Shopify offers a full ecom platform and let's you launch in days if you really have to. Upfront you aren't paying anything. Creating Shopify's functionality will take you years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop.
Most ecomm businesses are more complex than connecting a front end to a payments gateway. Generally requires multiple complex systems (Product Management System, Order Management System, CRM, etc) to work together seamlessly. This is where platforms like Shopify or Magento are really valuable. They give you all the pieces you need to build your business w/o needing to reinvent the wheel.
Don't forget inventory management, warehouse management, shipping etc.
Often platforms do a little of these themselves but lots of businesses have needs that require them to use specialised solutions that handle those aspects of their business better than Shopify does as each is a complex domain in its own right.
Stripe is only good for payments. Square does storefronts, but I have no experience with them. Shopify is “good enough” if you need to get a storefront up quickly, and integrate with payments and shipping.
arkitaip|5 years ago
hahahahe|5 years ago
sarora27|5 years ago
Most ecomm businesses are more complex than connecting a front end to a payments gateway. Generally requires multiple complex systems (Product Management System, Order Management System, CRM, etc) to work together seamlessly. This is where platforms like Shopify or Magento are really valuable. They give you all the pieces you need to build your business w/o needing to reinvent the wheel.
nullsense|5 years ago
Often platforms do a little of these themselves but lots of businesses have needs that require them to use specialised solutions that handle those aspects of their business better than Shopify does as each is a complex domain in its own right.
clintonb|5 years ago