Shopify Review

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.

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

Shopify also offers a hardware package for retailers that costs an additional $49 per month. This package includes an iPad stand, barcode scanner, EMV and swipe card reader, cash drawer, and receipt printer. Per-transaction pricing for this POS app 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.

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 100 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 121 complaints filed against it in the last three years. Forty-four complaints were related to billing and collection disputes, 57 were due to problems with the product or service, and 18 had to do with advertising issues. Shopify successfully resolved 34 of these complaints, while the remaining 87 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 14 informal reviews from users, 10 of which were negative in tone and three of which were positive. One recent informal review describes a sudden account cancellation:

Absolutely unprofessional. Shopify decided to CANCEL my shop without notice for using a different credit card to pay their $29 monthly fee. DOWNRIGHT ridiculous how they treated my shop. I have spent thousands of dollars on this website in web development and countless number of hours preparing for the launch. For months they took my money, they took my theme money, won’t reimburse me for my freelancers I used in perfecting the website, and won’t even bother to apologize or send me a reason WHY my shop was closed down. Not to mention I have proof of speaking with their LIVE CHAT agents and they ALL approved my website saying nothing was wrong. Neither a single font nor image was copyrighted. Unless they resolve my issue as soon as possbile, I will not just sit and wait for their lame 1 sentence responses from their so called RISK DEPARTMENT.

The response from Shopify indicates that Shopify reopened the merchant’s store after this complaint, but it’s possible that the merchant in this case may be better served by a high risk specialist.

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.”