Is Shopify Worth It in 2025? A Comprehensive Shopify Review
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As we move into 2025, many in the e-commerce world are asking: Is Shopify worth it? Shopify is known for helping countless entrepreneurs launch and grow their online businesses. For years, Shopify has been leading this business. However, with new technologies and a competitive market, it's time to reassess its value.
In this brief analysis, we'll explore whether Shopify remains the top e-commerce platform. We'll look at its latest features, benefits, and any potential drawbacks to help you determine if Shopify is the right choice for your business in 2025.
Is Shopify worth it in 2025?
Yes, Shopify is still worth it for businesses in 2025. With its robust features, scalability, and market presence, Shopify continues to be one of the best choices for building an online store.
Shopify serves millions of merchants across 175 countries, supporting around 4.7 million online stores. This extensive reach showcases its reliability and stability as a trusted e-commerce platform.
However, whether Shopify is worth it to you depends on your specific business needs, budget, and growth objectives. By carefully evaluating these factors, you can determine if Shopify is the one for you.
Pros and Cons Of Shopify
Shopify is widely known for its user-friendly interface and robust features, making it a popular option. Yet, every platform has its advantages and drawbacks.
| Aspect | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Intuitive interface designed for users with minimal technical skills. | Limited design customization options due to the use of Shopify's proprietary Liquid coding language. |
| Scalability | Supports businesses of all sizes, enabling seamless growth as your business expands. | Higher-tier plans are required for advanced scalability features, which can increase costs. |
| Customization | Offers a variety of themes and apps to create a personalized store experience. | Checkout customization is limited to changing colors and fonts, lacking deeper flexibility. |
| Integration with POD | Seamless integration with leading Print-on-Demand and dropshipping platforms like Printful. | Reliance on third-party apps to unlock essential features may result in higher operational costs. |
| Payment Solutions | Wide range of payment gateways, including Shopify Payments, to support diverse customers. | Transaction fees apply when using third-party payment gateways, adding to overall costs. |
| App Ecosystem | Over 8,000 apps available to enhance functionality for sales, marketing, and operations. | Over-reliance on apps may complicate store management and increase expenses. |
| Hosting and Security | Reliable hosting with built-in security, eliminating the need for external hosting services. | Limited backend control, making advanced customizations or server configurations impossible. |
| SEO Capabilities | Basic SEO tools included, such as meta titles and descriptions, to optimize search visibility. | Advanced SEO features, like URL structure customization, require third-party apps or expertise. |
| Customer Support | 24/7 support via live chat, email, and phone, with an extensive library of guides and tutorials. | Some advanced technical issues may require third-party assistance, especially during migrations. |
| Email Hosting | No built-in email hosting is available, keeping costs lower for basic users. | Requires third-party services for email hosting with custom domains, adding extra steps for setup. |
| Migration | Shopify simplifies setting up a new store from scratch with easy onboarding tools. | Migrating an existing store to or from Shopify can be complex and time-consuming. |
| Cost | Offers flexible pricing plans to suit various business sizes and stages. | Monthly fees can add up, especially when combined with app subscriptions and transaction fees. |
Shopify: An in-depth review
To better understand and get a more accurate answer about Shopify, join me for a more in-depth review below:
Shopify Plans and Their Pricing
| Plan | Price/Month | Who’s it for? | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Starter | $5/month | Entrepreneurs who want a low-cost solution to sell on social media, existing websites, or through messaging apps without building a full ecommerce site. |
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| Shopify Basic | $39/month ($29/month if billed annually) | Small businesses or new sellers seeking to establish their first online store with essential ecommerce capabilities. |
|
| Shopify | $105/month ($79/month if billed annually) | Growing businesses ready to scale with more advanced features and better analytics for deeper insights. |
|
| Advanced Shopify | $399/month ($299/month if billed annually) | Large businesses or high-volume sellers needing advanced control over shipping rates and detailed reporting. |
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| Shopify Plus | Custom pricing (starts at $2,000/month) | Enterprises and high-volume sellers requiring advanced customization, priority support, and robust performance. |
|
Additional Shopify costs
- Themes: While Shopify offers free themes, premium themes range from $180 to $400 and are designed to help your store stand out. Alternatively, you can hire a Shopify developer to create a custom theme tailored to your needs.
- Shopify Apps: There are free apps available, but premium ones—offering enhanced features—cost between $5 and $100 each, depending on the app.
- Payment Processing: Shopify supports a variety of payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal, each charging transaction fees typically between 2.9% + $0.30 and 3.9% + $0.30.
- Shopify Transaction Fees: If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, you'll incur additional transaction fees, ranging from 2% (Basic plan) to 0.6% (Advanced plan).
- Domains: You can purchase a domain through Shopify for about $15 per year, or choose to acquire one from a different provider.
- Email Hosting: Shopify doesn't provide email hosting, but you can use external email services for custom email addresses linked to your domain. Shopify allows unlimited free forwarding email addresses.
- Marketing and Advertising: Driving traffic to your store can involve costs related to email marketing, content creation, and paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Google Ads, Instagram, and Facebook.
Check out this article for more details about Shopify pricing: Shopify pricing: Which plans are for you?
Shopify’s ease of use
Shopify is designed with ease of use in mind, making it a top choice for beginners in e-commerce. It enables users with no previous experience to quickly set up and customize their online stores. The platform offers simple setup instructions, a variety of themes for different skill levels, and an intuitive design that allows users to add products and start selling with minimal effort.
By prioritizing accessibility and simplicity, Shopify is an ideal solution for those who want to enter the e-commerce world without the complexity of more advanced platforms.
Shopify website builder
Shopify offers a full range of easy-to-use tools and settings to customize your website. Customization is really simple with just 1 click or drag and drop. You can change colors, fonts, layouts, images, etc. to suit your needs and highlight your brand.
Going even further, for those with technical expertise or specific design requirements, Shopify offers deeper customization options through the Liquid template language. This allows you to modify every aspect of your store's design and functionality.
Shopify themes
Shopify themes are essential for creating great online stores. Themes dictate the look, feel, and structure of your website.
Shopify Theme Store: Users can easily find themes by business type or style in the Shopify Theme Store using the drop-down menu.
Free themes provide a professional look: New businesses or those with limited budgets can start with one of the 13 free themes available. These free theme are a great option for beginners.
Vast customization options: Shopify themes offer many customization options. These themes can align with various brand styles and ethos, whether it's boutique fashion, tech gadgets, or homemade goods.
Focus on User Experience (UX): Shopify themes prioritize user experience with intuitive navigation and responsive design. This ensures seamless browsing and shopping across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Regular updates and support: Themes from the Shopify Theme Store receive regular updates and technical support. Shopify stores are kept up-to-date with the latest web standards and e-commerce features.
Designed for sales: Shopify themes are tailored for e-commerce. They offer essential features and integrations. They include payment gateways, inventory management tools, and marketing platforms. Prices for Shopify themes range from $140 to $400, depending on the features and functionalities offered.
Demo versions available: Users can preview themes with a demo version before making a decision, ensuring it meets their requirements and preferences.
Product Management in Shopify
- Product Variants and Options: Shopify currently supports up to 100 variants with 3 options per product. This limit will soon be increased to 2,000 variants. For users needing more, third-party apps are available, although at an additional cost.
- Product Categorization: Shopify simplifies product categorization with manual and automated collections. Automated collections are especially useful for large inventories, as they automatically sort products based on set rules.
- Selling Digital Products: Shopify’s Digital Downloads app enables seamless delivery of digital products like eBooks and music. It allows for automatic post-checkout delivery with a 5GB file size limit. For larger files, third-party apps can be used.
- Custom Fields and File Uploads: Shopify allows merchants to collect custom information from customers through HTML coding. To enable file uploads during checkout or allow customer-submitted files, third-party apps are needed.
- Shipping Options: Shopify offers flexible shipping solutions, including free, flat, price-based, weight-based, local delivery, and calculated rates. Users can set rules based on price or weight for different shipping zones. Shopify Shipping also provides real-time estimates and discounts in certain countries, with some plans supporting third-party shipping services.
Shopify Integrations
1. Social Media Selling:
- Facebook: Set up a Facebook Shop to sell products directly.
- Instagram: Tag products in posts and stories for seamless shopping.
- TikTok: Partner with TikTok to create shoppable ads.
- Pinterest: Use Shopify Buy Buttons for direct product sales.
2. Shopify Marketplace Connect:
The Marketplace Connect app allows integration with platforms like Amazon, Walmart (U.S. only), eBay, and Etsy. Manage orders, inventory, and listings directly from your Shopify store. Any update on your store is instantly reflected across all linked marketplaces.
3. Multilingual Website Setup:
Shopify supports up to 20 languages (excluding the Starter plan). You can add language-specific folders (e.g., myshop.com/fr) or create international domains (e.g., myshop.fr). Most free themes come with a language selector, but it’s important to verify this for paid themes.
4. Multi-Currency Selling:
With Shopify Markets, you can manage multiple currencies, regions, and languages. Shopify automatically converts currency based on the visitor's IP address. However, some features, such as duties and taxes, are available only on higher-tier plans. To support countries without Shopify Payments, third-party apps are required.
5. Abandoned Cart Recovery:
Shopify offers an abandoned cart recovery feature that sends email reminders with incentives (e.g., discount codes) to users who left their carts. This tool can be customized based on different abandonment triggers and is available on most plans.
Shopify reports and analytics
Shopify’s built-in reports and analytics tools offer valuable insights. They help optimize your store’s performance. Here's a summary of key features:
- Dashboard Overview: The Shopify Dashboard offers a snapshot of your sales, orders, and website traffic, allowing you to monitor your business performance at a glance.
- Sales Reports: Track trends in sales, product performance, and order history. Reports can be customized to fit specific business needs, providing detailed insights.
- Marketing Reports: Analyze the impact of your marketing efforts. You can see where visitors are coming from (social media, search engines, email campaigns), what activities drive sales, and how effective campaigns are in converting traffic.
- Behavior Reports: Gain insights into customer behavior, such as traffic sources, popular pages, time spent on site, and exit points. This helps identify what’s working and areas for improvement.
- Order Reports: Monitor transactions, order statuses, and total sales. You’ll also gain insights into customer behavior, like repeat purchases and top-rated products.
- Additional Reports: Online Store Cart Analysis, Profit Reports, Profit by Point of Sale Location, Finance, Returning Customers, Top Online Store Searches, Retail Sales by Product, Store Conversion Over Time, Acquisition Reports, Inventory Reports, Online Store Speed, Refund Rate.
Shopify SEO and Marketing
SEO Features:
- On-page SEO: Easily manage titles, meta descriptions, headings, and alt text.
- Robots.txt: Control search engine crawling.
- 301 Redirects: Automatic redirects when URLs change.
- Responsive Themes: Ensure a mobile-friendly design for better SEO.
- CDN: Reduces load times, improving rankings.
- Hosting & Core Web Vitals: Fast performance with a dashboard to track speed and stability.
Shopify Email Marketing:
Shopify Email supports segmentation, automation, and AI optimization, with 10,000 free emails per month. After that, it's $1 per 1,000 emails, making it a cost-effective marketing tool.
Blogging in Shopify:
The built-in blog tool boosts organic traffic. However, it lacks advanced features like post categorization and drag-and-drop options, often requiring HTML or apps for extra functionality.
SEO Apps:
Improve SEO with apps like:
- Yoast SEO
- SEO Manager
- SEO Image Optimizer Wizard
- ...
These apps help enhance rankings and drive organic traffic.
Shopify offers a comprehensive set of SEO and marketing tools to improve visibility and sales, making it an excellent platform for store optimization.
Shopify support
Shopify’s customer support offers 24/7 phone, chat, and email. It now limits phone support to Shopify Plus users. Standard plans offer live chat and email support, with email requiring a ‘leave a message’ form and a 24-hour response time.
Live chat begins with an AI assistant, which some users may find frustrating. It supports a limited number of languages, with others handled via Google Translate. Users are unhappy with the removal of phone support and report slow live chat responses. Online support materials are clear but mostly text-based, lacking screenshots and videos.
Overall, these changes represent a step backward in Shopify’s customer service.
Shopify security
Shopify prioritizes security, providing robust features that protect both merchants and customers. With SSL Certificates, data transferred between your site and customers is encrypted. This provides security for sensitive information like credit card details.
Additionally, Shopify adheres to PCI compliance standards for handling card information. It also offers a cookie policy generator to enhance privacy and compliance.
Shopify's security measures allow you to focus on business growth. You can reach your full potential easily knowing that your store is safe.
Reasons Users Are Still Hesitant About Shopify
While Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform, certain factors may make businesses hesitant. Here are some key drawbacks to consider:
SEO Limitations
- Rigid URL Structure: Shopify's fixed URL structure limits SEO customization, which may affect search rankings.
- Basic Blogging Tools: Compared to WordPress, Shopify’s blogging features are basic, limiting content marketing effectiveness.
- Limited Control Over Robots.txt: Shopify restricts users from fully controlling search engine crawling, unlike other platforms with more flexibility.
- Redirect Management: Redirect management can be more cumbersome on Shopify, especially for larger stores, compared to platforms with more streamlined tools.
- Duplicate Content: Shopify can sometimes generate duplicate content, requiring manual intervention or additional apps to resolve.
- Limited Customization: As a hosted solution, Shopify restricts backend code access, limiting technical SEO adjustments.
App Dependency for Advanced Features
- Additional Costs: Many advanced features require third-party apps, adding significant costs.
- Integration Issues: App integrations may cause compatibility problems, complicating store management.
- Maintenance & Updates: Some third-party apps are not regularly updated, posing security and compatibility risks.
- Limited Customization: While apps extend functionality, they may not offer the precise customization needed, unlike platforms such as WordPress.
Extra Costs with Third-Party Providers
Shopify charges an additional transaction fee ranging from 0.5% to 2%, depending on the plan you're subscribed to. For high-volume businesses, these fees can quickly add up. In comparison, platforms like BigCommerce and WooCommerce do not impose transaction fees, though payment processors still charge for their services. This makes Shopify less favorable in terms of fees for large sales volumes.
Restricted Backend Access
Shopify's closed system limits customization options, especially for businesses requiring specialized or advanced technical adjustments. Platforms like WooCommerce, built on WordPress, offer more flexibility for custom coding and integration.
Conclusion
Yes, Shopify is definitely worth it in 2025. Shopify is still a top choice for online stores. It offers seamless integration between online and physical sales, along with features for dropshipping, print-on-demand, and multi-currency sales.
Competitive pricing, inclusive features, easy usability, and extensive app integration make it appealing. However, there are drawbacks. It charges transaction fees for third-party payment gateways. It limits product options, and restricts user accounts.
Despite these, Shopify remains a strong option for people who want to build an online store.
