Shopify Review Summary
Shopify is 100% the best e-commerce platform around. Shopify has the widest range of sales tools available along with free and premium themes & apps (plugins) for everything that you can dream of.
Anyone can make an online store using Shopify. No programming knowledge is required – everything is very simple and intuitive to set up. It takes about 5 minutes to register and have your store set up. Shopify is also one of the most affordable options for creating an online shop. Keep reading if you are interested in our more in-depth review of Shopify.
Pros
Cons
This Shopify review is meant for people either looking to start an e-commerce business or switch the platform they are currently using.
I am sure by now you know how difficult it can be to start an e-commerce business and create a beautiful store. There are so many difficult aspects of setting up an e-commerce business:
- Which e-commerce platform to choose?
- Should I self-host?
- Which payment methods to use?
- How to manage inventory?
- How to design a beautiful store?
- How much does it cost to run a store?
Our Shopify review will answer all those questions and help you get started with your e-commerce business today!
So what are you waiting for? Let’s find out if Shopify suits your needs.
Table of Contents
What is Shopify?
Quick answer
Shopify is a huge e-commerce platform that suits anyone looking to start an e-commerce business. No programming skills required at all.
Shopify is an e-commerce platform created in 2005. Shopify has reported that they host stores for over 1 million businesses with a total volume of 41 billion dollars all over the world.
Shopify’s clients range from small businesses making a couple hundred in monthly revenue to multi-million dollar monthly. That means Shopify is an excellent choice for businesses looking to find a solution for the long term.
Can you guess why Shopify is so successful?
Simple – the whole secret behind their business model is making the creation of online stores as easy as possible. In other words – they have successfully created a platform so easy to use that anyone can start an online store!
You do not need programming skills, designing skills or server managing skills at all to run a successful Shopify store. Although some HTML & CSS knowledge goes a long way if you are not entirely satisfied with any of their themes.
What makes Shopify extremely powerful is the wide range of tools to choose from. There is a plugin for literally everything – starting from automated e-mail marketing to showing users pop-ups about on-going discounts.
Later on in this Shopify review, we will discuss different themes, apps, and features available in Shopify.
How does Shopify work?
Quick answer
Sign up for the 14-day trial, choose your theme, payment providers, add products and you are good to go! Anyone can build a store using Shopify, even a total beginner.
Getting started with Shopify boils down to following simple steps:
- Register a Shopify account (14-day trial)
- Choose and customize a theme
- Setup plugins (not required)
- Setup payment processors (gateways)
- Add shipping methods
- Link your domain (not required)
- Add your products
- Publish your store and accept orders!
Shopify handles all the hard stuff for you – hosting, servers and backups to make sure your valuable data never gets lost.
So how can you start?
Well, you could just go ahead and sign up to Shopify. The best way to learn will always be experimenting with different options yourself.
Or…
You can keep reading this Shopify review and we will break down all of these steps and give you a step-by-step tutorial to get your first shop up and running.
How much does Shopify cost?
Quick answer
Shopify offers a 14-day trial for you to build your store. After the trial, you have to subscribe to one of their plans starting from $29 / month to 299$ / month. We think that for most stores the $29 / month plan is all they will ever need and more.
To start off Shopify offers all of its customers a 14 day trial period to make sure Shopify is the right tool for creating your online store.
After the 14 day trial period you have to subscribe to a monthly plan. Shopify offers 5 different plans. Take a look at the plans below to choose which one would suit you.
I think most people will be more than satisfied with the Basic Shopify plan ($29 / month).
Saving money on Shopify plans
If you are in it for the long term then I suggest you take a look at their annual and two-year plans because they offer a significant discount.
- Using an annual plan (pay once per year) you will receive a 10% discount compared to paying monthly.
- Using a two-year plan you will receive a 20% discount compared to paying monthly.
| Shopify Plan | Monthly Pricing | 1-Year Pricing (-10%) | 2-Year Pricing (-20%) |
| Shopify Basic | $29 / month | $26.10 / month | $23.20 / month |
| Shopify | $79 / month | $71.10 / month | $63.20 / month |
| Advanced Shopify | $299 / month | $269.10 / month | $239.20 / month |
10% and 20% saving might not seem a lot but in the end, keeping your costs down is always a good thing!
In the next section of this Shopify review, I will give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up your first store.
How to use Shopify?
Quick answer
Register to Shopify now and “learn as you go” is probably the best strategy.
In this section, I will give you a step-by-step tutorial that you have been waiting for to set up your first online store with Shopify.
So what are you waiting for?
Let’s get started.
Registering an account (14-day free trial)
In order to create your first store, you have to sign up as a Shopify user.
Click here to get started with your 14-day free trial.
After your trial ends you have to choose a plan to keep your store running.
Store name
The store name when you are registering does not really matter if you plan using your own domain instead of Shopify’s subdomain (store_name.shopify.com).
Choosing a theme for your store
After creating an account on Shopify. Click the “Online Store” and then “Themes” links to get started with theme customization and selection.
On this page, you can choose your preferred theme from the “Free themes” library or “Theme Store” where you can find premium themes.
If you are having a hard time choosing a theme for your store just scroll down a bit to find my favourite free and premium Shopify themes.
After choosing a theme for your store, click the “Customize” button to get started with personalizing your theme.
Shopify’s user interface makes editing themes extremely easy. You can add new elements to your store by clicking the “Add section” button and editing already existing elements by just selecting them. All the options associated with an element will be shown once you have selected an element.
Setting up payment gateways (processors)
Don’t worry the hardest part is now over…
In order to set up payment gateways click the “Settings” link in the left menu of your admin dashboard. On the settings page, you should see “Payment providers” link, click that.
By default, Shopify has already enabled Paypal as a payment processor for you. If you do not have a Paypal yet, it will be automatically created for you once the first order comes in.
You can add more payment providers by clicking the “Choose third-party provider” button. Shopify has a total of 62 payment providers available (along with Stripe and Worldpay for example).
Setting up shipping carriers
To add a list of shipping carriers to your store go to “Settings” and “Shipping“.
Under the Shipping settings you can configure the following:
- Shipping profiles – adjust shipping prices based on package size and customer’s location
- Packages – configure different sizes of packages and their shipping prices
- Packing slips – a printed list of items in a shipment that often goes inside a package
- Integrations – in case you want to integrate your shop with a shipping carrier to receive shipping prices dynamically
Linking a domain to Shopify store
If you already have a domain that you want to use for your store then head over to the “Online Store” and “Domains” page.
To connect your already existing domain to a Shopify store click the “Connect existing domain” button at the top, which will bring you to the next screen.
Follow the steps provided by Shopify to connect your domain with your store. It usually takes about 10 minutes to get your domain to work with Shopify.
Adding your first product
To add new products to your store just click the “Products” link and then “Create product” button.
While adding a product you can categorize products by:
- Product types
- Vendors
- Collections
- Tags
Categorizing your products makes the browsing experience of your potential customers a lot better.
Shopify also allows you to easily set up your inventory management on the products page as well as discounted prices to show your customers.
Shopify Features
Shopify offers everything you need to create an online store, here are some of the most important features of Shopify:
- Unlimited number of products
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage (for geeks)
- Fraud analysis to avoid chargebacks on your orders
- Discount codes
- Automatic order status change notifications and invoices to customers
- Staff accounts with flexible permissions system
- Finance and overview dashboards and reports
- 24/7 Customer support in 22 languages
I am sure I missed some of the features that Shopify has because there are just so many of them. I recommend you to try Shopify yourself and see if it suits you.
Shopify Templates (Themes)
Shopify offers 8 free and 64 premium themes for your shop. Premium themes are priced from $140 to $180, which is quite expensive, but considering it is a one-time payment – fair.
Shopify outsources their themes from different designers to get an original and new perspective with every theme.
All Shopify themes (both free and premium) are mobile and SEO optimised, so you do not have to worry about that.
Free Shopify Themes
Here are some of my favourite free Shopify themes.
Brooklyn Theme (Free)
Brooklyn is definitely my favourite of free Shopify themes. I think it is simple to configure and personalize and it looks and smells GREAT!
If you are on a budget I cannot recommend Brooklyn enough, just give it a try yourself.
Unique features of Brooklyn theme:
- Designed for clothing stores
- Slideshow option for header
- Dynamic product grid
- Video option for the home page
- Slide-out cart
Click here to view the Brooklyn theme.
Narrative Theme (Free)
The narrative is a great theme for small catalogue or single-page product stores. It looks clean and offers 3 different color schemes – warm, light and cold. The narrative is a great choice for shops wanting to portray trust and professionalism.
Unique features of Narrative theme:
- Built for small catalogues
- Designed for visual storytelling
- Wide (Full-Screen) Layout
- Fixed navigation bar
Click here to view the Narrative theme.
Premium Themes
In this section, I will give you a list of my favourite premium themes that I have found convert sales well and are easy to use.
Icon Theme ($160)
Icon theme suits stores that have a lot of products available – such as clothing stores.
Unique features of Icon theme:
- Sticky navigation bar
- Slideshow for the home page
- Multi-column menus
- Quick view products
- Instagram feed integration option
Click here to view the Icon theme.
Maker theme ($160)
Maker theme is another great example of a beautiful theme. Maker theme is suitable for shops with smaller catalogues (lesser amount of products) or single product shops.
Unique features of Maker theme:
- Built for small catalogues
- Editorial-style layout
- Home page video option
- Multiple slideshow options
Click here to view Maker theme.
Shopify Plugins
Shopify Apps (or Plugins) can further extend the functionality of your store. There is an app available for literally everything you can think of.
Some examples are email marketing, currency pickers, translations.
Here are some of our favourite Shopify Apps available on the “Shopify App Store“.
Even though there are many awesome apps available, make sure you do not add too many apps. Adding too many apps can slow down your store and make the browsing experience for a potential customer painful.
Shopify Review Summary
In my opinion, Shopify is hands down still the best e-commerce platform around – their user interface is easy to use, plans are affordable and customer support is great.
Shopify Review Summary
Shopify is 100% the best e-commerce platform around. Shopify has the widest range of sales tools available along with free and premium themes & apps (plugins) for everything that you can dream of.
Anyone can make an online store using Shopify. No programming knowledge is required – everything is very simple and intuitive to set up. It takes about 5 minutes to register and have your store set up. Shopify is also one of the most affordable options for creating an online shop. Keep reading if you are interested in our more in-depth review of Shopify.
2 Comments
Thank you for the review, it helped me a lot when I was creating my first Shopify store.
I’m still learning from you, but I’m trying to achieve my goals. I definitely liked reading all that is posted on your website.Keep the aarticles coming. I enjoyed it!