[awad]

As a former vendor working with customers across the e-commerce spectrum, Shopify were certainly the best to work with from both a technology integration and ease of use standpoint. They're a rare example of a company that started very self service and remained that way while growing to significantly more complex client bases so has a wide appeal. Working with them was generally a treat.

Demandware weren't strictly speaking the worst to work with, but it was certainly better days when they were an independent organization vs part of the Salesforce behemoth. There's just a lot more red tape slowing everything down, which I think carries over to the customer experience....things take days/weeks/months in SFCC land that can be done in minutes/hours/days in Shopify land.

All that is to say I'm not at all surprised by the headline, that I'd be long Shopify as an investor, and I'd seriously look at them first as a developer if I were building in the e-commerce space.

[ethbr1]

> They're a rare example of a company that started very self service and remained that way while growing to significantly more complex client bases

From my experience, anything with a self-serve option tends to be a better product.

It sets up all sorts of incentives (Have functioning support! Fix bugs! Have accurate documentation! Build understandable features!) that disappear when you remove "have to support self serve customers" from the equation.

Then all those nice things disappear into a morass of professional services custom implementations and big customer feature chasing.