Our Verdict: The Best E-Commerce Platform for Most People
Shopify remains the gold standard for building and running an online store in 2026. It is not the cheapest option on the market, and power users may bump into some template limitations, but for the vast majority of merchants it delivers an unbeatable combination of ease of use, reliability, and room to grow. We have processed over $180,000 in test orders across our three stores, and Shopify has not let us down once.
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What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a fully hosted e-commerce platform that lets you build, launch, and manage an online store without touching a line of code. Founded in 2006 by Tobias Lutke after he struggled to find a decent tool to sell snowboards online, Shopify has grown into the backbone of millions of businesses worldwide. As of early 2026, the platform powers roughly 4.8 million active stores across 175 countries and processes hundreds of billions of dollars in annual gross merchandise volume.
What sets Shopify apart from most competitors is that it handles everything in one place. Hosting, SSL certificates, payment processing, inventory management, shipping labels, tax calculations, and even basic email marketing are all built in. You pick a theme, add your products, connect a payment method, and you are selling. The average store owner we surveyed had their first product listed within 45 minutes of signing up.
Shopify also has one of the largest app ecosystems in the e-commerce space. The Shopify App Store currently lists over 8,000 apps covering everything from subscription management and print-on-demand fulfillment to advanced analytics and AI-powered product recommendations. Some of these apps are free, while others carry their own monthly fees, which is something to budget for.
Over the past two years, we operated three Shopify stores for this review: a direct-to-consumer apparel brand, a digital products store selling design templates, and a dropshipping test store. This gave us a wide view of how Shopify performs across different business models, price points, and traffic volumes. Our apparel store peaked at around 14,000 monthly visitors and about 380 orders per month, which was enough to stress-test the checkout, shipping, and inventory systems.
Shopify Pricing Breakdown
Shopify offers three core plans, plus an enterprise tier. All plans include unlimited products, 24/7 support, SSL, and fraud analysis. The main differences come down to transaction fees, staff accounts, and advanced reporting features. Here is how they compare as of February 2026:
| Feature | Basic ($39/mo) | Shopify ($105/mo) | Advanced ($399/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online store | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Staff accounts | 2 | 5 | 15 |
| Inventory locations | Up to 10 | Up to 10 | Up to 10 |
| Shipping discount | Up to 77% | Up to 88% | Up to 88% |
| Credit card rate (online) | 2.9% + 30c | 2.7% + 30c | 2.5% + 30c |
| Third-party transaction fee | 2.0% | 1.0% | 0.5% |
| Reports | Basic | Professional | Advanced custom |
| Duties & import taxes | No | No | Yes |
A few important pricing notes from our experience. First, paying annually instead of monthly saves you roughly 25 percent, which brings the Basic plan down to about $29 per month. Second, Shopify Payments is included at no extra charge beyond the credit card processing rates shown above, and it eliminates the third-party transaction fee entirely. Third, many merchants overlook the cost of paid apps. Our apparel store ran five paid apps that added $87 per month on top of the Shopify subscription. Factor that into your budget early.
There is also Shopify Plus for high-volume enterprise merchants, starting at around $2,300 per month. Unless you are doing over $800,000 per month in revenue, it is unlikely you need Plus. The Advanced plan covers most scaling needs up to that level.
Pros & Cons
After running stores on Shopify for two years, here is what genuinely impressed us and what frustrated us. We are not sugarcoating anything.
What We Love
- Unmatched ease of use. You can go from zero to a live store in under an hour. The admin dashboard is clean, logically organized, and almost never confusing.
- Rock-solid reliability. In 24 months of monitoring, we experienced zero unplanned downtime. Shopify handles traffic spikes, including a 6x surge during our Black Friday sale, without breaking a sweat.
- Shopify Payments eliminates payment headaches. No third-party gateway setup, no additional transaction fees, and payouts arrive in 2-3 business days.
- The app ecosystem is massive. Over 8,000 apps mean you can add virtually any feature: subscriptions, loyalty programs, reviews, bundling, upsells, and more.
- Built-in SEO and marketing tools are better than most competitors. Automatic sitemaps, customizable meta tags, canonical URLs, integrated blogging, and social media sales channels are all included.
- Excellent multi-channel selling. We sold simultaneously on our Shopify store, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon from a single dashboard. Inventory synced perfectly across all channels.
- Shopify Shipping saves real money. We saved an average of $4.20 per shipment compared to retail USPS rates. Over hundreds of orders per month, that adds up fast.
What Could Be Better
- The costs add up. Between the subscription, paid apps, and credit card processing fees, our monthly Shopify bill for a single store averaged $176. Budget-conscious beginners may feel the pinch.
- Theme customization has limits. The free themes are solid but relatively rigid. If you want a truly unique design, you will likely need a paid theme ($180-$350) or a developer.
- The built-in blogging tool is basic. If content marketing is central to your strategy, the blog editor feels underwhelming compared to WordPress. Limited formatting options, no content scheduling, and no native commenting system.
- Email marketing is still playing catch-up. Shopify Email works for simple campaigns, but it lacks the automation depth and segmentation power of dedicated tools like Klaviyo or Kit. Most serious stores end up paying for a separate email platform anyway.
Who Is Shopify Best For?
Shopify is not the right tool for everyone. Based on our experience, here is who benefits the most and who should probably look elsewhere.
Shopify Is Ideal For:
- First-time store owners who want to launch quickly without dealing with hosting, security, or technical complexity. Shopify removes virtually all the technical barriers.
- Growing brands doing $10K-$500K per month in revenue that need a platform that scales reliably. Shopify handles growth without requiring a platform migration.
- Multi-channel sellers who want to sell on their website, social media, marketplaces, and in-person through Shopify POS, all from one dashboard.
- Dropshippers and print-on-demand entrepreneurs who need seamless integrations with suppliers like Printful, Spocket, or DSers.
- Subscription businesses using apps like Recharge or Bold Subscriptions to manage recurring orders and billing.
You Might Want to Look Elsewhere If:
- You have a $0 budget. WooCommerce with cheap shared hosting will cost you less, though you trade simplicity for that savings.
- Your primary business is content, not commerce. If you run a blog that happens to sell a few products, WordPress with WooCommerce is a better foundation.
- You need extreme customization. If your product or checkout flow requires highly custom logic, a headless commerce setup or custom-built solution may be more appropriate.
Shopify vs WooCommerce
This is the comparison most people ask us about, so let us break it down plainly based on running stores on both platforms simultaneously.
Head-to-Head Summary
| Factor | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of setup | Under 1 hour, no code | 2-4 hours, some technical skill |
| Monthly cost | $39-$399 + apps | $5-$50 hosting + plugins |
| Hosting | Fully managed, included | Self-hosted, you manage |
| Security & updates | Automatic, handled by Shopify | Manual, your responsibility |
| Design flexibility | Good (themes + Liquid) | Excellent (full code access) |
| Scalability | Handles any volume | Depends on your hosting |
| Best for | Most online sellers | WordPress users, developers |
The short version: if you want to focus on selling products and not managing infrastructure, Shopify wins. If you already know WordPress, have a developer on your team, and want maximum control at a lower ongoing cost, WooCommerce is a capable alternative. For our three test stores, we spent about 3 hours per month on Shopify maintenance versus 11 hours per month managing our WooCommerce comparison store, mainly dealing with plugin updates, security patches, and hosting optimization.
Performance & Speed
Page speed matters for conversions. We ran detailed performance tests on our Shopify stores using Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and WebPageTest. Here are the numbers from our apparel store, which uses a paid theme with moderate customization and seven apps installed:
- Google PageSpeed (mobile): 72 out of 100 - above average for e-commerce, though not exceptional. Most of the score impact came from third-party app scripts.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 2.1 seconds on desktop, 3.4 seconds on mobile. Well within Google's "good" threshold on desktop.
- Time to First Byte (TTFB): 218ms average across US locations, 340ms for European visitors. Shopify's global CDN keeps this consistently fast.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0.04 - excellent. The built-in themes handle layout stability well out of the box.
- Fully loaded time: 3.8 seconds on a standard 4G connection. Not blazing fast, but competitive with most e-commerce platforms under real-world conditions.
One thing worth noting: Shopify's performance is remarkably consistent. While platforms like WooCommerce can be faster with extensive optimization, they can also be much slower without it. Shopify gives you a reliably fast baseline without any performance tuning on your end. Our WooCommerce test store scored 58 on PageSpeed mobile before optimization and 81 after spending a full day on performance tuning. Shopify scored 72 with zero optimization effort.
The main performance bottleneck on Shopify tends to be third-party apps. Every app you install adds JavaScript to your storefront. We tested our store with all apps disabled and the PageSpeed score jumped to 89. Our advice: audit your installed apps quarterly and remove anything you are not actively using.
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Start Free Shopify Trial →Frequently Asked Questions
Is Shopify worth the monthly cost?
Yes, for most online store owners Shopify is worth the cost. The Basic plan at $39 per month includes hosting, SSL, payment processing, and a full e-commerce platform. When you factor in what you would pay separately for hosting, an SSL certificate, a shopping cart plugin, and payment gateway integration, Shopify often works out cheaper and far simpler than a DIY solution. We calculated the total cost of running an equivalent WooCommerce store at roughly $32 per month for hosting and plugins, but that does not account for the hours of maintenance you save with Shopify.
Can you really make money with Shopify?
Absolutely. Millions of merchants generate revenue through Shopify stores. However, Shopify is a tool, not a magic bullet. Your success depends on having a viable product, effective marketing, and good customer service. Shopify removes the technical barriers so you can focus on those business fundamentals. Our test apparel store generated $63,400 in revenue over 12 months, and our digital products store earned $18,200 in the same period. Both were profitable after accounting for all costs including the Shopify subscription and paid apps.
Is Shopify better than WooCommerce?
Shopify is better for most people because it handles hosting, security, and updates automatically. WooCommerce offers more customization but requires you to manage your own hosting, plugins, and security patches. If you want simplicity and reliability, choose Shopify. If you need deep WordPress integration and maximum control, WooCommerce may be the better fit. We cover this comparison in detail in the section above.
Does Shopify take a percentage of sales?
If you use Shopify Payments, their built-in payment processor, there are no additional transaction fees beyond standard credit card processing rates (2.9% + 30 cents on Basic). If you use a third-party payment gateway instead, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Shopify, and 0.5% on Advanced. Our recommendation is to use Shopify Payments whenever possible to avoid these extra charges. It is available in over 20 countries.