Shopify Overview
Simple, Robust E-Commerce Products
Shopify is an Ottawa, Ontario-based merchant account provider that specializes in e-commerce solutions for small businesses. Founded in 2005, the company offers a broad range of services for online businesses, including debit and credit card processing through an online shopping cart, website creation and customization, marketing and SEO solutions, payment gateway integration, and an app store with a large number of additional features. Tobias Lütke has been the company’s CEO since 2008.
Integrated Payment Processing
In mid-2013, Shopify launched its own payment processing platform called Shopify Payments, which is powered by Stripe and is the primary payment option advertised by the company. Merchants can set up their own merchant accounts and payment gateways through third parties (such as PayPal or Authorize.net) and integrate these accounts into Shopify, but they will be subject to additional transaction fees. The company also offers an in-store point of sale (POS) system compatible with the iPad for merchants with retail locations.
Standout Features
The Shopify app store offers a huge base of add-ons and plugins for merchants, and an early 2013 rollout of Shopify 2.0 also brought with it some new and interesting features. All of the company’s merchants will receive support for over 70 payment gateways, an SSL-secured shopping cart, their own domain name, and unlimited bandwidth. Merchants who sign up for Shopify Payments will receive real-time payment tracking and a chargeback recovery service, which alerts merchants to chargebacks, provides customer contact information and even prepares customized order information to help merchants dispute chargebacks. As for the Shopify app store, additional features available to all merchants include accounting integration, email marketing integration, digital download support, rewards programs, and social media integration.
Mobile Phone Payments
The company also offers a service called Shopify Mobile, which allows its users to accept payments using an iPhone and a mobile card reader. Shopify Mobile is available to existing Shopify customers at no extra cost except for a variable per-transaction fee.
Shopify Review Table of Contents
- Costs & Contract: Shopify offers multiple pricing plans that operate on a month-to-month basis and do not charge an early termination fee.
- Complaints & Service: Shopify has received more than 500 public complaints.
- BBB Rating: Shopify has an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau and has received 181 complaints and 54 reviews in the past 3 years. The company has been accredited by the BBB since 2012.
- Sales & Marketing: Shopify does not hire independent sales agents and has not received any complaints about its sales practices.
- Rates & Fees: How Merchants Got The Best Rates With Shopify
Related: Our Top Picks For E-Commerce
Our unbiased reviews are supported, in part, by helping you find highly rated merchant accounts. You can learn more here.
Related: Phillip’s Mobile Processing Picks
Our Opinion of Shopify
A Top Option for Online Payments
Shopify rates as a reliable merchant services provider for e-commerce merchants. The company is showing a low number of complaints online and appears to offer a large number of services for a competitive price. Although it is possible to integrate preexisting merchant accounts, payments gateways, and websites with Shopify’s shopping cart, the company’s best prices and services are reserved for merchants who start fresh with Shopify Payments. For more information, visit the Shopify website.
We rely on your feedback about Shopify to keep this review accurate and up-to-date. Please take a minute to tell us about your experience. We and the small business owners of this world thank you!Related: Our Top Picks For E-Commerce
About Phillip Parker
Thank you for reading my review. I hope that it has helped you with your research.
Why I'm Qualified to Write About Credit Card Processing and Merchant Account Services
I'm a former credit card processing sales director who left the industry because I didn't like how it takes advantage of small business owners. It feeds like a leech on businesses and thrives by imposing fees that are nearly impossible to comprehend. Seeing a need for change, I left and built this website help business owners better understand the industry, research merchant services providers, and get refunds of excessive merchant account fees. My experience of working "behind the curtain" in the industry, and using that knowledge for good, has resulted in millions of dollars returned to hard-working small business owners as well as enterprise-level companies.
From the time that I starting working in the merchant services industry to when I left to create this website, I've been on the pulse of payments for nearly 15 years. It didn't seem fair to keep this "insider" knowledge to myself. To lift the fog, I've reviewed hundreds of companies, read thousands of user reviews, and learned the pricing tricks of every provider. If you have questions about credit card processing, you can find the answers on this website.
Shopify and Better Wav.com scammed me out of $80 on Bose products.Is there any way to legally do something.
I have purchased items online for the past 10 years. Sites like Amazon and Ebay do offer protections, but with the understanding that they are online marketplaces. From what I understand Shopify is not, but it is very difficult to determine that. I purchased an item from a “merchant” through Shopify, but within days the website disappeared, after my card was already charged. Shopify was unable to do anything because they only provide the software, but to a decently savvy consumer, they appeared to be the host. They responded to my email after I followed up and 3 days after my initial request. So I would rate them 1/5 stars for their customer service, but on top of that they appear to the average consumer as a host, which to me is misleading.
Website: Zackaryo ordered So clean filter, charged $16.00 on my Visa Card… March 19th 2020. Now May 13, 2020.
I have not received my order!
Where you at Zack!!!!
Terrible customer service. Long wait time on call, no action to resolve issues. Randomly took item (s) down off our site for no apparent reason, nor any contact to seek resolution. I would never recommend this company to any retailer – ever! Horrible, unresponsive, and a total lack of communication.
Ordered a product from a shopify company.
Was billed to my Visa.
Did not receive product.
This is nothing but a scam
Would never order anything again on shopify
Good morning,
Shopify is taking advantage of its consumer and ALLOWING bogus app developers as well, and this must stop. I only owe $34.95 and that’s all I am paying for. The consumer service I experience at shopify is HORRIBLE. Shopify don’t protect is client that trust them with operating their stores. Shopify guru tell us to use these app and it doesn’t do what it suppose to that UNACCEPTABLE. Something NEEDS to be done for the INCONVENIENCE. How in the hell they call themselves shopify guru and they don’t know how do anything, but repeat everything you tell me. I’m trying to handle this situation at the lowest level possible. Before filing a complaint with the better business bureau along with a lawsuit.
Sincerely,
Joseph
I ordered two items from shopify never received them no response or emails. I believe I was scammed tried to contact shopify no response. This site needs to be taken off for fraud.
I ordered from them on 12-25-2019 and received a text thanking me for my purchase and now I cant find anything on them. I have an order number and everything. IT s**** that people have to be so dishonest anymore. What happened to having morals.
[email protected]; scammed me for $175.00 and no product. Do not shop this site!!!’
We had someone hack our Shopify store and because they don’t have two step authentication like our other payment processors the hacker easily changed our account number to theirs and was putting all of our deposits into a bunch of diff accounts. Once we found this out we had been frauded for over 100k and Shopify blames Stripe and Stripe blamed Shopify both said there was nothing they could do. BEWARE they offer NO protection to their customers. We are switching payment processors and getting a lawyer.
This post will help: Best E-Commerce Merchant Accounts
-Phillip
Good morning,
Shopify is taking advantage of its consumer and ALLOWING bogus app developers as well, and this must stop. I only owe $34.95 and that’s all I am paying for. The consumer service I experience at shopify is HORRIBLE. Shopify don’t protect is client that trust them with operating their stores. Shopify guru tell us to use these app and it doesn’t do what it suppose to that UNACCEPTABLE. Something NEEDS to be done for the INCONVENIENCE. How in the hell they call themselves shopify guru and they don’t know how do anything, but repeat everything you tell me. I’m trying to handle this situation at the lowest level possible. Before filing a complaint with the better business bureau along with a lawsuit.
Sincerely,
Joseph
This, my shop also got hacked by a “digital ad agency “ who did the same thing and now Shopify has locked my account and put over $16,000 on hold! They have not responded to me for 7days now!! They do not have “24 hour live customer support” 😂😂 either! I now cannot fulfill 25 plus orders in including super high ticket bulk orders because Shopify is holding my money to put back in it! Biggest bullshit ever and now I’m on the verge of going out of business and dealing with insane amounts of customer complaints because of theM!
Gunnar,
There are ways to make a payment processor release your money.
Healithop at Shopify took my $90 order and I did not get the product from China. When I went to the original order site on Shopify, Healithop URL was no longer working. When I called and talked to Shopify, they said that they could not resolve money paid to Healithop [email protected]. I’m out $90. Shopify has no support for Fraud and no responsibility if the vendor fails.
We have been with Shopify for about one year and it’s been pretty good… until now. Two days ago they started holding our payments without an explanation. We tried and tried to get an explanation and they refused to give one. Finally we received an email about on day after they notified us of the hold on our payments. They said that we might be selling unlicensed products and that they needed to verify that the products are licensed. I have no problem with that and provided the requested information, but they shouldn’t have held payments without checking with us first, and they shouldn’t hold payments for products that are not even in question. This is absurd!
Now, more than 48 hours after they started holding our payments and more than 24 hours after I provided the information they requested, they are still holding our payments… and no end in sight.
We have bills to pay and no way to pay them. We are a relatively new small business without any excess cash flow and no cash reserves to handle a situation like this. Shopify is seriously damaging our business. Their actions are completely inexcusable and are borderline criminal in my opinion.
I will leave negative feedback and complaints about them on ever forum I can find.
This post will help: How to Make Your Payment Processor Release Your Money
-Phillip
Be very careful with Shopify if you think you may want to use the site. I joined in Sept 18 to have a processor for some customers credit cards. Huge mistake!
When signing up and creating an account one is asked the general information they would need to collect and pay you your funds. Then when i sent out an invoice to be paid, they collected the $162.32 and a week later the funds showed in my account. After that i sent four more invoices out between Oct 3 and Oct 8. The total of those invoices is $2490 and change. This prompted them to take the funds hostage and demand basically everything one would need to successfully steal my identity. Along with my banking info, they would have a pretty complete package.
Of course the GURU’s tried to assure me that my personal identity was “safe”. I’m pretty sure Yahoo, some major banking institutions, our government and a host of others could “assure” that the info they had was “safe” too, until it wasn’t.
I looked around a bit to find that Shopify’s main IP address is actually shared with 90,427 other sites. I’m pretty sure they would not be contacting me to “assure” me that they will safeguard my personal info. I flat refuse to put the front and back of my DL online, nor a copy of my passport to them or anyone else. The more i dig, the more it becomes apparent that this “organization” at it’s core is not really about processing payments at all. They lure people in then hijack their money to force the person to give them every necessary detail of one’s identity to complete the package.
I have my thoughts on what they do with this info after bullying people into giving it to them but for now I’ll see how that compares in the near future to what the FTC finds. I’ll certainly help them all i can.
If you ask the GURU’s who is requesting this info, they like to try to make you believe its your bank. Simply go to your bank first as i did and you will find that has no truth in it at all. Why would it? The bank knows exactly who their customers are, after all they get that proof of id at time the account is opened.
Stay far far away friend.
From The Editor
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I have read several of these comments and I agree with most of them. In the beginning I was excited about this app. It was fast, efficient, and the easiest app to use when transferring or receiving funds. I even referred several friends because of the convenience that I initially had with this app. Then I guess the saying “it sounds to good to be true” really showed it’s ugly head. It has gone on three weeks and I still haven’t received some funds a friend sent me using the cash app. It was requested 4/11/18 and was taken out of his account the very next day 4/12/18. However, the funds are still not in my account to this day. As others have stated their only form of communication is through email and they have constantly copied and pasted the same correspondence putting my bank at fault for not receiving the funds. I have asked for a supervisor and that is when the correspondence ceased. I’ve sent them emails back to back and no one has replied since. It has literally turned into a nightmare and my funds have either been stolen from this company or lost somewhere and their “support team” has not provided a resolve or restitution for my funds! Someone mentioned that it’s a good app until there’s a problem but I would have to disagree. It’s fraudulent when an app is a hit or miss withholding their consumer’s funds! I will never use this app again once my funds are received!
Terrible. They withhold payments after a while and make you intensely prove and provide documents that you are a real legal company. The team that deal with that are only contactable via email..takes forever to resolve. They then made a mistake & made my account unable to cancel or refund orders. Which resulted in several chargebacks which cost me money as well extremely unhappy customers! The guru actually said he had never seen anything like that before. Soon after I was able to issue refunds but I never heard from shopify about this. I just took it as they realised their mistake & corrected it as though it never happened as it was their error. No apology or any kind of acknowledgement it just started working again after 2 weeks broken! Oh..guess what..my account worked nicely for 3 weeks but the payments account is now on hold again due to receiving chargebacks at the time shopify with held over 3000gbp the week leading upto xmas & straight after that unable to
Issue refunds…you see where I’m going with this? I have a backlog of orders & shopify withhold the payments with no say on when they will release. I may as well shut the business now. Cheers Shopify
After Square failed to pay out over $4,000 in sales and refused to provide any explanation, we switched to Shopify for POS as we had the web program. We LOVE IT! So easy and simple and ties in the retail to the web sales and tracks inventory so well. Always get tech support (a bit of a wait on the phone) talking to a REAL person who really knows the program! I am thrilled!!
Hi Lisa,
Please reply to this comment with your business name and location in order to authenticate your testimonial. Thanks!
Ordered and paid via PayPal. My Discover card has been charged, BUT no delivery of purchase. Have filled out a form with them, BUT NO REPLY. Not feeling very happy with this company. Will never order again because of lack of customer service. Will report to BBB and let PayPal deal with this.. I GIVE UP.
Sounds like a problem with the vendor more than Shopify itself. Can you describe the situation in more detail?
Asking because I’m curious how many BBB complaints involve things that Shopify can/should fix vs the number of complaints that should have been filed against the store owner.
Thanks.