My review is based on my 5+ years experience with Shopify.
Every feature you will NEED will be offered as AN EXPENSIVE ADD ON UPSELL.
ZERO SEO: While keywords are allowed, their SEO is non-existent. Platforms nowadays do everything for you. Just add your keywords and poof! Shopify doesn't have anything like that. My site doesn't even come up in a search on any of the 5 top Search Engines unless I type in my actual name.
HORRIBLE UX: They are about 10 years behind the times as far as functionality. Minimal free templates, and when you attempt to add your own images or content it's reminiscent of using Wordpress in the early 2000s.
TEDIOUS PROCESS: Uploading is tedious, no drag & drop, minimal fonts on the low priced plans. Everything takes for. Ev. er.
FORGET UPDATING YOUR SITE: Can't use anything you create from sites like Canva. Nothing ever fits regardless of how you resize it. It's not optimized. The only time your site looks remotely professional or optimized is when you use one of Shopify's stock photos. The selection is limited and they're awful.
ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE: Customer service is literally a COMMUNITY FORUM. Good luck if you need actual help.
DOUBLE FEES: If what I've shared hasn't turned you off yet, just wait. Shopify does NOTHING about ADVOCATING for their clients. I had a business competitor issue a false report to Shopify and Shopify cut off my ability to process payments without even looking into the origin of the report. They use Shopify Stripe to process payments. I had to create my own Stripe account to process payments (what the hell difference did that even make?) So now I'm paying what's tantamount to DOUBLE FEES as a result. I'm STILL paying Shopify fees + now my own Stripe fees. This crap costs me a fortune with my business accountant too. Did they look into it? Nope.
STORE REPORTS ARE USELESS: The accounting is a nightmare on so many levels. Unlike pretty much everywhere else on the planet, they don't separate anything and the reports are useless.
GLITCHY: You can't block specific IPs or locations without "plug ins" and apps that cost money and cause site glitches & errors. You can't do ANYTHING without installing one of their apps > causes glitches > abandoned checkouts.
FORGET BLOGGING & MEDIA: The minute you UPDATE or hide a blog post - not delete but hide - or just add a photo, it automatically CHANGES THE DATE to "today" even if posted 5 years ago. Updating blog posts also seemingly removes the comments that used to exist. As I'm typing out a new post, Shopify often just refreshes out of nowhere so I lose all my work.
TEDIOUS TIME SUCK: Doing anything on Shopify's platform takes forever.
DATED DESIGNS & NO BRANDING: Unless you want to look like your site crawled out from under 1996's rock, skip it. I tried to upload my logo, favicon, etc., and no matter the size it won't properly accept it which can effect search engines results. While it lets you choose brand colors, that's all. Your uploads won't be accepted properly.
RIDICULOUS LOGO MAKER: It directs you to "make a logo" which has designs that haven't changed since what looks like the mid 2000s. They're all weird info graphics you can't adjust in any way, or dated pictures of stop signs and arrows. It's awful.
All in all, I don't think Shopify is a good fit for me. I think for maybe someone who sells homemade items from Etsy who isn't reliant on branding or a cohesive website design might like it, but at this point Shopify is literally HURTING my reputation. I look like a buffoon. Right now I'm hunting for a new platform.
My god, anything has to be better.
Website platform
I run a retail store with a brick and mortar, online store, as well as a mobile unit that sells remotely at events. Our revenue is over a million dollars, and we have over 10,000 products physically in our retail store inventory. We used Shopify for our web sales and our in-person Point of sale software for almost a year. We had one employee publish a belt buckle to the website with confederate flag motif on it. It is an "X" with stars on, just like the hood of the General Lee car in Dukes of Hazzard- black and white, just that motif with no text or anything else on there. Shopify's legal team said this was a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy, as it's a racist hate crime symbol. On Dec 23rd, we got an email saying we can't use their platform any longer because of this one single item on our website. No warning, no communication, no opportunity to learn that something in the "grey area" was a problem for them. NOTHING except a legal team letter stating they are cutting us off. We appealed, and they sent another email on Dec 24th stating we will loose all access to our Shopify account on Dec 30th. They shut down the website immediately with the first notice, and they did turn off all access to the platform on Dec 30th. That gave us three business days to find a new POS system and get the hardware in place, find a credit card processor and get equipment for that, get our files downloaded and do all reporting for month end and year end, rebuild our website someplace else, all in the three days right after Christmas when the store would be incredibly busy and every professional tech person we would need to lean on is on vacation. We have two registers running daily, so this was a significant hardship in this window. I can not believe that this company can shut you down at any moment they want. With no warning, and no communication. Customer service could not talk to us, and legal team (who only communicates by email) refused to send any communication back to us or answer any questions. NOT ONE EMAIL from them. If you are considering this company for any reason, you need to have redundant backup systems in place for everything. I had NO IDEA I was exposed like this, and I'm shocked that they can actually do this. No recourse what so ever, and no refunding any of our annual subscriptions paid, no systems in place for what an EMPLOYEE might do that an ower of an account is not aware of, like publishing ONE item to the website. I can not recommend this company in any way, IRREGARDLESS of how the platform worked. What would you do if they said you have five days to pick up and leave? Could your company accomplish that? Do you have enough control over every employee that works for you to be absolutely certain that ONE click of ONE box in ONE product maintenance page for an individual item is not going to shut your whole store down? How are going to handle that one employee that made one mistake that totally shuts down all POS and back office functions in the blink of an eye? Shopify is not a a safe place for any business to run, and you need to research stores being shut down by Shopify before you do any business with them.
Do more research, Many functional issues
Printers not saved for each task. This is a nightmare when you have one person printing shipping labels, another in the back office trying to print tags, one on a register needed receipts, and another printing orders to pull. Every person has to select their printer, paper and format EVERY TIME. Dymo printers suck.
No tax reporting for month end accounting
No return for exchange items.
No employee security settings
Point of sale PRO and Website builder
Business owners please be aware, Shopify.com does not care (<--- Made a rhyme see what I did there?)
Shopify is an e-commerce platform based out of canada I think. This review describes their quality of service in a nutshell. This was a chat log when speaking to their technical support in regards to down-time while accessing their tools.
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Chat started with Dave
Dave
Hi there! Thanks for reaching out to Shopify Support. My name is Dave and I am happy to help you today!
Hi Anthony! OK so having some issues with uptime today, can you let me know the context there and the nature of the issues you're facing while I pull up your account here?
Anthony
Hi, its not just today it constantly happens
Dave
Can you let me know the issues you're facing so I can help you investigate a solution?
Anthony
Well up until a few minutes ago it was reported on shopfiystatus.com
Its not a singular issue
Im contacting shopify today because i have had enough of these uptime issues
I realize that you are not the one in control of this type of thing, but I have no one else to notify
Shopify claims they have 99.9% uptime
And that isn't true
The last 12 months I have been unable to either load my website hosted by shopify, or access my shopify admin account to perform my duties
Uptime for my shopify account has been at bet 95%
Dave
Fair enough! I can appreciate that any time you're told one stat but experiencing something different, that it's completely frustrating. So basically the uptime issues you're referring to are both customer facing (store was down) and admin facing (you can't log into your account or access the admin), in these instances were you able to get in touch with us to learn more about the downtime? We do strive to make sure our merchants have the most uptime possible of course so I would want to look into any downtime right away
Anthony
Everytime this happens i am on hold for an hour or longer
I don't have time to wait on hold
For the kind of money i pay for this service i should be getting the 99.9% uptime advertised
There are two options that can remedy this situation
Fix the uptime problems
Compensation for existing uptime problems
Dave
So I would be happy to help you look into all available options. When it comes to any current issues you may be experiencing with downtime, I would be happy to help you look into them immediately to rectify them to make sure you have access and your customers can check out. If there are any instances of downtime that you feel have led to lost sales, we can also take a look directly at your contact with customers where they were noting the issues with downtime and pass those along to our Billing team. When it comes to feedback for our developers as well, I will be taking detailed notes of your noted downtime today and passing those along internally to my developers so they can take note as well as I do have a direct path for feedback to that team:)
Anthony
Ok
Dave
Did you have any current downtime issues we need to address? I can also make myself available to you over email as well if you think it's something that might happen in the next few days, so you can let me know over email and I can address things myself then so you don't have to wait in line for our chat here
Anthony
Things appear to be back up right now.
I don't feel like my issue has been resolved though
Dave
I can appreciate it's frustrating to experience downtime, which can sometimes be so fast that by the time you wait in line to contact us it could be resolved already. How can I best help you at this moment to resolve your issue?
Anthony
So I am strongly considering ending my relationship with shopify after my latest subscription is over and moving to a platform that has historical better uptime. And i feel like all that has been done here is what shopify allows in their terms and conditions. If shopfiy doesn't care about my subscription then just say so and I will move on. If they do care, then they should consider that I've been a loyal customer for a few years and offer me a direct compensation from my yearly subscription in effort to keep me.
Dave
So as you've noted that you feel the downtime has led to lost revenue for you, do you have some examples of conversations with affected customers that I could show to my Billing team? I would be happy to look into any possible credits which could be discussed if you have specific cases of lost sales due to downtime
Working in support, all I want to do is make sure I help you as best as I can within the company, so I'd be happy to bring those cases to my Billing team on your behalf to talk about any potential credits that are possible:)
Anthony
I think you may have missed the point
Shopify prides itself on 99.9% uptime and that hasn't happened. Loss of sales or not, its the potential loss of sales, not the actual loss of sales. And my discussions with my customers are private even from shopify.
What i am asking is for them to provide me with the service that was purchased, and if they can't figure out a way to provide me with compensation for the downtime that I have received thus far
Then i am better off moving to a company that can
Dave
So certainly I would like to pass along your feedback about the downtime and will be doing that today. If we're not actually giving you the statistic we are advertising then that's important feedback for our developers so they can continue to work on our product and I'll be passing it on directly. While I wouldn't be able to offer any blanket compensation today, as noted I would be able to look at specific examples of downtime leading to lost sales and we could bring these to our Billing team to discuss
Anthony
Look back on your downtime logs. Thats how many times i've been down
Everytime shopfiy status indicates a problem my site and or admin access is unavailable
Dave
Fair enough! I can certainly pass that along then as notes to my developers in terms of the downtime you have faced specifically, so that we have detailed notes for your case. Outside of sending along your comments to our developers directly, and noting that there are no specific sales conversations to address to our Billing team, can I offer you any further assistance on your downtime issue today Anthony?
Anthony
When should I expect a feedback to this issue?
Dave
So unfortunately our developers do not have outgoing communication lines, and the feedback will be received internally but there would be no direct follow up on a "fix" or something of that nature, as we are at all times doing our best to minimize downtime for all merchants and would be actively assessing any downtimes as they happen for a fix. This feedback is still important and very valuable to send along to let our developers know where to best prioritize their efforts and to know the impact any issues have on our merchants, but in terms of a follow up I can only assure you that we are doing our best to make sure all our merchants are able to sell and access their account as much as possible and to keep our uptime as high as we can
Anthony
I see, so this issue im having is basically a dead end... you have to try and see it from this side for a moment. What I am hearing is "there is nothing we can do, your request may or may not get looked at, and we don't really offer compensation for downtime unless you have an actual loss of sales due to it"
To me that sounds a bit like a paradox
If the site is down, how can you know if there was going to be a sale?
I sincerely want to fix this issue and that is not what I am hearing
I also understand there isn't much more that you can say.
I really want to find a better solution to this issue than "your feedback is important"
Dave
I can definitely assure you that we do want what's best for our merchants here, and any downtime leading to lost sales also means lost sales for us so really we are all in this together online. It is true that from my position in support, I cannot comment on any individual cases of downtime on a technical level or any work that team is currently taking to try to prevent downtime, but I can certainly impart to you that our merchant's uptime is a top priority as it helps all of us
I will be taking your feedback today, but how best can I assist you now? What kind of better solution would you be looking for today?
Anthony
I already explained that
But i see thats not possible
Although i disagree with that as well
Dave
It's true that I would not be able to offer blanket compensation for system-wide downtime today, but can I offer you any further assistance on this issue for the time being?
Anthony
One thing I don't think Shopify would appreciate from me is posting this chat on social media. So at this point I am not left with much recourse. People need to see this conversation so they can be better informed about their decision to support and buy shopify services. If there was one time where I needed support from shopify it is now.
I hope shopify does the right thing. Thanks for your time
Dave
If you are looking to reduce costs, we actually have more plan options than ever right now in an attempt to help all of our merchants as best as we can. Did you want me to go over some ways to reduce your billing going forwards with you to try to cut down on expenses during these unprecedented times?
Anthony
Will that fix the downtime problems?
Dave
This is not directly related to downtime, but I would more like to offer my services to you to see if there is a way to reduce your fees going forwards since you have mentioned that now is a time you do need extra support
Anthony
Yep, i think you missed the point entirely
Thanks for your help Dave. I will be moving along now.
Dave
You're welcome Anthony! Thanks for bringing this to my attention today so I could pass along your feedback and please let us know any further time we can assist you. Take care and have a happy and healthy rest of your week:)
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Trying to suggestive sell a new package plan as a solution to an issue it would never fix? Give me a break!
I'm pretty sure Shopify needs help at better addressing the concerns of the people who help write their paychecks.
Further more, there are better e-commerce platforms out there... its worth a google.