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Shopify and the Power of Platforms

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Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#51

Post by joking »

RickS wrote: post #42
_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

I am plenty technical to do this and it still sucks. We moved to shopify from a plumbed-together solution like that and it's a world of difference. First, shopify is like $30 for a month. I'm $30 for a few minutes. The cost savings are laughably huge. And shopify's better anyway! Their plugin ecosystem is great, the admin tools are built specifically for merchant admin types (as opposed to boil-the-ocean blog admin U…

you seem to forget about the credit card rates, which are the 2.9% of your sales. I don't know in other countries, but where I live you can get the same conditions than for a physical pos terminal from a bank with around 1% rate. a 2% of your sales can easily grow to something that you can optimize.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#52

Post by RickS »

joking wrote: post #51
RickS wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am plenty technical to do this and it still sucks. We moved to shopify from a plumbed-together solution like that and it's a world of difference. First, shopify is like $30 for a month. I'm $30 for a few minutes. The cost savings are laughably huge. And shopify's better anyway! Their plugin ecosystem is great, the admin tools are built specifically for merchant admin types (as opposed to boil-the-ocean blog admin U…

you seem to forget about the credit card rates, which are the 2.9% of your sales. I don't know in other countries, but where I live you can get the same conditions than for a physical pos terminal from a bank with around 1% rate. a 2% of your sales can easily grow to something that you can optimize.

I did almost mention those. Negotiating POS rates is in the realm of much bigger shops than I've run. At the 100k/mo mark, that's $2k/mo, which... I'd honestly still take shopify, but yeah, it starts to be worth asking about.

Shopify is a hair more expensive than some competing processors, but when I last dealt with it, they were in league of paypal, stripe, square, etc, so it wasn't a differentiating factor for us, and I suspect that's true for most businesses of our size.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#53

Post by pxue »

_csoo wrote: post #4

Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify. In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps"…

Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app + multiple attempt in starting a store)

Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period.

Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the funnel all the way down to personalized targeting.

Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figure out all that yourself. Outsiders / beginners looking in would say Shopify is amazing because the ecosystem and how many "tools" there are to help you sell. but it's all load of horsesh*t. The merchant ultimately is the one responsible to run the ad campaigns, find the customers, run promotional pricing on BFCM.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#54

Post by woah »

joking wrote: post #51
RickS wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am plenty technical to do this and it still sucks. We moved to shopify from a plumbed-together solution like that and it's a world of difference. First, shopify is like $30 for a month. I'm $30 for a few minutes. The cost savings are laughably huge. And shopify's better anyway! Their plugin ecosystem is great, the admin tools are built specifically for merchant admin types (as opposed to boil-the-ocean blog admin U…

you seem to forget about the credit card rates, which are the 2.9% of your sales. I don't know in other countries, but where I live you can get the same conditions than for a physical pos terminal from a bank with around 1% rate. a 2% of your sales can easily grow to something that you can optimize.

They let you choose among a wide range of processors

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#55

Post by brightball »

RickS wrote: post #42
_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

I am plenty technical to do this and it still sucks. We moved to shopify from a plumbed-together solution like that and it's a world of difference. First, shopify is like $30 for a month. I'm $30 for a few minutes. The cost savings are laughably huge. And shopify's better anyway! Their plugin ecosystem is great, the admin tools are built specifically for merchant admin types (as opposed to boil-the-ocean blog admin U…

I'm always curious to see Shopify compared to something like Square's ecosystem.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#56

Post by drchiu »

pxue wrote: post #53
_csoo wrote: post #4

Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify. In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps"…

Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app + multiple attempt in starting a store) Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period. Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the funnel all the way down to personalized targeting. Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figur…

I echo your sentiment as well (also from a background of having ran a Shopify app with thousands of installs).

There's a lot of misconception of how much hard work it is amongst beginner Shopify merchants in order to generate sufficient traffic. Amazon, at the very least, provides an audience -- which solves a very major problem for any business (to get traffic).

There's a lot of success stories running on Shopify, but these companies would have pretty done well creating their own custom solution.

At the end of the day, it's a piece of software (ie. shovel) to sell to people who want to try and make money online (ie. the gold rush).

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#57

Post by bluGill »

asaddhamani wrote: post #41
delecti wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just combine these 6 things and it's just as easy as a single tool that does it all for you." Is this satire?

Do this, and this, and this, and that, and this, and that and this, and in a few days, you're halfway to this readymade offering that would have you up and running in minutes. I don't understand how anyone can type that out and not realise halfway through how ridiculous they're being. Even for technical users / developers, their time is better spent than fiddling around with 10 different tools.

> Even for technical users / developers, their time is better spent than fiddling around with 10 different tools.

This might or might not be true. Fiddling with 10 different tools often gives you are much larger level of control. If you need some control that you get with 10 different tools that the single source doesn't do then you are stuck with 10 tools. The downside of course if you now need to fiddle with 10 different tools.

Make the correct decision for your situation.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#58

Post by pbreit »

_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

I don't think it's worth a downvote but what you list out is one of the worst examples of "why use SaaS? this convoluted self-assembled mish mash of randomness already exists" I've seen.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#59

Post by benologist »

If anyone is interested in a 'Shopify for SaaS' I am in private beta with one, my platform is an open source app store for web applications with developer registration and payouts through Stripe Connect. Developers can code single page apps on the website or import their servers by URL. Users can install the creations for personal or organization use, imported or freely subscribed or paid subscriptions.

My email is in my profile if anyone is interested in participating in my beta.

Example of a web app on my platform -

https://github.com/userappstore/integration-examples/blob/ma...

Case study for how that app, hastebin, was ported -

https://github.com/userappstore/integration-examples/blob/ma...

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#60

Post by Miss_Vee22 »

omouse wrote: post #13
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "number of plugins" is a good comparison metric here. The Shopify app store is regulated + tested by Shopify before getting the approval to go live. WordPress plugins are the wild west, many of them incompatible with each other.

Regulated meaning a tightly controlled and closed "market"? Number of plugins isn't the greatest metric but it's a good leading indicator. It's kinda hard to estimate how many merchants and customers and volume of transactions have been processed when they aren't being tracked by a central entity ;)

What was meant was moderation. Shopify works with developers to ensure the plugin's code will be compatible/quality more similar to how Apple does moderation.
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