Shopify UK review – the best ecommerce platform?

Shopify pricing and payments

An oddity of Shopify is the requirement to pay in US dollars instead of pounds sterling. This is a reflection of their customer base being mostly American.

Currency aside, Shopify’s three main plans for building a web store include Basic Shopify, Shopify and Advanced Shopify. There is a fourth plan called Shopify Lite, but this is just for ‘buy buttons’, not for managing an online store. A Shopify Plus plan is also available, but this is only for enterprises, large and/or high-volume businesses.

You can choose to pay monthly, annually, every other year or every third year upfront. You can save money the more you pay upfront, but then the price is a lot higher and you cannot get the money refunded. It is therefore quite a commitment to go for any other plan than the pay-monthly ones.

Each subscription includes the ability to accept payments via Shopify Payments, but card rates vary between the plans. Card fees are highest on Basic Shopify and lowest for Advanced Shopify. If you’re a high-volume business, it might therefore make sense with the higher plan as the card rate savings could justify it.

With Shopify Payments, you are also able to add additional payment methods to your checkout options, such as PayPal and Amazon Pay. These other methods have separate costs payable to those providers – Shopify does not add anything on top of those as long as you also have Shopify Payments activated in your online store.

Shopify Payments also handles in-person payments through Shopify card reader – these fees are a bit lower than for online payments. There is no 20p charge added to the percentage rate for transactions on credit card terminals like you see with online payments.

If you use a different card reader than Shopify’s own model, transactions will just be marked as complete in the system and no Shopify transaction fee will be charged. You will, of course, have to pay transaction costs to the other payment provider in this case.

If you deactivate Shopify Payments and instead use another payment gateway for online transactions, Shopify will charge a 2% transaction fee on Basic Shopify, 1% on Shopify or 0.5% on Advanced Shopify. This is in addition to the transaction costs paid to the external payment provider.

There is a selection of free website templates, but most cost a one-off price ranging between $100-$180 each (most of them are $140-$180).

Features

All three Shopify plans allow you to build and run a full ecommerce store with blog included. You can add unlimited products and sell on social media or another website through pay buttons via the Shopify system. Let’s go through some important features available on all plans.

Product catalogue: Add any products, services or gift cards to the product library, or import them in one go if they’re in a spreadsheet. Choose what sales channels (online store, point of sale etc.) you want to sell them through, track inventory levels, add variants, SEO data and more to each item. Out-of-stock items can be hidden automatically and search filters added to your website so customers can find products easily.

Order management: The order section lists all sales alongside payment and fulfilment status and customer details. Connect with fulfilment solutions like Amazon and Shipwire to make the dispatch system more efficient.

Discounts and promotions: Set up a variety of discounts to incentivise customers, e.g. discount codes, Buy One Get One Free offers and timed or persistent offers. Promotions are powerful tools for growth.

Abandoned cart recovery: A proven way to increase sales conversion is sending emails to customers who abandoned their shopping carts. Shopify can do that automatically.

What, then, are the differences between the price plans? Most built-in ecommerce features are the same for everyone, except for:

Website templates

Through the online dashboard, you can go to Shopify Themes to pick a design template for the web store. Only 9 templates are free, although each has 2-4 variations to pick from. There are 64 other themes costing $100, $140, $160 or $180 each – a total of 73 themes including the free options.

Instead of overwhelming you with design options, templates can be filtered based on the style. For instance, pick a template based on layout, navigation, social media feeds, industry, product pages, and the number of items you’re selling. Once you’ve chosen your basic template, the editing choices will be shaped around it.

Domain and hosting

As with most mainstream ecommerce providers, Shopify manages the hosting (i.e. storing and processing) of your website on their choice of servers, covered in the subscription cost. This includes a free SLL certificate ensuring your website is safe to browse.

Shopify boasts unlimited bandwidth and a quick load time regardless of location in the world, largely due to a worldwide server network enabling quick processing to local website visitors.

The only extra thing you pay for is a domain name, unless you stick to a free URL in this format: https://your-website-name.myshopify.com

If you already have a domain name purchased elsewhere, this can be connected to your online store. There is a benefit to buying a domain through Shopify, though, as it gives you an unlimited number of forwarding email addresses (e.g. info@yourstore.com) that forward emails to an existing email address of yours. However, we’ve seen feedback that replying to customers will show your personal email address to the customer.

POS integration

Brick-and-mortar shops, seasonal stores and pop-up shops could benefit from Shopify’s integration with its very own POS system and card reader.

All Shopify plans let you download a complimentary POS app on iPad or iPhone and connect it with Shopify card reader (£59 + VAT). The Shopify POS system does not integrate with any other card machines in the UK, but it is possible to use an external card machine separately and then manually mark the transaction as a card payment in the POS app.

Products already added in the online store can be added to the POS library to sync stock levels across all sales channels.

There are actually two POS packages: Shopify POS Lite (free on all Shopify plans) with enough features for on-the-go sales, and Shopify POS Pro (US$89/month per location) with advanced features for staff, store, order and product management.

Integrations with several major POS systems such as Zettle and Vend are also available. Alternatively, sync Shopify inventory with Square if you prefer Square’s free payment tools. The point is: you are not limited to using Shopify POS if you prefer a different till system.

Customer service and user reviews

24/7 customer support is offered on all plans, but there are mixed reviews around the quality of service.

Some in the UK claim that the customer support is hard to reach or not able to resolve all queries. Other users complain that they pay more in monthly fees and chargebacks (due to fraudulent transactions) than earned on the website, although arguably, the sales you make are beyond’s Shopify’s control.

Several customer reviews mention increased service disruption, especially last year. Not all server downtimes are recorded on the server status page, apparently, meaning the official claim of “99.98%” uptime may be significantly off.

The comprehensive Help Center on the website answers most questions with in-depth explanations and videos. There are also guides, forums, podcasts and free tools to help your business. Shopify Academy is another impressive, free resource for budding entrepreneurs where you can enrol on short courses divided into learning videos. These cover Shopify-related topics, marketing, business know-how and other ecommerce topics.

Our verdict

Shopify is an expansive platform for ecommerce – there’s nothing stopping you from setting up a successful, modern online business through one of the subscriptions.

However, advanced features require an upgrade to a plan with a monthly fee of £60+ on top of costs of transactions and external apps. Add to that a paid website theme (if the few free ones are not attractive enough), and you’re off to an expensive start.

This is why I’d strongly recommend making most out of the free trial before committing to a subscription that could cost more than your sales can justify.

If you anticipate an uncertain turnover, it might be better to choose a platform that’s affordable even for the advanced features you’ll need down the line.

If you anticipate an uncertain turnover, it might be better to choose a platform that’s affordable even for the advanced features you’ll need down the line.

That said, the customisation options are varied, and it might just be the most advanced ecommerce solution that syncs seamlessly with a low-cost POS system.