Newly released from federal prison and I'm looking for ways to add to my income as a factory worker and barber. Can anybody give me a ballpark on how much it actually costs to open up one of these stores? I'm green to this here y'all.. even on Reddit. Lbs

After switching to WooCommerce for a month, I don't find it less expensive than Shopify in terms of overall cost.

Many apps on Shopify charge based on your sales, which I find ridiculous. But is it more expensive? It depends, I guess... but for me, I'm not sure.

Most good plugins on WooCommerce also use subscription model, just like Shopify. Plus, you need a good hosting plan that's fast enough to run this heavy CMS. This one alone is already more expensive than Shopify Basic.

And checkout page, you need to pay for it if you want it to look good. Meanwhile, the default checkout page on Shopify looks good enough.

A good caching plugin also has a subscription model. Meanwhile, with Shopify, it already set everything up for you. All you need to do is avoid installing too many apps and using too many images.

And more...

There might be something I don't know. If anyone here thinks WooCommerce is less expensive, please explain it to me.

This is from a perspective of a small store owner btw.

If i sell a $100 item on shopify, on average shopify takes $5.60 as the fee, 5.6%.

• My store is based in Canada

• Basic plan

• We mostly sell internationally

Is this normal? Fee CSV Snapshot

I currently host my site/store with Squarespace and their lack of features (really, no product-specific shipping options? very few templates for online stores. No ability to create giftcards without actually purchasing one yourself? and on and on...) is starting to hold me back, so I'm looking at other options, but seeing that Shopify wants to charge me more per month AND 1-2% on all sales not made through their payment system is mind boggling.

Those using shopify, is it worth it?

Those somewhere else with a website builder that allows for a simple site and ecommerce to be set up, what do you use and why?

Thanks.

B&M business owner. I stink at following through with developing eCommerce sites and I've had horrible luck with getting developers. Our product offering is vast and and there are a lot of variables per item. I always get bogged down in it, especially with the customization I think I need. I have an idea to setup a wholesale site for a particular market that I'd like to give a shot. The issue is I don't want to get bogged down and I'd like to get up and running by September 1.

I'm looking into options and I'm having a difficult time swallowing the monthly costs of Shopify. It's not necessarily about the money but I just hate monthly fees for websites. So long story short, is it worth the money when you add in the fees for the plugins compared to Woo-commerce which is essentially free?

I’m building an apparel store and I’m not sure how to charge for my products.

Do most of you just add x% to your cost of goods?

From my experience, running an online store feels like navigating a pricing minefield—one wrong step and profits vanish or demand takes a hit. After testing multiple pricing strategies, I’ve realized pricing is more of an art and experimentation than an exact science.

I’d love to hear your most painful (and educational) pricing mistakes:

- Pricing too low—basically paying customers to take your products?
- Discounting too aggressively—and destroying your brand’s perceived value?
- Raising prices too fast—and scaring off loyal customers?
- Never experimenting with pricing—and leaving money on the table?

Drop your best (or worst) pricing lesson in the comments. What happened? What did you learn? How did you fix it?

Would love to hear your insights—let’s all learn from each other.

Hey everyone, I’m currently looking for an agency or designer to build my Shopify store, and the quotes I’ve received range from €5,000 to €15,000 – for what seems to be similar scopes of work. That’s a pretty big price gap, so I’m wondering: what causes such big differences?

I’d love to hear your experiences if you’ve hired someone to build your store:

• How much did you pay?

• Was it a custom theme or a modified premium theme?

• How’s the performance (speed, conversions, etc.)?

• Looking back, was the price justified?

Thanks in advance – any insights or rough breakdowns would really help me out!

On the website under there price is says $29/month billed yearly. But when I went to check out it said $39/month... I contacted customer support and they said

"The discrepancy in the pricing for the Basic Shopify plan is likely due to a price increase that Shopify implemented on January 24, 2023. This change affected all new merchants globally, and existing merchants were notified with a grace period until April 24, 2023, to adjust to the new pricing. The current price for the Basic plan is indeed $39/month for new merchants. Since you're coming from a free trial, the rate for the Basic plan is indeed $39 USD."

WHAT. How can a website company not have an updated website? I'm feeling very confused

Hi all, I am Looking to sell one product on shopify and am wondering how much it will cost me. I do not already have a buisness and will be starting up on it, I will be advertising in person and maybe on social media. Is shopify the best place to do this or is there are better cheaper option that is easy to use?

Just wanted to clarify that I've looked into moving my store from Shopify to wordpress because I thought it was less expensive, but it seems like you have to pay around $20/mo for Woocommerce & around $7.99+/mo for wordpress which makes it very close to Shopify's $31/mo. If people have found less expensive alternative to hosting an online store platform please let me know!

I'm looking to sell both digital products and physical merch, as well as have a home/bio/contact page for my band. I'm not sure if either platform is "easier" to get up, as they both seem pretty straightforward so I'm wondering if anyone has found benefits to one over the other?

Edit: So everyone's telling me Wordpress+Woocommerce are free, but im literally on Wordpress website and the free plan is like nothing. 3GB of storage and I don't believe you can upload videos until a premium plan. I know that's still much cheaper than Shopify but with an ecommerce store it you kind of need a lot of storage if you're selling digital products, unless it relates to other storage?

I am trying to figure out if I should choose Woocommerce or Shopify for a client. I have a hard time wrapping my head around all the variables. I have a limited amount of knowledge with Woocommerce, but nothing on Shopify side.

First, I hear that Shopify charges per transaction, hence more expensive. But if I use Stripe, it has the exact same charge, so what is the difference?

Second, I am going to need many plugins for Woocommerce: Shipping, charging, multilingual support, Inventory. I am guessing I need to expense 1000 dollar for the plugins. On Shopify this gets pretty convoluted. I cannot even understand what is going on. For example, internationalization is there, but it says only main URL is exposed to SEO. So I am guessing if my site is in English and Dutch, only English results will show up on google, which is pretty bad. For pricing, it seems I need an add-on for pricing for different countries, but then how does that play with the multilingual thing.

I am kind of stuck.

I’m a software engineer and have a lot of experience in both MERN and Shopify. I’ve built my company 2 sites one with Shopify and one with react/firebase/stripe. Shopify currently costs me $30 a month while my react site is like .50/m. If I have say thousands or hundreds of thousands of users what will be cheaper in the long run hosting on firebase or just using Shopify? I like being able to build new features and not having to deal with Shopify bs but also don’t wanna get screwed with cost at scale with api requests.

I don't understand why people promote Shopify over Wordpress. - hear me out

The problem with Shopify is you have to pay every month at least $30 for the basic plan, ($360 a year minimum) that's not including paying for a theme or a very expensive designer which could easily cost just as much, never mind any plugins that are sold. you're looking at $700 your first-year MINIMUM and most of it in your first month if your developing website quickly. Usually, these people are newcomers for a small business, just trying something out thinking $30 a month seems acceptable, but this is SUPER deceptive for newcomers when they realize as they develop the store how expensive it really is with themes and plugins. When you consider if you want to advertise on social media as well. It usually can cripple motivation in newcomers since Shopify startup costs was more than what they initially thought.

It's also just an inferior option on every level in terms of feature customization compared to Wordpress. As for Wix same problem, you have to pay for themes and it doesn't have access to over 55,000 plugins to make your website customized on every level. I can even make it so that you don't have to understand any coding what so ever to edit your site in almost any way by yourself if needed. using Elementor page editor which is SUPER userfriendly.

I personally offer a service that costs $60 to $150 for creating & designing you a website, (this is due to me building portfolio atm, I'm always available on WhatsApp to help if I'm somehow needed) and the hosting for a year would cost you $65 with Siteground for example including domain and SSL. But besides that, I would really want to know why people think Shopify makes more sense when the cheaper alternative is better in every way. You're renting your business on Shopify not owning it even.

*If I hear user-friendliness Ill scream.*
If you talked to your webdsigner they should have done the foundations and you don't need to know anything. My grandmother can use elementor page editor. the hardest thing you need to do is possibly watch a 20-minute video on woocommerce payment settings

*Security*

There are inbuilt WordPress security options that don't require coding knowledge other than sliding buttons. And if it's really needed to be Fort Knox, there are great plugins for security.

End of rant

So please explain to me WHY do people promote Shopify over WordPress? The platform is extortion and it's not worth paying, where you don't really own your business but you rent it. (they hold the data)

Looking to switch to shopify for our retail store. I am looking at $105/month plan ($79/month yearly). If you are running a retail store with this plan, how much are you really paying a month?

I was told that typical retail store need additional add-on modules and shopify charges additional for those modules. We have simple store setup and need basic ones like coupon module, Shipstation order import, etc. Where do I find out what kind of basic features the plan I am looking at come with?

What’s the ACTUAL monthly cost of running your Shopify store? Obviously there is the usual monthly subscription to get started but once you add-on whatever free+paid apps you integrate, what should one expect to be spending in terms of a monthly overhead cost for the “average” store?

If you run an Etsy shop as a small business/hand crafter and want to (and should) expand or just diversify your income streams, I would discourage you from trying Shopify. Maybe it works well with dropshippers and/or people who can invest a fairly large amount of money, but from my one-year experience, I highly doubt it can be of any use for a hand crafter, other than draining your pocket and drive you crazy.

The 4 lessons I learned along the way:

Lesson #1: You get something with the basic subcription, but not everything you need to run a store.

Example: I wanted to start a blog along with my store (which was provided). When I got my first comment to one of my blog posts few months later, I realized that there was no way to reply! Yes, you get a blog along with your subscription, but not the ability to reply to comments (you need to pay for an app to do so.)

Lesson #2: Solving your problems depends on the mood of the person you are dealing with.

Example: I somehow messed my blog's fonts and turned white (on a white background). The only thing I managed to do was to replace the white background so the text was visible (but looked awful.)

When I reached Shopify Support and explained the situation. I got a "You will need to hire an expert for this" response.

Two days later, I tried again: "Sure, let me solve this for you."

Less than 10 seconds later and it was fixed.

Why wasn't it fixed the first time, since it was less-than-10-seconds easy?

Lesson #3: Etsy fees are nothing compared to the marketing value and work they do for your store.

Example: When I first opened my Etsy shop, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. All I knew, was to make leather bracelets and create the listings.

I did write descriptions, but new nothing about keywords and SEO.

I did put all 10 photos, but they were not that good. (In fact, I occasionally stumble upon some of my first product photos and I freak out)

I did include all 13 tags, but most of them were wrong (I believe that some of them are still wrong)

I did set up social pages but other than sharing a picture of my products with a title, I knew nothing more about content quality and marketing (and I'm still learning!)

And this was my Etsy shop for a year. However, with my nothing SEO/marketing/content creating, I got 100 sales! Why? Because Etsy was driving people to my shop. They gave me the new shop boost, they used off-site ads, they did all the things they do to work on stores and it worked. The rest was a matter of my own work and crafting skilss, my products quality, my communication with buyers, my packaging, my shipping, etc.

I SPENT 200-250 euros in ads for my shopify store plus monthly subscription plus apps for 13 months and what I got was 9 sales in one year (and half of them were by people I brought to my store via social, or my Etsy customers.)

Lesson #4: They would if they wanted to, but they don't, so they won't.

Example: My biggest issue with Shopify (and my "I had enough" point) were product photos. They were displayed as crap and didn't know why. When I uploaded them as they were, my store's speed went red low. When I compressed them as best as I could (not to lose quality) and uploaded them, they were still crappy.

I reached out to Shopify Support just to have them telling me "Oh, you will need to hire a Shopify Expert for this". Again!

Tried to figure out things on my own (weeks passing), watched a bunch of tutorials, read articles, joined the Shopify community, to my surprise I saw many, many people dealing with the same issues that remained unsolved.

I decided to pay another 10 euros per month for a promising app that would optimize my pictures, provide alt texts and do all that micro-work (which is also important.) While the app did a great work (improved SEO, got me more traffic, impoved my organic search), my pictures were always pixelated.

How am I supposed to make any sales ?

I reached out to the optimizing app support team and asked them about my product photos problem. The guy just casually said: "Oh, it's just a matter of the theme's code, you can ask the developer to disable it. It's nothing really, done in seconds, and many others had the same issue, too."

Seriously?

Again, reached Shopify Support. I kindly asked them to disable image resizing from my theme's code. They told me to wait while they "take a look at it." Much later, the response was: "Our team seems to be unable to work on this. Consider hiring a Shopify expert!"

HELL, NO.

I already pay a lot and I expect AT LEAST to have a properly functional store, I told him. And closed the chat, slammed my laptop and unplugged it. I was FURIOUS.

One year later and I was ashamed of my store!

Next morning, made myself some coffee, turned on my laptop and went to ChatGPT: Suggest me FREE shopify themes that display high quality product images.

My dearest friend, replied: this, this and that. So, I went and changed my theme to one of ChatGPT's suggestions.

AND IT WORKED. But it was too late.

One year of me suffering, working like razy, paying for nothing, and NO ONE of the support-lol- team could tell me "hey, this theme you are using is not that good for your store, why don't you try this or that?"

WHY?

That was the moment I was done for good with Shopify. I closed my store the very same day.

I gave me a week of nothingness to calm down and went to Wordpress.