Shopify review
Bottom line
Shopify is a full commerce platform that combines an online store builder, payments, inventory, and multichannel selling in one dashboard. Its clearest strength is breadth: a single catalog can feed the online store, social channels, marketplaces, and AI chats. The main cost to watch is the climb from $29 to $299 per month, plus the extra transaction fees charged when a store uses a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments. It suits merchants who want to sell across many channels from one place and expect to grow into in-person retail.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a commerce platform for building an online store, accepting payments, and managing orders, inventory, and shipping from one admin dashboard. It is aimed at merchants who would otherwise piece together a site builder, a payment gateway, and separate inventory software. The core promise is that a store can go live quickly, using AI-generated starting points or prebuilt themes, and then expand into in-person and multichannel selling.
Day to day, merchants add products to a catalog, set up payments and shipping, and run the business from the same dashboard. The platform covers product variants, inventory locations, returns, gift cards, discount codes, and abandoned checkout recovery. Sidekick, a built-in AI assistant, works inside the admin to help with commerce tasks. Marketplace Connect syncs a product catalog to marketplaces including Amazon, Walmart, and eBay, and sales channels extend to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Google.
The platform serves freelancers, small businesses, mid-size businesses, and enterprises. Pricing is tiered: Basic starts at $29 per month billed yearly, Grow is $79 per month, Advanced is $299 per month, and Plus starts at $2,300 per month. A three-day free trial is available, and POS Pro for physical locations is a $89 per month add-on per location. Online card rates drop at higher tiers, from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic to 2.25% + 30¢ on Plus.
What sets Shopify apart is the reach of its checkout and sales channels. Shop Pay checkout is offered across stores, and Agentic Storefronts let shoppers buy products within AI chats. Developers can build custom apps and headless storefronts through the Shopify APIs and Hydrogen toolkit. Compared with a basic website builder, the emphasis is on running online, in-person, social, and marketplace sales from one product catalog and one set of orders.
Who it's for
- Small businesses selling online and on social
- Merchants expanding to marketplaces and AI chats
- Growing brands with physical retail locations
Who should look elsewhere
- Buyers who need fully custom checkout on a small budget
- Businesses that only want a static brochure website
Typical uses
- Launching a direct-to-consumer online store
- Selling across social channels and marketplaces
- Running in-person and online sales from one catalog
- Selling to international customers with regional storefronts
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Shopify alternatives and comparisons
Shopify is the only headless ecommerce product we list so far. Browse the category as more are added.