2023 Shopify Review: Best Small Business Ecommerce Platform

Shopify has 12 free and nearly 140 paid themes (starting at $170) as of this writing. All available themes include multiple styles and are mobile-commerce ready (if not mobile-first). Shopify’s website templates are sleek and stylish and come with most features needed to help you run a store effectively. It is perfect for those averse to coding as it is easy to set up global designs such as font and color choices for your store.

The available free themes, although fewer when compared to Wix (over 800) and Squarespace (more than 100), are all mobile-first and have diverse layouts (compared to BigCommerce’s free ones, which only differ in colors and font choices). Its default free theme, Dawn, is the flagship theme that rolled out OS 2.0’s changes.

Shopify’s most popular free themes are Refresh and Spotlight, as shown above.

Shopify’s premium (paid) themes, meanwhile, are designed by other developers and range from $170–$380. You can browse them on the Shopify Theme store freely and see their presets by viewing their demo stores.

An example of Shopify’s paid theme, Sahara. You can view a demo store using its example presets.

When it comes to finding themes for your online store, its theme store provides comprehensive filters. You can choose themes depending on the industry your business is in, how extensive your product catalog is, and what pre-built site features you would like your store to have.

Shopify’s theme store offers free and professional options, categorized by industry. You can also sort the listings in order of relevance, popularity, and price.

How the newly improved OS 2.0 builder works with flex sections. (Source: Shopify)

Your Shopify store already comes with a full blogging platform and content management system (CMS), allowing you to set up your store and include website pages such as about, contact, and blog pages. With OS 2.0, you can also add, edit, and rearrange content blocks on the front end—no code needed.

I am very excited about its new feature, CSS Flexbox, which helps create more multi-directional responsive layouts and easy content alignment within store sections. This way, it is way easier to create custom layouts—I can simply drag and drop, re-size, group, and edit a section’s components to my liking.

Shopify’s OS 2.0 has a more user-friendly setup with drag-and-drop building blocks.

The Pages section of the Online Store can now be designed using the drag-and-drop editor, although it isn’t obvious since you see the default WYSIWYG editor at first. You need to go to Pages>Add Page, hit save, and then go back to the theme editor, choose the Page in the dropdown on top, to be able to edit. It also wasn’t clear that it was possible to customize menu pages at all. I only figured it out when I was building our demo store.

Edit the design of your menu pages by clicking on the dropdown located on top of your website builder editor.

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The default WYISWYG editor for main menu pages when you add a new page under Online Store>Pages. You need to go to the theme editor if you want to customize the page further using building blocks.

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Shopify also has an improved search and filter function where you can add custom filter settings and product recommendations. You just need to activate the free Shopify Search & Discover app from the Shopify app store.

An improved search and recommendation feature in Shopify can help increase conversions. Set up filters for your products, such as price, color, and size to help shoppers find them easily.

If you are interested in further customizing your store with code, Shopify gives shop owners full access to CSS, HTML, and Liquid (its templating language).

Shopify’s SEO features are quite strong—on-page SEO is easy to implement, automatic redirects and site map generation are provided, and site speed and uptime have stellar performance.

Shopify’s websites are all mobile-friendly, which gives you an advantage when it comes to Google indexing. It is easy to set up headings, meta tags, and descriptions for your store and product pages. When you add products, Shopify also prompts you with SEO best practices. It also offers an automatic redirect system when you change a URL, so you don’t generate 404 errors.

An example of a product page SEO listing preview you can edit. (Source: Shopify)

You can also customize your robots.txt file extensively as Shopify gives you full control over which URLs can be crawled, crawl delay rules for certain search engines, block crawlers, and add extra sitemap URLs.

Shopify is certified Level 1 Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant—meaning all your data and customer information is ultra secure. It also provides free SSL certificate so you can securely process payments.

On a subscriber account level, Shopify has two-factor authentication (2FA), which we recommend you activate to help you secure your account. It adds an extra layer of security to prevent unauthorized logins to your account.

Shopify’s app store allows you to customize the shopping experience in your store. This allows you to move beyond Facebook and Instagram and incorporate tools—such as your own chat service, targeted ads, affiliate programs, profit calculators, and shipping solutions.

While most ecommerce platforms have their own version of Shopify’s app store, the main difference is that Shopify has a tremendous amount (more than 8,000 as of this writing) of available apps—from dropshipping to email marketing to customer segmentation. It is the biggest and most extensive app store among ecommerce platforms we have tried. If there’s something your store needs, it’s a near certainty that you’ll find it in Shopify’s app store.

While apps can be pricey (for example, QuickBooks integration starts at $19/month), these can certainly save you time and money compared to developing custom solutions. Consider these when estimating Shopify costs.

To be able to access and launch your Shopify apps better, follow these best practices:

• Access your apps by clicking on the search bar, clicking on Apps in the sidebar, or opening the app launcher using keyboard shortcuts CMD+K / CTRL+K.
• Pin your most-used apps in the sidebar to make them accessible anytime, anywhere in your control panel.
• Go through the curated list of recommended apps based on your previous app installs and the apps used by similar businesses you receive from Shopify regularly.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the center of Shopify’s latest improvements. Collectively known as Shopify Magic, these AI-enabled features include some of the following:

• Sidekick: This AI-enabled assistant leads the new suite of AI-enabled features. You can set up a discount, redesign your store, and even ask what’s your best-selling product for the past month by using Sidekick.
• Generate text in the Online Store editor with AI
• AI-generated email subject lines, email copy, and optimized send times with Shopify Email
• Manage incoming chats more easily with AI-generated response with Shopify Inbox
• FAQ and response recommendations personalized for a merchant’s store.
• Instantly generated blog posts for any holiday, business milestone, or campaign idea, with the ability to customize the tone of voice and quickly translate content into different languages.
• Instantly generated emails built for commerce with compelling subject lines, engaging content, and recommended send time for optimal performance.
• AI-powered review summaries if you are looking for apps in the Shopify App Store

You can find more details about Shopify Magic’s abilities and how it can help the rest of Shopify’s functionalities in their AI for Commerce summary.

The “Products” tab gives you an at-a-glance view of the products you have on hand and how many are coming in, and it allows you to manually set actions to take when inventory runs low. Additionally, each item you sell has an editable product page where you can input and modify variants such as descriptions, prices, and shipping.

An example of a product view inside a Shopify dashboard. You quickly get to see a summary of all your active/inactive products, corresponding inventory, type, and vendor.

Adding products to your Shopify store is intuitive. You can choose to set them up one by one from its interface or import them via a CSV file. Product information, such as title, description, images or videos, price, and SEO options, can easily be filled in on the product page.

How to add a product in Shopify

One advantage of setting up products in Shopify is the ability to quickly make your product live in other channels once you connect it to your chosen platforms. Aside from social media channels, you can sell your products in bulk (or wholesale) through the Handshake wholesale marketplace and set up dropshipping.

You can also set up product bundles through its free app, Shopify Bundles. Easily create fixed bundles and multipacks right from your dashboard and let customers choose variants associated with the products in your bundle, if there are any. What I like about Shopify Bundles is that it also updates the inventory of individual products in real time so that you don’t need to worry about overselling.

Source: Shopify

How to set up product variants in Shopify

Shopify has one of the best inventory management systems—all account levels can import items, manage returns, and view basic inventory reports, although the most advanced features require a paid upgrade.

Its free app, Stocky, is available on all plans and lets you manage all of your inventory, including stock transfers, label printing, and purchase orders. Real-time tracking between multiple locations is possible, as well as low-stock order alerts—although you need to set this up manually and not depend on EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) reports. However, advanced inventory reports—such as forecasting and COGS (cost of goods sold)—are only available in the Advanced tier.

You can manage your orders across multiple sales channels in your dashboard and also connect with third-party fulfillment centers and dropshipping carriers. After a customer places an order (in any of your active sales channels), it appears in the Orders area of Shopify. You can create orders manually in the backend to record orders that you’ve made outside of Shopify or send your customers invoices.

Besides fulfilling orders and taking payment, you can tag open orders, add notes to them, review the order’s timeline, or follow up with the customer. You also have the option to automate some steps, including payment capture, digital download fulfillment, and order archiving.

Shopify lets you set up three main methods for product delivery: shipping, local delivery, and local pickup. Shipping rules can be set up easily (e.g., flat rate, free shipping, country or region-based rates) for individual products, collections, or your entire store. For businesses with multiple locations, you can set shipping rates per location within each shipping profile for greater control over costs.

Shopify has sophisticated shipping settings, with options to set rules based on destination or product. Toggle on and off local pickup and delivery options and enable backup shipping rates for your real-time shipping calculators.

Live shipping rates for carriers like USPS, FedEx, and UPS are only available for higher plans such as Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus. However, if you are subscribed to a lower plan, you can add live shipping rates for around $20 per month. You can also get it for free if you pay for your subscription annually. You will need to contact Shopify support to request this.

Shopify offers discounts on standard shipping rates and makes it easy for you to set standard package sizes, print shipping labels, and customize packing slips.

If your online store is based in the US, Canada, Australia, or the UK, Shopify Shipping provides real-time shipping rates from local postal services. With Shopify Shipping, you can print shipping labels straight from your dashboard and take advantage of shipping discounts, especially if you are on higher plans.

You can also choose to have order fulfillment handled through the Shopify Fulfillment Network or with services like Amazon. You can join the Shopify Fulfillment Network (limited to stores within the US and Canada), where your products can be stored, picked, packed, and shipped from Shopify’s fulfillment centers around the US. You can enjoy fast (and even same-day) delivery, free packaging, branded packaging, and discounted shipping rates.

Shopify merchants using the Shopify Fulfillment Network has access to the following:

• Default access to Shop Promise, a badge you can display on your checkout pages, and Buy Now buttons that guarantee faster delivery.
• Expand logistics and fulfillment with integrations with Deliverr and 6 River Systems, giving you an advantage, especially when you do multichannel sales.

The Shop Promise badges display the guaranteed delivery date of a product before purchasing. (Source: Shopify)

Shopify allows you to sell products beyond your Shopify storefront. It enables you to do business through other platforms, including Facebook, Messenger, Amazon, Pinterest, and Instagram. It also launched Twitter sales channels—Shop Spotlight and Twitter Shops.

While most ecommerce platforms offer tools to sell on social media, Shopify has the most extensive direct partnerships with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to enable more seamless in-app shopping, catalog management, and order syncing.

Additionally, Shopify allows you to add buy buttons for your products onto any website you manage. However, it lacks compatibility with sales channels accessible by BigCommerce, such as Walmart Marketplace and PriceGrabber.

With Shopify Inbox, an app that lets you talk with your customers and subsequently sell through chat, social media, and email. You can customize your online store chat, saved responses, and more right from your dashboard. At the moment, you can connect through Messenger from your Facebook Page and Shop. Instagram is set to launch soon, too.

Shopify includes marketing tools that can help boost sales, including discount codes, gift cards, and product reviews. It doesn’t have a built-in loyalty or rewards program, but this can be added through the app marketplace.

How to create discount codes from the Shopify dashboard

One of Shopify’s biggest advantages is having an abandoned cart recovery feature available even on the basic plan, compared to other ecommerce platforms that offer the feature in higher-priced tiers.

Setting up abandoned cart recovery emails helps you interact with customers who don’t place or finish their orders in an effort to lure them back. You can customize your emails, add schedule triggers, and add discount codes as a way of enticing customers back to your store. You can also customize confirmation emails sent to customers when they place an order.

Shopify also has a free and customizable email capture app, Shopify Forms, that seamlessly works with Shopify Email, marketing automations, segmentation, and more.

Shopify Forms has more than 200 font choices, multiple display choices (such as teasers and pop-ups), and images.

Everyone on a paid Shopify plan is entitled to send 10,000 free emails each month with Shopify Email. It comes with email marketing features, such as customer segmentation and marketing automation tools.

You can customize your workflow for abandoned carts using automation in your Shopify dashboard.

Shopify provides different types of reports for its merchants, including sales, customer, marketing, search data, finance, and abandoned cart reports. Default reports are available, but certain reports’ availability depends on the subscription plan.

Shopify’s advanced reports can be unlocked in the $105/month plan, while custom reports are only available on the highest plan ($399/month). This is a sharp contrast with BigCommerce, which makes all of its reports available across its tiers.

(Source: Shopify)

An example of your Shopify mobile app dashboard (Source: Shopify)

Shopify has a mobile app that allows you to capture payments, fulfill orders, manage inventory, and email or call customers. All your data (products, inventory, orders, and customers) is synced with the platform. This mobile app is completely different from the POS app. Businesses use this app to monitor sales and view reports. Every time you make a sale, the Shopify app notifies you with a signature “cha-ching” cash register sound.

The best Shopify plan for your business depends on your needs.

• If you just dabble in online selling occasionally and primarily sell on social media, Shopify Starter ($5/month) lets you generate checkout links to send via email, text, or social media. You can also embed Buy Now buttons to your website or blog.
• If you are just starting out in building an online store, Shopify Basic ($39/month) has all the tools you need to set up, launch, and market your ecommerce store.
• As your online store grows, your business needs change. You can unlock lower processing fees, higher shipping discounts, and real-time shipping calculators on Shopify’s higher plans, Shopify ($105/month) and Advanced Shopify ($299/month).

There are some situations where an alternative to Shopify should be considered.

• If you run a brick-and-mortar store and would like to add an online component for pickup or local delivery sales, Square Online is your best option. It lets you build a full website or a simple one-page site for free.
• If you need an online ordering system for your restaurant, an all-in-one POS system with integrated online ordering for pickup and delivery, such as Toast or Tock-to-Go, are better.
• If you have high-volume sales, you might be losing a lot of money with Shopify’s payment processing fees. You might be better off using BigCommerce, which lets you choose your own payment processor so you can shop around for low rates. BigCommerce also offers special low rates for PayPal payment processing, and, unlike Shopify, it does not charge a fee or markup for connecting an outside payment processor.
• If you want an ecommerce website on top of a content website, Squarespace is a better option. Shopify is great for ecommerce, but it’s not as fluid when it comes to maintaining content. Squarespace’s drag-and-drop page editor is powerful.

Shopify is an easy-to-use and scalable ecommerce platform for small businesses. It has low startup costs since it’s an all-in-one ecommerce solution—it comes with hosting, a web builder, store management, order and inventory features, and marketing tools. You can also sell on social media and in person using its free POS tool.

Yes, absolutely. Shopify is very intuitive and user-friendly, especially for non-techies. Its support team is highly-rated among its users and available 24/7 via email, live chat, and phone. Knowing you can ask for help at any time makes Shopify very appealing to beginners. Startups, those dabbling in online selling, and those serious about growing their online business will benefit from Shopify’s user-friendly, affordable, and scalable platform.