Shopify
Best for: Ordinary products, and a preference for selling over administering.
Everything above. If your products have a price and a picture and you want to be open soon, this is the straightforward answer and the maintenance is not yours.
Ecommerce platforms
Shopify Explained for Small Business
Shopify is a fully hosted ecommerce platform. It runs the servers, the software and the storefront security, and you run the shop. That one fact answers most of the questions people arrive with, including the one about hosting.
What "fully hosted" means, and why it matters here
On a self-hosted store, you rent a server, install the software, and then somebody has to keep that software patched forever. On a hosted platform, all of that is the platform's responsibility. You get an admin area, and the machinery underneath is somebody else's problem.
This is the whole reason the question "do I need hosting for Shopify" keeps coming up, and the answer is no. We sell hosting, and we still say no, because selling somebody a plan their store will never touch is not a business we want.
What Shopify does not include is the domain name. Register that yourself, at a registrar, in your own name. It costs the same either way and it means the address is yours if you ever move the store.
What Shopify is good at
- Getting a catalog online without a developer. For products with a price, a picture and a quantity, this is genuinely quick.
- Taking money. Checkout, payment and the security scope that comes with handling cards are the platform's responsibility, not yours.
- Not falling behind. There is no version of your store quietly running three year old software, because you do not run the software.
- Growing. The same store handles a busy season without you moving it anywhere.
What it is not good at
- Unusual selling. Trade pricing, quotes, deposits, rentals and rules that vary per customer are where a hosted platform starts costing you workarounds.
- Owning the stack. You are a tenant. That is the trade you are making, and it is a reasonable one, but it is a trade.
- App sprawl. Every gap gets filled with an add-on, each with its own monthly charge and its own effect on speed. Stores that end up with a long app list are often the ones that should have been built.
We deliberately do not restate Shopify's pricing, plan features or trial terms here, because they change and a page that is wrong about them is worse than a page that is quiet. Check those on Shopify's own site.
What you still buy from us if you choose Shopify
Less than you might think, and we would rather be clear about it.
- Your domain name. Held at a registrar, in your name, pointed at the store. This is the one that matters.
- Business email at that domain. Business email or Microsoft 365, so the address on your invoices is not a free mail account.
- Nothing else, usually. Not hosting, not an SSL certificate for the storefront, not backups of the platform. Shopify covers those.
If you also have a separate marketing site, a blog or a members area alongside the store, that part may well need hosting. The store itself does not.
Shopify, or one of the other two routes
Worth a look before you commit, especially if anything about how you sell is unusual.
WooCommerce
Best for: A WordPress site already in place, or a wish to own the stack.
Self-hosted, so it needs a plan and a maintenance habit, and gives you control of every part in exchange. Compared side by side at Shopify vs WooCommerce.
A build by AldoMedia
Best for: Pricing or a catalog that a hosted platform will fight you on.
When the workaround list gets long before you have even launched, that is the signal. AldoMedia has built ecommerce sites since 1999, including Shopify stores.
Ready to start, or still weighing it up?
Start the store yourself with the button below, or tell us what you sell and we will tell you whether Shopify is the right fit. We will say so when it is not.
Shopify questions
Does Shopify include hosting?
Yes. Shopify is fully hosted: the servers, the platform updates and the SSL certificate on your storefront are part of what you pay Shopify. There is no separate hosting plan to buy, and a hosting plan bought alongside a Shopify store would sit empty.
Do I need separate hosting for Shopify?
No. What you buy outside Shopify is the domain name, and business email if you want addresses at that domain. Email is a separate product from the store on every platform.
Is Shopify good for SEO?
It is capable. It produces clean URLs, lets you set titles, descriptions and redirects, and it is fast out of the box, which are the technical parts. What it will not do is write the pages that earn rankings or decide your site structure, and those are the parts that actually decide whether you rank. A well run Shopify store ranks; a neglected one does not, exactly like every other platform.
Can Shopify rank on Google?
Yes. There is no ranking penalty for using a hosted platform, and Google does not know or care which software rendered a page. The constraints worth knowing are that some of the URL structure is fixed by the platform, and that heavy use of apps can slow a store down, which does affect rankings indirectly.
Is Shopify good for local businesses?
It works, with a caveat: local search is mostly won on your Google Business Profile, your reviews and pages that clearly say where you are and what you serve. A store platform helps with the shop and does very little for the local side, so plan on doing that work regardless of platform.
Who should not use Shopify?
Businesses whose pricing or sales process the platform will not carry: trade pricing per customer, quoting instead of a cart, complex made to order rules, or a catalog that has to stay in step with another system. Also anyone who wants full control of the code, which a hosted platform does not give you by design.