Shopify is the platform millions of businesses use to sell online. Here’s what you need to know before you open your store.
Shopify is a platform for building and running an online store without writing code or renting servers. You pay a monthly subscription and Shopify gives you everything you need to sell: the storefront, hosting, security, shopping cart, payments and an admin to manage products, orders and customers. It’s used by everyone from founders selling their first products to global brands.
In this guide we explain how it works, what you can sell, what it costs and what you need to get started.
Shopify in a nutshell
Shopify is a Canadian company founded in 2006 in Ottawa. It started when its founders wanted to open an online snowboard shop and couldn’t find software they liked, so they built their own. Today, according to Shopify, millions of businesses in more than 175 countries sell on the platform, and its App Store has over 8,000 apps.
What matters for you: Shopify is an all-in-one service. You don’t install anything on your computer or buy hosting separately. You log in from your browser or the mobile app and run your whole business from there.
How Shopify works
The basics come down to four parts:
- Your online store. The site your customers see. It’s built on a theme (a design template) you customize in a visual editor: colors, fonts, sections, banners.
- Your admin. Where you add products, review orders, manage inventory, create discounts, see reports and set up shipping and payments.
- Checkout. The payment process. Shopify hosts and secures it, and it accepts cards, Shop Pay and other methods depending on your payment provider.
- Apps. If you need something Shopify doesn’t include out of the box (reviews, loyalty points, email marketing), you add it from the App Store.
When a customer buys, the order shows up in your admin, the payment is processed, inventory updates automatically and you prepare the shipment (or your warehouse or supplier does).
What you can sell on Shopify
Practically any legal product:
- Physical products: apparel, cosmetics, food, accessories, parts, furniture.
- Digital products: courses, templates, downloadable files.
- Services and appointments: with booking apps.
- Subscriptions: monthly boxes or replenishment products, with subscription apps.
- Wholesale (B2B): special pricing and catalogs for business customers.
And not just on your own store. From the same admin you can sell on Facebook and Instagram, Google and YouTube, TikTok, in your physical store with Shopify POS, and in AI assistants like ChatGPT, where Shopify already surfaces products from its stores. Inventory and orders from every channel live in one place.
How much Shopify costs
In the US, the Basic plan costs $29 a month billed yearly ($39 month to month), Grow is $79 and Advanced $299, with Shopify Plus starting at $2,300 a month. On top of that come payment fees and whatever you spend on apps.
We break it all down, with every fee and a sample monthly budget, in our guide to Shopify pricing.
Advantages of Shopify
- You launch fast. You can have a working store in days and a professional one in a few weeks.
- No servers to worry about. Shopify handles hosting, security and traffic spikes, like Black Friday or a campaign that goes viral.
- A checkout that converts. It’s one of the most battle-tested payment flows in ecommerce.
- Everything in one admin. Store, orders, inventory, customers, reports and sales channels.
- It scales with you. The same platform handles your first order and thousands a day; you just change plans.
- 24/7 support from Shopify.
Drawbacks to consider
For the full picture, there are a few things you should know:
- It’s a subscription. You pay every month, whether or not you sell.
- Apps add up. Install a lot of paid apps and your monthly cost climbs. Pick a few good ones; here’s our list of the best Shopify apps.
- Extra fee with third-party processors. If you don’t use Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an additional percentage per sale.
- Limited core customization. You can change almost all of the design, but not the platform’s inner workings the way you could with open-source software.
If you’re comparing it with WordPress, read our Shopify vs WooCommerce guide.
What you need to open a Shopify store
Here’s the practical checklist:
- Your products with good photos, descriptions, prices, weights (for shipping rates) and inventory.
- A name and a domain (for example, yourbrand.com).
- Your logo and brand colors.
- A way to get paid: Shopify Payments or another provider.
- A shipping strategy: carriers, rates, free shipping over a threshold or local pickup.
- Your legal pages: privacy policy, terms of service, shipping and refund policies.
- Sales tax settings for the places where you’re required to collect it.
How to get started, step by step
- Create your account and use the trial period to explore the admin.
- Choose a theme and customize it with your brand.
- Add your products and organize them into collections.
- Set up payments, shipping and taxes.
- Connect your domain.
- Place test orders to make sure everything works, including the emails customers receive.
- Pick your plan and launch.
- Drive traffic: social media, ads, email marketing and SEO.
If you’d rather have someone build it with you, at Tebiko we offer Shopify store development on our own theme, Bridge, designed to sell from day one.
Who Shopify is for
Shopify is a great choice if you want to sell online seriously, grow without worrying about technology and keep your whole business in one place. It’s especially strong for brands with their own products, stores that sell across several channels and businesses that expect to grow.
If you’re just validating an idea with a few products, it works too: the Basic plan is affordable and you can upgrade when you need to.
The essentials
Shopify is the most direct way to get a professional online store without wrestling with servers or code. It gives you the storefront, payments, security and the tools to sell across channels, and it grows with you.
Wondering whether Shopify is the right platform for your business? As Shopify Partners, we help you plan, build and launch your store. Reach us through our contact page.