chat Support

To get in touch with Shopify live chat support, follow the steps listed below:

1. Visit the Shopify Support page. To help reduce load on their online support services, Shopify will first attempt to redirect you to its documentation by asking you what you need help with.

       2. Instead of typing in a query, just press the ‘Get Help’ button. Since there’s no answer to an empty query, Shopify will take you directly to its online support options.

 3.  Listed in the content box named ‘Quickest Response Time’ is the link to Shopify’s live chat support. Simply click on the ‘Chat with us now’ button. Please note that you’ll need to have a registered Shopify store in order to proceed.

4. The page will scroll down and you will be presented with two text input boxes. Please type in your Shopify store’s address, and a message (optional) and finally click on “Chat with us”.

5. And that’s it! Hopefully, you’ll be the first in queue to get assistance from Shopify’s live chat.

Shopify Email Support

If you don’t have the time required to live chat with Shopify’s support engineers, you can also consider emailing them. Response times are not as quick as live chat, and you can generally expect a reply within a couple of hours of sending the support request.

How to Contact Shopify Support through Email

Getting in touch with Shopify through email requires the same set of steps taken for reaching live chat support (as discussed above). However, once you reach the ‘Contact Us’ section, click on the ‘Email Us’ button.

Once you’ve clicked on the ‘Email Us’ button, the page will serve a form that needs to be filled.

After filling the form, simply click on ‘Send Email’, which will send your message to Shopify’s support engineers.

Shopify Phone Support

Phone support remains one of the best ways to engage in a discussion about a query or an issue. It is quite similar to live chat support in the sense that you’re engaging in conversation with a real person, but sometimes the only way to best explain a problem is through spoken words.

Shopify operates a 24/7 online phone support service for its platforms. There are dedicated phone numbers for different regions of the world, and our experience with Shopify’s phone support team has been generally quite positive. Response times are fairly quick and we never had to wait an unreasonably long amount of time to get in touch with a support rep.

Region	Shopify Support Phone Number
North America	1-888-746-7439
United Kingdom	0800-808-5233
Australia	03-8400-4750
New Zealand	07-788-6026
India	000-800-100-5786
Malaysia	1800-80-6678
Singapore	800-181-1121
Indonesia	007-803-651-0008

Contact Shopify Phone Support for Free

If your country isn’t listed in the table above, you can still reach Shopify’s phone support. What’s more, you can do it absolutely free.

Gmail allows users to make free calls to any US phone number, and the same applies for Shopify’s US support number as well. Simply login to your Gmail account and click on the phone icon located on the bottom-left corner of the screen.

Select United States from the country menu and put in Shopify’s US support number (888-746-7439) to place a call.

Third-Party Shopify Support

Shopify support is great at helping you with most technical issues you might encounter using their platform. But as good as the support is, Shopify will not help you create a great eCommerce store.

A huge number of eCommerce businesses struggle to be profitable – and not just due to technical issues. There are other important factors that make an online store profitable. Those can be:

1. The amount of traffic it receives
2. Its product lineup
3. The quality of the website itself (design, images and text)
4. Optimization for search rankings

To help with setting up a great eCommerce store that has the potential to be profitable, you’ll need to get in touch with a Shopify development agency.

Logic Inbound – Specialized Shopify Support Services

Setting up a small level Shopify store is quite an easy process. The platform was made for ease-of-use so that users with zero coding skills could set up their own online store. However, the goal with any online business is to make sales. And without website traffic, there aren’t going to be any sales.

Shopify support can help you get your store up and running, but after that you’ll have to figure out a way to make it profitable.

Logic Inbound, an official Shopify Partner, offers specialized Shopify support services that can help you build a profitable eCommerce store. We leverage our extensive experience in SEO services to drive qualified traffic to your store reliably. Other marketing agencies will often bombard you with information about the countless tactics that can be used to optimize your Shopify store. However, we use only a few tried-and-tested methods that have long-term benefits with regards to your store’s revenue.

The only sustainable way of getting reliable sales each month is by optimizing your online store so that it gets organic traffic from search engines. Facebook advertising can also be somewhat effective in getting users to your website, but it is prohibitively expensive and there is a lot of hit-and-miss involved with the advertising efforts as well.

Services	Logic Inbound	Shopify Support
SEO optimization for reliable, qualified traffic		✘
Complete development and setup of Shopify site		✘
Migration of existing site to Shopify		✘

 

As a case study, Logic Inbound started a Shopify store of its own that sold knives (Hobanco.com). By putting expert SEO practices to use, Logic Inbound was able to drive 4000 visitors each month to Hobanco.

Traffic stats for Hobanco.com, a Logic Inbound eCommerce case study

Thanks to first-hand experience, Logic Inbound is fully equipped for making any Shopify store profitable.

How Logic Inbound Places You Ahead of Competitors

Logic Inbound leverages the power of SEO to drive sales through qualified traffic to an eCommerce site. SEO is a vast domain, and there lots of ways to approach it. SEO consultants will often list down a hundred different ways by which your Google ranking can become favorable. However, we have experimented and narrowed down crucial search engine ranking factors:

Important SEO Ranking Factors

• Research
• Site Structure
• Authority
• Relevance
• Content

Research

Whatever products you might have on your online store, there’s bound to be someone searching for them at any given time. Google processes 40,000 searches every second, many of which include users searching for products similar to those you have on your eCommerce site.

Your most relevant search terms aren’t always going to be obvious. That is why Logic Inbound conducts thorough research on the search terms people are using to find products similar to yours. Our goal is to find relevant users who have the potential of becoming paying customers on your website. The traffic we drive to a website is organic and profitable.

Site Structure

In a process called indexing, Google goes through (crawls) each website to learn about it. There are certain factors that make a website better at performing at this stage. A good site structures makes it easier for Google to know what your website is really about. Good site structure will also bring forward the keywords your website is targeting.

A website with good site structure has meticulous upkeep on its metadata, inbound and outbound links and most importantly, content. Each page of a website should have links to other pages, a meta description and relevant content.

Authority

A new website will hold little-to-no authority for Google. To be considered an authority, a website should have high quality links from other websites. Links from a high-authority website will lead to accelerated authority growth for your website.

Logic Inbound implemented this tactic to gain authority at an accelerated pace as well. Thanks to links from established websites such as Moz, Logic Inbound now gets nearly 60,000 organic search visitors each month. We can use the same methods and strategies to help your eCommerce store gain authority, which is definitely needed for good search engine rankings.

Relevance

Google recognizes a website by its indexed keywords. Ranking for the right keywords is important, but it’s also quite challenging. Targeting highly-competitive keywords in particular can be costly in terms of both time and money.

At Logic Inbound, we build a website’s relevance by targeting highly-competitive keywords, but also keywords that are relevant but not as competitive. This helps us achieve reliable results as the keyword strategy is multi-faceted, with benefits from low competition but relevant keywords aiding in ranking for high competition keywords.

Content

Logic Inbound went from 10 organic visitors per month to nearly 60,000 visitors by devising the right content strategy. Content is often overlooked by marketers in the pursuit of easy traffic through either costly advertising or shady link building practices.

We make a high quality content strategy for each client, targeting topics that people are searching for in high volumes. All of this is done through data and research and there’s no guess work involved.

Logic Inbound Enables Profitability for Your Shopify Business

Shopify is a great platform for building eCommerce websites, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to create a profitable website. For that you need a strategy for getting traffic.

At Logic Inbound, we specialize in ranking websites through our tried-and-tested approach to SEO. Our knowledge and experience in SEO coupled with expert Shopify development makes us fully equipped at creating a profitable Shopify store for you.

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