Yes. Shopify offers a three-day free trial. All that’s needed for initial signup is an email address — no credit card or monetary risk required. If you’re happy with the service after the trial period, you can choose a plan that fits your budget. If not, the trial account will be automatically frozen without incurring any fees.
Site owners must pay for Shopify services using a credit card issued by MasterCard, Visa, or American Express. Shopify does not currently accept debit cards due to the processing methods employed by some issuing banks.
No. At this time, Shopify does not accept payment via PayPal.
The Shopify plan you choose largely depends on the size and scope of your online business. Shopify offers three eCommerce packages that start with the foundations necessary to build a new online storefront and run through the advanced functionalities large, established web merchants need to scale their sites in tandem with growing customer bases.
Shopify’s entry-level plan allows for the easy creation of an online store complete with product pages, shopping carts, and multiple payment and shipping options. So, if you’re a new web entrepreneur or if your business is just starting to expand, this package offers an ideal platform to reach your audiences online.
For fast-growing and established businesses, Shopify offers more functionality and features with its higher-tiered plans. These more advanced packages allow site owners to scale operations as necessary and reach wider audiences with expanded access to marketing and eCommerce tools.
Shopify also offers two additional plans that come in at polar ends of the eCommerce spectrum. Shopify Lite allows merchants to sell on Facebook, add products to blogs and other websites, and accept credit card payments. For large enterprises seeking high-growth opportunities, the ShopifyPlus platform offers an extensive feature set and fully customizable storefronts to optimize user experiences and maximize ROI. ShopifyPlus also delivers industry-specific themes tailored to a business’s niche in the marketplace.
By default, all Shopify plans carry a 30-day billing cycle. This period can be changed to a longer interval but not a shorter one. Some Shopify plans qualify for discounts if a longer billing cycle is selected. This option can be chosen upon account registration or at any time after signup through the account manager admin panel.
Site owners can either transfer an existing domain or purchase a domain name from OpenSRS through Shopify. While a myshopify.com subdomain is available to all users at no charge, custom domain names are not included with eCommerce hosting plans. All the most popular TLDs, including .com, .net, and .us, are available, and domain prices come in right at the industry standard.
Purchasing a domain is usually a cause for celebration. You’re about to embark on a new online venture, and it all starts with your web address. However, your personal information, including name, email, and physical address, can appear in the public WHOIS directory — which is often scanned by those with malicious intent — if certain precautions aren’t made when registering your site name.
To prevent your data from becoming public, many hosting providers offer WHOIS privacy protections that replace your contact information in the WHOIS listings with that of a forwarding service. Shopify is a reseller of OpenSRS’s domain registration services. Once domains are purchased through Shopify, site owners are given their OpenSRS login information and can add WHOIS privacy by purchasing it directly from OpenSRS for a negligible fee.
An uptime guarantee is a promise made by a host to site owners that their online properties will be available to visitors a certain percentage of time each month. The industry average uptime guarantee runs between 99.9% and 99.99%. Shopify boasts the high-end of that average with a 99.99% uptime guarantee. This gives site owners peace of mind that their online shops will be open for business around the clock.
Shopify doesn’t offer VPS or dedicated server hosting. Rather, the company employs Fastly’s content delivery network (CDN) for all of its Basic, Professional, and Enterprise hosting packages. Shopify’s CDN approach uses a distributed network of servers over multiple locations, which enables the host to guarantee high uptime rates (99.99%) and fast page load times. This gives Shopify customers power and performance similar to that of a virtual or dedicated server hosting solution.
No. You do not need to copy and paste a promo code to receive discounts on Shopify services. Simply click on one of the linked coupons above, and you’ll be directed to our reader-exclusive deals on Shopify’s eCommerce hosting packages.
According to Shopify’s terms of service, the company does not offer a warranty or money-back guarantee on hosting plans. However, Shopify’s three-day free trial provides a built-in safeguard against signing up for unwanted services.
At first glance, the pricing of Shopify’s entry-level eCommerce plan seems to come in at well above the industry average for basic web hosting. However, when you weigh the number of features and performance Shopify delivers, the higher cost becomes much more reasonable. Some hosts require purchasing third-party eCommerce plugins, PCI-compliant shopping carts, and offsite image hosting. With Shopify, it’s all included. And our reader-exclusive deals on Shopify services linked in the coupons above make the host’s eCommerce platform all the more budget-friendly.
