Review
We ran a small store on Shopify for a full season, including a launch spike. Here is what the platform handles for you — and what the app bill really looks like.
Shopify's checkout, reliability and app ecosystem remain the strongest in ecommerce, and the platform simply does not fall over when traffic spikes. The true monthly cost is the plan plus four or five apps — budget accordingly.
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Ecommerce platforms are judged on one night: the launch, the sale, the day something goes viral. Everything else is preparation. We ran a small physical-product store on Shopify Basic through a full season including one genuine spike, and measured the boring things — setup time, checkout drop-off, the real bill.
From signup to accepting a live card payment took under a day, including a theme, twelve products with variants, shipping zones and tax settings. Nothing in that process required a developer, and nothing needed to be undone later.
The admin is unfashionably plain and that is a compliment. Orders, products, customers, analytics — everything is where you would guess.
Shopify's checkout is faster and more trusted than anything a small merchant could build. Shop Pay's saved details convert repeat buyers at a rate we could not match with a generic gateway on a previous project.
The base plan is $39. Then: reviews app, upsell app, email marketing, a subscription tool, a page builder. Each is $10-30 a month and each is genuinely useful, which is how a $39 platform becomes a $95 one. Audit the list quarterly or it grows on its own.
You get editable titles, descriptions, alt text, redirects and clean structured data. You do not get control of URL structure, and the blog is basic enough that content-led stores often run WordPress alongside. For most merchants that is acceptable; for content-first brands it is a real limitation.
If selling is the business, Shopify is still the default and deservedly so. WooCommerce wins on control and cost for technical owners; Wix is fine for a handful of products. For everyone else, pay the money and spend your attention on the products.
| Basic plan | $39/mo, 2 staff accounts |
|---|---|
| Grow plan | $105/mo, lower card rates |
| Transaction fee | 2% on Basic if not using Shopify Payments |
| Themes | Free and paid, from $180 one-off |
| POS | Included, Pro tier extra |
| Free trial | 3 days, then discounted first month |
Scores from our own testing. Prices are launch RRP in USD.
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