Shopify

Shopify is leading online shop builder which is powering over two lakh online shops. You do not have to worry about hosting or implementing extra security for your e-commerce store. Shopify provides you with the secure hosting account when you sign up with features like automatic backups and Level 1 PCI compliance for processing credit card payments. With your account, you will receive a website and a blog. Shopify backend is easy to navigate and gives you full control over your store administration. It's very easy to add & remove products and reports also provide you with insights about sales. Out of the box, Shopify comes with a responsive theme which is mobile friendly. With a higher plan, you get integration with Facebook and Pinterest, and a simple point of sale. Shopify comes loaded with marketing tools. You can easily create landing pages and for SEO, it allows for custom title tag and meta descriptions. If you do not find a feature you can check out the Shopify app store which has over 1000 apps. The app store is full of free and paid apps which allow you to integrate your store with services like MailChimp, selling products through Amazon and eBay or showcase and sell your products from your Facebook Page. When you are paying every month for a service and most probably maintaining the store by yourself, you will want to talk to an expert support rep. Shopify has 24x7 support and you can contact them by phone, chat or email.

Unlike Magento, there is a cost involved with running a Shopify every month. For a new business when sales are low and your spend extra on Marketing, the monthly subscription plus add-on fees (transaction charges) can be overhead cost. Apart from the Shopify platform cost, you will also be paying for using a lot of paid plugins which one might consider are essential for running e-commerce operations. This again will add to your monthly cost of running a store. Shopify also uses its own coding language called Liquid and you need to learn it if you do not want to employ services of an expert for customizing your theme. The blog is a nice feature to have but when you compare the quality with what you get in Wordpress, it falls short.

Shopify takes away the technology part of running an online e-commerce store and lets you focus on running a business. You can devote more time to marketing, selling and supporting your customer. If your sales are low then overhead costs associated with running a Shopify store may turn you off but over the time as your sales increase these costs are negligible when you consider the overall technology cost. If you are looking for a turnkey e-commerce solution for your online store then Shopify is highly recommended.