Shopify is a hosted e-commerce platform – a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) product. This means that the environment in which the store runs is managed entirely by Shopify – the platform, hosting, checkout and security is all taken care of for you. You pay Shopify a small monthly fee (which is very favourable compared with the cost of decent e-commerce hosting alone) plus a percentage of each transaction (which varies depending on which plan you choose, see below for more information).
All aspects of a normal e-commerce environment are covered – from product management to secure credit card processing, and it’s all wrapped up in Shopify’s incredible powerful and easy-to-use administration interface.
As a web-based product, there is no software to install, no complex configuration to do, and you don’t need to worry about upgrades and ongoing maintenance either with the platform itself or with the server. Shopify uses a powerful cloud hosted environment to ensure maximum performance and availability, plus amazing customer support if you have any technical queries.
One of the most important aspects of our work is ensuring that clients are able to effectively manage almost all aspects of a website without compromise. Shopify’s administration panel is incredibly easy-to-use, even for non-technical users; it’s deceptively simple on the outside for what is an immensely powerful tool for managing all aspects of your online shop.
Developing for Shopify is also immensely satisfying – we’ve used other SaaS e-commerce platforms in the past (Magento Go, Actinic Online) and the level of customization offered within Shopify is unprecedented – seriously, nothing comes close. From a design perspective, there is very little in the way of limitations and dubious hacks and workarounds simply are not required.
As with all of our services, we offer a full-service package to design and develop your Shopify store, including: