Shopify Review

Several Plans To Choose From

While the company does not offer much in the way of the minimalist, pay-as-you-go pricing found with most Shopify competitors, it does return a lot of value for its various monthly pricing plans. All Shopify plans are month-to-month contracts with no setup fees or early termination fees, and PCI Compliance fees are built into the company’s monthly rates. Merchants can pay $9/month (Lite), $29/month (Basic), $79/month (Standard), $299/month (Advanced), or a customized amount for large merchants under the Plus pricing plan.

Reasonable Pricing At Each Level

Shopify’s transaction fees and added features are generally proportional to the monthly expenses paid by the merchant. Merchants under any of Shopify’s plans will have access to a wide range of easy-to-use e-commerce tools, but smaller businesses may want to ensure that they aren’t on the Standard plan if the Basic is adequate. As noted in the Sales & Marketing Tactics section of this review, the company will charge additional percentages on transactions if a merchant prefers to link a top-rated merchant account to their Shopify store.

iPad Point Of Sale

At the time of our previous update, Shopify offered a separate Shopify POS hardware package for retailers for an additional $49 per month. Now, Shopify POS is included in the Standard and Plus plans. This package includes an iPad stand, barcode scanner, EMV and swipe card reader, cash drawer, and receipt printer. Per-transaction pricing for Shopify POS is 2.7% on the Basic plan, 2.5% on the Standard plan, 2.4% on the Advanced plan, and a keyed-in rate equivalent to the online Shopify per-transaction rate for each merchant’s pricing plan. The Shopify POS system includes inventory syncing, analytics, email receipts, multiple staff accounts, customer tracking, syncing between online and retail stores, and additional apps. Retail and restaurant merchants should be aware that the Spotify POS app does not currently support tipping, which lowers its ranking among top iPad POS systems.

Something For Everyone

Overall, Shopify’s pricing delivers a large amount of features for the price charged, and there are very few online complaints about the company’s pricing. We rate the company’s low-commitment contract an “A.”

Live Support Available

Shopify offers phone, email, and live chat support to all tiers of service. We are currently able to locate a handful of negative Shopify reviews that outright accuse the company of being a ripoff or a scam, but the issues mentioned by these complainants do not appear to be widespread or especially problematic. The 40 or so available complaints list fund holds, difficulty cancelling service, billing issues, chargeback problems, and trouble operating the company’s service. Company representatives responded to some of these complaints in a timely fashion and offered to resolve the issues, although it is unknown how the complaints were ultimately settled.

Shopify Lawsuits

We have not found any outstanding class-action lawsuits or FTC complaints filed against Shopify. Dissatisfied merchants who wish to pursue a non-litigious course of action against the company should consider reporting it to the relevant supervisory organizations.

A Standout In Service

Generally speaking, it does not appear as if there is any one persistent problem with Shopify’s products, and the company’s readily available customer support cements its position as one of the best mobile payment apps.

Note: We have adjusted this company’s BBB rating according to our own standards. To better understand why we adjust BBB ratings, please see our Rating Criteria.

Over 140 Complaints

Shopify has been accredited with the Better Business Bureau since 2012 and is currently showing an “A+” rating on the BBB website. The company has had 142 complaints filed against it in the last three years. Forty-eight complaints were related to billing and collection disputes, 73 were due to problems with the product or service, and 19 had to do with advertising issues. Shopify successfully resolved 32 of these complaints, while the remaining 110 either were resolved to the dissatisfaction of the merchant or did not receive a final response from the merchant.

What Merchants Say

Shopify has also received 24 informal reviews from users, 20 of which were negative in tone and four of which were positive. One recent informal review describes a sudden account cancellation:

We have been with Shopify for over 5 years. At the end of August, they changed their terms of use policy, which forced us out of their platform by the end of 2018. We migrated the majority of our products into a new platform. The process to switch eCommerce providers cost us over $75, 000.00. Our term with Shopify ended on November 30, so we paid for a full year so that we would have access to customer records and vital information required to complete our migration into the new platform. On January first we launched a new web site and switched out URL and payment gateway to the new platform, essentially ending any transactions or a URL with Shopify, however we still required access to our admin page. On the first of February, Shopify locked us out of our admin page. I called to request a refund for the remaining 10 months that I had paid for and no longer had access to. Shopify accepted my payment for a one year term, locked me out after 2 months and refuse to refund the remaining $2700.00 that is owed to me, this despite the thousands of dollars they cost our company by changing their terms of use policy without warning. Here is their response:

Hi *, Thanks for reaching out to Shopify today. I spoke with our billing department, and unfortunately as the invoice was paid in November we are unable to provide you with a refund. Please refer to Shopify’s Terms of Service (https:// /legal/terms) if you have any additional questions or concerns regarding billing. As you know, back in August, Shopify amended our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to restrict the sale of certain firearms and parts on our platform. Shopify’s current AUP can be found at https:// /legal/aup and the definition of “Restricted Items” can be found at https:// /legal/aup-definitions#RestrictedItems. As mentioned in our call, if you still had any “Materials” related to these restricted items such as photo, image, video, graphic, written content, audio file, code, information, data or other content uploaded, collected, generated, stored, displayed, distributed, transmitted or exhibited on or in connection with your Account it violates our Acceptable Use Policy which is why your account has now been closed. Should you require further information, you can respond back to the most recent email you received regarding Shopify’s amended Acceptable Use Policy and restricted items – as our general support does not have access to further information beyond what I provided in our call as well as this email. The emails would have been sent to the info email on file for your account, so replying back to those emails itself will ensure your inquiry and concerns are being addressed to the appropriate department Regards, ** Success Guru | Shopify Inc.

We have been operating our firearm business in Canada for over 50 years and operate within the laws and regulations put forth by the Canadian Government and the RCMP. Apparently, these laws and regulations were not sufficient for Shopify’s terms of use and made the decision to distance itself from the firearm industry, which has been instrumental in building Shopify’s profile and profits before going public with its stock and agreeing to be the sole platform to purchase cannabis in the province of Ontario. In my opinion, this is another instance where a multi billion dollar corporations use their growth and power to influence policy and take advantage of hard working individuals. They have cost my industry millions without any compensation or legal leeway.

The merchant in this case may have been better served by a gun-friendly merchant account provider.

A “B” Performance Overall

Shopify’s current complaint total marks a significant increase in complaints from the time of our last review, and we have accordingly adjusted the BBB’s rating to a “B.”

No Outside Sales Reps

Shopify appears to primarily market itself through its website, through its growing online customer base, and through strategic partnerships. The company does employ a sales team to handle inbound inquiries, but it does not appear to engage in telemarketing or in-person sales. We have located a handful of Shopify complaints that mention misleading or deceptive advertising by the company, but upon further investigation, these complainants seem to have simply been confused or dissatisfied with the service they received.

Separate Pricing for Third-Party Processors

Although the Shopify website does not seem to intentionally obscure its contract terms, it is not entirely clear about its pricing structure. The company’s “Pricing” page lists a series of transaction fees that vary depending on whether merchants are signed up for Lite, Basic, Standard, Advanced, or Plus pricing. These fees are only applicable to merchants who are signed up for a merchant account/payment gateway through Shopify Payments. Merchants who have integrated a third-party payment processor with the Shopify platform will pay 2% plus their third-party transaction fees on the Basic tier, 1% plus their third-party transaction fees on Standard, and 0.5% plus their third-party transaction fees on Advanced. Since Shopify Payments is now the company’s default merchant account, it’s likely that most new merchants will not encounter these additional charges. If you would still prefer to integrate a third-party payment gateway with Shopify and pay the additional fees, we recommend keeping your total costs down with a cheap merchant account.