What Is Shopify and Is It Right for Your Business?

Shopify is a hosted platform for running an online store: you pay a monthly subscription, and Shopify runs the servers, the checkout and the security updates while you manage products, orders and the look of the store. Whether it is right for your business depends less on Shopify itself than on what you sell, how much you want to change about the way your store works, and who will look after it once it is live.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is software you rent rather than build. You sign up for a plan, choose a theme for the design, add your products, connect a way to take payments and point your domain at it. Shopify hosts the store, keeps the checkout running and handles software updates, so there is no server for you to maintain and no security patching to schedule. In exchange, the store works the way Shopify's platform works: you change its design through the theme, add features through apps, and adjust the checkout only as far as its settings allow. For most product businesses that trade is worth it, because the hard parts of selling online, such as taking cards safely, calculating tax and shipping, and staying online during a busy sale, are already solved. The decision is mostly about whether your way of selling fits inside that frame.

The parts you work with day to day are:

• Products and inventory. Each product has its own title, description, images, variants such as size or colour, price and stock count (Shopify Help Center: Products).
• Themes. The design of the storefront comes from a theme, free or paid, that you customise in an editor without code, or with code if you want more control (Shopify Help Center: Themes).
• Checkout. Shopify hosts the checkout. You set what it asks for, such as phone number or company name, and how it behaves in the checkout settings (Shopify Help Center: Checkout settings).
• Payments. Shopify Payments is Shopify's own payment processor in the countries where it is offered; elsewhere, or by choice, you connect a third-party provider (Shopify Help Center: Shopify Payments).
• Apps. Features Shopify does not include, such as subscriptions, product reviews or wholesale pricing, are added through apps from the Shopify App Store, many of which carry their own monthly fee.

What does Shopify cost?

There are three kinds of cost, and only the first is fixed:

1. The plan. A monthly subscription, with higher plans adding staff accounts, reports and lower card rates. Current plan prices are on Shopify's pricing page.
2. Payment fees. A card rate on every sale. Shopify's pricing page also lists an additional transaction fee on most plans when you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, so check which applies to you before you choose a processor.
3. Apps and theme. A paid theme is a one-time purchase; apps are usually monthly. This is the line that grows quietly, because each app solves one problem and is easy to add.

When you compare Shopify with another platform, add all three together for the number of orders you expect, not only the plan price.

Who is Shopify a good fit for?

Shopify suits businesses that sell physical or digital products to customers online and want the store working quickly without managing hosting. It tends to fit when:

• You sell a catalogue of products with standard options, such as sizes, colours or bundles.
• You want to manage products, orders and discounts yourself, without a developer for everyday changes.
• You expect to sell in more than one place, because Shopify connects the same catalogue to other sales channels.
• You would rather pay a predictable subscription than maintain your own server, security patches and checkout.

When might Shopify not be the right choice?

It is a weaker fit when the business is not really a product store:

• Service businesses that need bookings, quotes or appointments rather than a cart. A website with a booking system usually fits better.
• Highly custom buying processes, such as complex configurators, unusual pricing rules or approval steps, where you would end up depending on several apps or custom development.
• Very small catalogues with occasional sales, where a simpler site with a payment link may cost less each month.
• Businesses that need full control of the checkout code. Shopify hosts the checkout, so what you can change is limited to what its settings and extensions allow.

How does Shopify handle SEO?

Shopify covers the basics without extra work. It creates a sitemap for the store automatically, and you can edit the page title, meta description and URL of each product, collection, page and blog post (Shopify Help Center: SEO). What it does not do for you is the part that decides rankings: product descriptions written for the way customers search, collection pages that answer buying questions, and fast pages without too many apps loading scripts.

Shopify compared with building a custom site

Questions to answer before you decide

1. What do you sell, and how many products? A product catalogue points to Shopify; appointments and quotes point elsewhere.
2. Which features do you need on day one? List them, then check which come with Shopify and which need an app, and what each app costs per month.
3. Who will run the store? Shopify is built for owners to manage themselves; if nobody has the time, budget for help with product updates, apps and speed.
4. What will payments cost at your expected volume? Use the card rates on the pricing page and your own order numbers.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a developer to use Shopify?

Not to start. A theme, products and payments can be set up without code. A developer helps when you want a custom design, changes the theme editor cannot make, or integrations with other systems.

Can I move my existing store to Shopify?

Yes. Products, customers and orders can be imported, and redirects from your old URLs keep the search traffic those pages already have.

Does Shopify own my store?

You own your products, content and customer data and can export them. You are renting the software, so the store runs on Shopify for as long as you keep the subscription.

If you are weighing Shopify for your business, read whether you need a Shopify development partner, see what ongoing Shopify store management covers, read how we work with Shopify brands, or get in touch to talk it through.

Related reading

• Do You Actually Need a Shopify Dev Partner? A Store Owner's Guide
• How to Generate a Business Name for Your Shopify Store When You're Out of Time
• Running E-Commerce with Shopify When You're Running Out of Hours