Shopify Review

Are you about to build an ecommerce website?

Build it on Shopify.

I kind of wish the answer had more nuance to it, so I could write a more engaging review. But it really is that simple.

Ecommerce site = Shopify. End of story.

Out of all the decisions you need to make building your online store, the decision of which ecommerce tool to use is not a hard one.

If you want, you can stop reading this review and go sign up. You won’t miss out on much.

In-Depth Shopify Review and Methodology

To show you that I do know what I’m talking about, I have broken down all the core ecommerce site features and rated Shopify by each.

I’ve used a simple 5-point scoring system on each ecommerce feature below: 5 for “amazing,” 1 for “it sucks.”

I’m not a complete Shopify fanboy. There are a few areas where Shopify could do better. And one category Shopify completely fails. But these aren’t a big deal. The gaps are either minor or can be completely covered by other tools.

If you’re building an enterprise ecommerce site and evaluating new tools, it’s worth having the Magento and Shopify Plus (Shopify’s enterprise version) teams do a bake-off for your business. Otherwise, go sign up for Shopify and build your site there.

Big Brands Choose Shopify

Before jumping into the Shopify review and feature-by-feature ratings, who else uses Shopify?

Here are a few Shopify customers you might recognize:

• Bulletproof
• Leesa
• The New York Times Store
• Red Bull
• Kylie Cosmetics

You’re in good company — world-class brands and massive ecommerce sites have been built on Shopify.

Ease of Use: 5/5

Ridiculously easy.

Shopify is not only considered the easiest of the ecommerce tools, it’s also considered one of the easiest tools across all business apps. It’s true — lots of other business tools use Shopify as inspiration for how to build their apps.

If you’re looking for an ecommerce tool to get all those annoying tasks out of your way, Shopify is your best option.

Site Customization: 5/5

Shopify managed to do something that’s exceptionally rare in software: build a tool that’s both extremely easy to use and has all the flexibility that you’d ever need.

Most tools only achieve one of these. They’re either easy to use and limited, or they’re flexible and complicated.

As you grow your business, you’ll have the ability to evolve your store however you like. While you’ll most likely start with one of the pre-built themes, you can build a theme from scratch. At some point, you’ll need a theme that embodies your brand and has a unique feel. When you’re ready, find a ecommerce site design agency that has experience with Shopify. They’ll be able to build the entire thing for you.

When you’re ready for the big leagues and need a tool that has complete flexibility, Shopify has an enterprise version called Shopify Plus. So it’ll scale with you no matter how big you get.

Pricing: 4/5

Shopify charges you in four ways:

• A monthly fee that starts at $29/month and goes to $299/month. The more expensive plans have extra features along with larger shipping discounts.
• If you use Shopify as your online payment provider, you’ll be charged 2.9% + 30¢ to process the transaction. The fee comes down slightly each time you upgrade: it’s 2.4% + 30¢ on the advanced Shopify plan. There’s a similar fee for in-person payments that’s slightly lower.
• If you use another payment provider, Shopify charges a percentage on top of the payment provider fee. Shopify’s fee starts at 2% and decreases to 0.5% on the advanced plan.
• If you choose to use Shopify’s POS hardware, there’s a one-time fee of $656 for the entire package which includes an iPad stand, receipt printer, cash drawer, and card reader. Each of these can also be purchased individually. If you only want a basic card reader, you can get one for free with your Shopify account.

All of these prices are in sync with the rest of the industry. They’re exactly what you’d expect.

Some ecommerce site builders advertise the fact that they charge 0% transaction fees. This isn’t entirely true. Yes, they don’t charge anything. But you also have to set up your own payment provider and that payment provider will charge you a payment fee.

In other words, Shopify is your site builder and your payment provider. All payment providers charge a standard fee, including Shopify. That’s why Shopify charges you a monthly subscription and a payment processing fee.

The one fee that’s a little annoying is the fee to use other payment processes. This is the fee that starts at 2.0% on the lowest plan and comes down to 0.5% on the advanced plan. This fee applies to payments accepted through Paypal and Amazon Payments, among others.

I totally understand why Shopify charges a processing fee when they’re handling the payments. That’s completely normal for the industry. But the fee on top of other processing fees is a bit of an overreach in my opinion.

The vast majority of your payments will come in through Shopify Payments anyway so it’s a minor annoyance. This mainly impacts transactions that will come in through Paypal. You’ll have the Paypal processing fees and Shopify’s fees on each transaction.

That said, the extra cost is still worth all the extra value that you get from Shopify.

Shipping: 5/5

Shopify has removed all the friction from shipping. It’s as easy as it gets.

Core integrations with all major shipping companies are built right into your store. You get discounted rates and you have multiple options for how to handle shipping during the checkout (flat rate shipping vs individual quotes).

Simply print shipping labels at your home or office for each order. That’s it.

Shopify Themes: 5/5

Shopify has dozens of themes to choose from. Some of them are paid, ranging from $140–180.

But there are a lot of amazing free themes, too. Even the free Shopify themes look like they were built by top-tier website designers.

When you build your site on Shopify, you’ll look through the theme store to find one you like. If you choose a paid theme, you get a professional-looking site for a nominal fee that will easily support your business until you’re large enough to have the budget for a customer-built theme that conveys your brand perfectly.

With the Shopify theme store and how easy it is to set up a site on Shopify, you can build your entire site on your own without needing a site designer and developer. Cutting those costs goes a long way for a new ecommerce site.

App Store: 5/5

The Shopify App Store is amazing.

You’ll find an app for just about every extra feature you could ever want for your store: email abandonment, Facebook Messenger, recurring billing — it’s all there.

This is what really sets Shopify apart from other ecommerce tools.

I know several CEOs of Shopify app businesses that are doing extremely well. They’ve built businesses with hundreds of employees.

What this means is that with a few clicks in the App Store, you can add an extremely advanced app on top of your Shopify store. It’s like buying an entirely new tool for your business that’s integrated perfectly with Shopify.

No other ecommerce tool has an app store with as many apps or as high quality as Shopify.

Expert Directory: 5/5

Sooner or later, you’re going to want some help with your site.

Maybe you want to tweak the layout of your product pages. Or maybe it’s time to do a complete brand revamp and you want your Shopify theme built from scratch.

Whatever it is, you’re covered.

Shopify has been the top ecommerce tool for long enough that there’s now an extensive network of professionals to help you with your site. Any ecommerce agency will have deep experience with Shopify at this point.

Shopify also has an entire directory of experts for you to search. Designers, developers, photographers, marketers, all categorized by city. It’s super easy to find the help that you need.

Marketplace Integrations: 5/5

There are a few ways to build an online store.

Quite a few ecommerce companies choose to focus exclusively on Amazon for example; they don’t have their own website at all.

But what if you want both?

Shopify has made this much easier than it used to be. Instead of having to build out all your product listings by hand multiple times — on your own website, Amazon, and eBay — Shopify will handle it for you. Build your products in Shopify first, then add integrations for Amazon and eBay:

Once you’ve connected Shopify to your Amazon and eBay accounts, Shopify will automatically add your products to those platforms.

It saves a ton of time.

Product SEO: 5/5

Out of the box, Shopify has great SEO for your product pages.

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still have to do a bunch of work to get your product pages to rank for any keyword that’s even somewhat competitive. But Shopify gives you everything that you could possibly expect from an ecommerce tool.

You’ll be able to optimize your product pages, photos, and descriptions for keywords just like you’d expect. All the standard “on-page SEO” items are right where you’d expect them to be. In other words, Shopify’s on-page and technical SEO won’t slow you down at all. It’s everything that you need to rank.

That doesn’t mean you’ll automatically rank for the keywords you want. You’ll still need to create a ton of great content to increase your site’s authority and do a bunch of link building. In my opinion, that’s outside the scope of an ecommerce tool.

Content and Blog SEO: 1/5

This is the one category where Shopify completely fails.

Yes, Shopify technically has a blog feature. They built it out just enough so they can say that they have it. In reality, there’s no real reason that you’d ever want to use Shopify for your blog. Shopify lacks the management features and SEO that you’ll need.

If I’m using a blog to grow my business and traffic, I get the blog on WordPress. End of story.

If you’re going to get serious about blogging, you need to use WordPress. It is possible to have Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. So you’ll use Shopify for your online store and WordPress for your blog.

I break all of this down in my guide on WordPress ecommerce.

Point of Sale (POS): 3/5

I don’t know anyone who uses Shopify as their POS system. Nor have I ever seen one in the wild as a customer.

I consider that a… bad sign.

Nearly every POS I run into is Square, tailed by Clover and Revel. I’ve even seen Shopkeep a few times.

But I’ve never seen Shopify, not once.

Following my rule of using business tools for the one thing that they’re best at, if I needed a POS, I’d go get the best POS tool. For a small business, the most popular choice is Square. I’d only use the Shopify POS if the majority of my business was an online store, I occasionally did some in-person retail like at a farmer’s market, and I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible by using a single tool.

But if I had a brick-and-mortar location, I’d look into one of the dedicated POS tools instead of using the Shopify POS.

I give Shopify a rating of 3/5 since I consider their POS to be a neutral benefit. It’s a nice to have but not a huge benefit.

The Final Choice: Shopify vs BigCommerce vs Magento

For small and medium-size ecommerce business, the choice really comes down to options: Shopify or BigCommerce.

Shopify gives you the better tool and ecosystem. The tool itself is better, the apps are better, the agencies are better — all of it.

What this costs you is an extra fee on payment providers on top of what the payment providers charge. Now if you use Shopify payments, you skip all that entirely. The extra fee also comes down from 2% to 0.5% as you upgrade plans. So as soon as you start to feel the impact of the extra fee, you’ll upgrade and the fee will be lowered.

The extra payment fee is kind of annoying for folks who want to use another payment provider and give their customers as many options to pay as possible. But it’s a cost that’s worth enduring to get on the best ecommerce tool.

At the end of the day, this is an extremely easy choice for me. For any ecommerce store, I automatically pick Shopify to build my site and don’t think twice about it.

We put together an entire guide on how to create your store once you’re ready to build with Shopify.

Our recommendation only changes for true enterprise ecommerce businesses. If that’s you, check out Shopify Enterprise and Magento. Contact both companies and have them fight for your business.

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Dear Penny: I’m Debt-Free! But What Should I Do With All My Money Now?

Dear N.,

Congratulations on being debt-free! Your world is filled with nothing but possibility.

I was you once. I paid off all my business, credit card and undergraduate debt, rejoiced for but a moment, and then turned around and took out a car note. We all make our choices. Don’t make the same one I did!

The trouble with possibilities is that it’s easy to start disbursing money into so many different buckets: savings, other savings, a rainy day fund, a house fund and so on. If you try to divide and conquer too much, you’re not going to conquer anything. Those small achievements for each of your goals could actually leave you feeling disheartened instead of empowered.

For your best next step, I turned to Jen Smith, a fellow writer at The Penny Hoarder who paid off $78,000 of debt with her husband in two years. Smith is my savings role model.

Smith recommends starting your debt-free life by first saving three to six months of expenses in a high-yield savings account, and then making sure 15% of your income goes toward retirement. “Fifteen percent isn’t a hard-and-fast rule,” she said, “but if you want to retire on time, then prioritizing it is essential. Then, any extra can go toward saving for a house.”

Since you’re already saving, you can probably skip ahead to focusing on your retirement accounts. Smith is a fan of contributing to your company-sponsored 401(k) up to the offered match. Then it’s time to open a Roth IRA if your income permits.

“Roth IRAs are great because you have full control over the investments, and the contribution limits are reasonable enough to be able to max it out,” she explained. (The contribution limit for 2019 is $6,000; if you’re 50 or older, you can contribute an extra $1,000.)  

If you still aren’t setting aside that full 15 %, go back to your 401(k) or HSA and contribute more to one of those. If you’re not catching the drift, your priority should be to stash as much money as you can for retirement now, before a house or kids enter the picture.

But while you’re making these plans, don’t forget to pat yourself on the back. The progress you’ve made is noble and worth celebrating. Smith and I salute you!

Have a tricky money question? Write to Dear Penny and you might see your question answered in an upcoming column.

Lisa Rowan is senior writer at The Penny Hoarder, and the voice behind Dear Penny.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.

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Doing Versus Consuming

At an earlier point in The Simple Dollar’s history, I went through a period where I reviewed a new personal finance book each week. Believe it or not, between general personal finance, investing topics, frugality, and other related areas, there are plenty of books coming out all the time that makes such a review cycle easy.

What I found is that the more I was reading about personal finance topics, the worse I actually was in terms of making good financial decisions. If I was spending a lot of time reading about personal finance, I would invariably find myself making more spending mistakes and not actually taking care of my own finances.

Over time, I came to the realization that I was most effective with my finances when I was reading personal finance books and other materials less regularly. I found that if I dipped in occasionally for inspiration or came in with the intent to read about a specific subtopic, I would actually see much more success in my financial life than if I read extensively on personal finance issues every day.

I began to notice the same phenomenon with other self-improvement topics. If I constantly read books and watched videos and read articles on that specific topic, I would often make little or no progress on improving myself. Instead, if I read a lot to get a baseline knowledge and then moved on to just reading or watching a tiny bit of information each day – a devotional of sorts – and only dove in again when I was confused on an issue or struggling for motivation, I was actually far more likely to take action and actually improve myself.

The Two Cycles

There seems to be two cycles that people fall into when it comes to reading and listening to and watching and using personal finance materials.

In one cycle, a person fills a lot of their time watching videos or listening to podcasts or going to seminars or reading about personal finance or weight loss or whatever area of improvement they’re concerned about. They read books on the topic. They watch lots of videos and television shows on the topic. They read lots of websites on the topic.

Yet, when it comes time to actually make the challenging choices that are part of any kind of personal success, they don’t do so. Instead, they keep reading the books and watching the videos and going to the seminars and never actually changing anything about themselves.

I think what happens here is that if you engage too much on reading and absorbing material on an area of self-improvement, it ends up feeling like “success” in your head. If you’re anything like me, you read about self-improvement and visualize yourself doing it. In small doses, that’s really powerful, but if you’re constantly absorbing a lot of content about a particular kind of personal improvement, you end up visualizing your own improvement so much that it already feels like you’ve done it, even though you haven’t done much of anything yet.

A lot of reading and video watching and podcast listening leads to a lot of visualization, and a lot of visualization brings about a sense of completion without actually having done anything. You then immediately go back to the well because you feel somehow partially successful and the information makes sense, but you never really end up improving things.

The other cycle is more of a question/action/answer cycle. You’re interested in a particular area of self-improvement, you read or watch or listen to enough materials to understand what you need to do, and then you stop reading and watching and listening and take action.

At that point, you might still read a little bit on that topic regularly, but you do it just enough to feel motivated to go do something, but not enough to feel like you’ve done anything. You might turn back to trusted materials when you’re feeling a strong lack of motivation or you have a specific question, but your focus is on taking action for yourself. Rather than drowning yourself in visualization, you do just enough visualization to get yourself to step up to the plate and take action.

That first cycle is one where a book or a video or an article or a seminar leads you right into another book or a video or an article or a seminar. It’s the cycle that many people who lead financial seminars and self improvement seminars want you to fall into. They want you to feel empowered and successful… but you haven’t actually taken action to do so. Rather, they want you to feel like that next step for success is found right here in this additional book or this additional seminar, and that mixed feeling you have of success along with this sense that real success is very close by gets you to buy in. The problem is that without you personally taking action, that real success never arrives.

The second cycle is one where a book a book or a video or an article or a seminar leads you directly toward taking some kind of action to improve your situation. Rather than filling subsequent time with another seminar or video or podcast or book, you negotiate a better cell phone plan or have a meal prep day or cut the cord on your cable or start buying store brands at the store or come up with a debt repayment plan of your own. Instead of thinking about action and continuing a cycle of reading or watching videos about actions and visualizing them, you take action! You do something to improve your situation, and then you do something else, and then you do something else.

Yes, there will come a time where motivation becomes a struggle, and that’s a good time to dive back into a book or a video on the topic, to inspire yourself, but that should lead right back to action. There will also come a time where you’re not sure what step to take next – again, that’s a moment to dive back into the best material and figure out a course of action… but then you follow through on that course of action instead of just loading up another video or checking out another book.

That’s why I don’t read a lot about personal finance any more. I’ll read just enough to stay up on changes and events, and I’ll dig into a book if I’m curious about a topic or feel some motivation slipping or if a reader really recommends it, but I try to focus less on being a consumer of personal finance information and instead focus more on taking action on the abundance of financial ideas I’ve already learned.

The same exact phenomenon is true with any area in which you want to improve your life. For example, if you read endless books and watch endless videos about losing weight, it’ll probably be hard to lose weight. You need to take action rather than just visualize action.

Final Thoughts

Here’s my recommendation. Today, take an action on whatever area of personal improvement is most important to you right now. I’m not talking about absorbing more content or listening to a podcast or watching a video – I mean take real action on that area of self improvement. Do something meaningful and real to make your life better in that area, even if it’s something small. Then, tomorrow, take another action. And another. Focus on doing something. Turn back to the content only when you have a question or need an inspirational nudge, but follow that up with more action.

Need some personal finance ideas? Today, go home and cancel your cable plan. If you’re going to really miss a channel, see if it’s available over Sling. Today, if you’re going to stop at the store, buy everything in store brand form and decide over the next week or two if those store brands meet your needs. Today, go home and, before bed, prep everything you can for a slow cooker dump meal, so that you wake up tomorrow morning, toss some already-chopped vegetables and (maybe) meats in the slow cooker, and turn it on low. Today, go home and list five things from your “catch-all” closet on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.

Today, take action.

Good luck!

The post Doing Versus Consuming appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Can’t Qualify for a Cash-Back Credit Card? Try This Instead

Those cash-back credit cards are wicked cool, aren’t they?

Buy a cartful of groceries; get cash back. Fill up your gas tank; get cash back.

As long as you pay off your balance each month, this is basically free money — especially if you’re just buying stuff you’d need to purchase anyway (like gas or food).

Unfortunately, it can be hard to qualify for these cards. The Credit Card Gods are awfully picky when it comes to handing them out. To get your hands on that sweet, sweet cash-back plastic, you might need a near-flawless credit history. Let’s face it: That’s something many of us don’t have.

We found another option, though.

It’s called the Aspiration Spend and Save Account. This online account comes with a debit card that gets you 0.5% cash back on purchases. It basically turns your debit card into a cash-back card.

An Account We Love as Much as an Everything Bagel

This is actually an all-in-one account that does a bunch of different things. You can pay your bills, build your savings, invest and earn interest — all in one place.

Here’s what Aspiration offers:

• You get your cash back, obviously. (Bonus!)

• The debit card comes with no ATM fees, so you can use any ATM you want.

• It pays up to 2.00% APY on your savings.
• The company also offers two investment funds for middle-class investors. These require only a $100 minimum investment.

Declutter Your Financial Life

Are you a little leery about using an online account? Aspiration makes it super easy.

Its mobile app lets you access the account from anywhere and deposit checks from your phone. It offers unlimited ATM fee reimbursements anywhere in the world.

There’s no monthly fee and no minimum balance. All of Aspiration’s services work on a “pay what is fair” model. You choose your price and pay as a “tip” — up to $10 a month and as little as $0.

It’s also simple to set up. The whole sign-up process takes about five minutes, and you can open an account with just $10.

So go get that cash back!

Get cash back at the grocery store, at the gas station, at the gardening center — heck, wherever you’re spending your hard-earned money.

Tell the Credit Card Overlords to take a hike. You don’t need them or their approval anymore.

Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He doesn’t qualify for a cash-back credit card — not that he’s bitter about it or anything.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.

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