Why Sellers Are Leaving Shopify...BEWARE!

in this video I'm going to reveal the ugly truth about Shopify and what the e-commerce gurus who actively promote Shopify will never reveal about this platform behind the scenes if you are currently shopping for an e-commerce platform make sure you watch this video to the very end to understand all the risks involved in running your online store on Shopify what's up everyone my name is Steve Chu and I run a seven figure e-commerce store selling handkerchiefs over at bumblebe linen.com I also run a seven figure blog about e-commerce over at my wife quitter job.com where I've documented my e-commerce Journey for the last 17 years if you are interested in starting your own online store make sure you sign up for my free 6-day e-commerce mini course below now the main reason that I created this video that you are watching today is because I see way too many people blindly recommending Shopify without understanding the ramifications be careful about who you follow because most people promoting Shopify on the internet today are doing so because Shopify has a generous affiliate program program for every sale that any influencer refers they get a cut of the sale now in reality Shopify isn't all Moonlight and Roses and it's not the best solution for everyone there's some serious drawbacks to this platform that everyone needs to be aware of because once you choose an e-commerce platform for your store it's extremely difficult to change later on now the number one drawback to using Shopify is actually ironic and counterintuitive most people start an e-commerce store and Shopify so they can escape the iron grasp a selling on Amazon eBay Etsy or any Marketplace that you do not own now the worst part about selling on Amazon for example is that Amazon makes all the rules Amazon can raise prices on you and ban you at any time Amazon calls all the shots and controls what you can and cannot sell so people sign up for Shopify thinking that they actually own their own website when in fact they do not what no guru will ever tell you about Shopify is that they are just as bad as Amazon in terms of lack of control and the first Shopify horror stories about this broke out during the pandemic back in 2020 I had a friend who sold hand sanitizer in his store and he sold these products years before the pandemic began but once hand sanitizer became scarce his prices from the supplier started going up so he was forced to raise his prices in his shop as well in a couple of days after he raised his prices Shopify banned his entire store for price gouging in reality he wasn't trying to price gouge anyone his his prices had gone up so he had to charge more money for his products I had another friend with a similar story during the pandemic he purchased a small quantity of hand sanitizer that was made in the USA to sell to the public for about 20 bucks a bottle but after he heard that Shopify was Banning stores for selling sanitizer he preemptively contacted Shopify and showed them his Factory invoice and shipping and they said he was good to go but then 3 days later they banned his shop now does this sound like Amazon like Behavior to you the pandemic was the first time that Shopify publicly started dictating what products that you could or could not sell in your store and this Behavior has continued post pandemic as well very recently one of my friends got his product banned after Shopify deemed that his supplement product had violated their acceptable use policy even though he'd been selling this product on Shopify for over 3 years and he did not make any medical claims or violate any policies his product was shut down for being considered a pharmaceutical all messes sent to Shopify in protest were met with a stock response and he lost all of his revenue for that product so basically Shopify can control what you can and cannot sell and they can shut you down at any time at their discretion without giving you a straight answer the second biggest drawback of using Shopify is that they control your payment processing as well Shopify basically forces you to use Shopify payments by imposing Hefty transaction fees if you use any other Payment Processing provider and when you give your e-commerce platform power over your products and your payments you are basically relinquishing control over your entire business to a third party recently a colleague of mine got his Shopify payments account put on hold for verification because they thought he was offering copyrighted brands on his website but all the copyrighted products on his site were obtained via legitimate methods because he purchased a license for the right to sell these products nonetheless Shopify made him send in invoices and receipts to prove the legality of his Goods now this process took several weeks and he wasn't making any money during this verification period and he lost tens of thousands of dollars in sales once again this sounds a lot like Amazon doesn't it basically they held his money and he was guilty until proven innocent here's another horror story that another one of my close colleagues experienced with Shopify legal now a while back my colleague found that a Chinese company was ripping off his brand and IP on Amazon and he filed takedown notices to get their listings taken down and after he was successful they decided to retaliate and tried to ruin his Shopify store by sending in fake infringement notices to Shopify legal Shopify legal took the claims as legitimate without doing any research the claim was written in poor and broken English but it turns out that with Shopify you are guilty until proven innocent now this issue was ultimately resolved weeks later when they hired an attorney who sent Shopify legal a letter and it was a pain to get his shop back and once again he lost tens of thousands of dollars in the process now the main problem with Shopify is that they have way too much power over your e-commerce store they can dictate what you sell what prices to sell your products at and they can hold your money at any time as well if they decide not to process your payments any longer then guess what it's going to cost you Hefty transaction fees to use another processor and since it's such a pain to migrate shopping carts Shopify makes money no matter what just be aware of these risks before you sign up because Shopify legal is very sensitive about any infringement issues and are quick to the banhammer heck it seems as though almost anyone can take down any Shopify store by accusing them of infringement it's also worth mentioning that even Shopify theme vendors can take down your store at any time as well according to Shopify policy you are required to have a licensed version of any theme available from the Shopify theme store and public access to your storefront will be disabled in one business day if licensing issues are not resolved so basically it means that you don't really own the theme that you just bought I had a colleague get his site taken down because his theme provider's license server didn't have the same email address as his Shopify store and this was back when you could buy themes directly from the developer anyway they gave him 24 hours notice to resolve this issue on a Friday and threatened to shut down his entire store now what if he missed this email what if he was on vacation he ended up only losing a day of downtime but still should Shopify have all this control over his website should the theme developer have all this power as well a similar issue happened to another friend of mine whose site had been up and running for over 3 years he had hired a site designer long ago who purchased a theme legitimately with a developer account but neglected to officially register the theme nonetheless he was given 24 hours notice to rectify the issue but this friend however did not see the email in a timely manner and his site was taken down for a week now why should shapify have the power to remove somebody's income just like that that quickly in many respects this is just as bad as Amazon now the next biggest drawback to Shopify is the price Shopify payments is one of the most expensive ways to process payments online at an average rate of 2.6% plus 30 this is assuming the typical Shopify plan this is a full .5% higher than what I'm currently paying with my payment processor for my store over a bumblebee Linens anyone making at least six figures per year in Revenue can easily negotiate a significantly lower rate than Shopify but guess what you can't shop for a better deal or else you'll get get stuck with Hefty transaction fees Shopify also has very little functionality out of the box which basically forces you to purchase thirdparty apps just to maintain feature parity with other providers like big Commerce or shift for shop I was browsing the e-commerce fuel forums the other day and most people are paying over $500 a month in app fees according to pagefly the average number of apps a Shopify store owner uses is six apps the base price of Shopify is very deceptive because it doesn't take into account recurring app fees now in this video here I revealed my top apps for Shopify and they tally up to over $400 per month now admittedly the best part about Shopify is that they have a huge third-party developer ecosystem so all new features always make it to Shopify first and it's easy to find a developer this is their trump card and why Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce Platforms in the world but the downside is that you'll have all these disparate apps written by different companies on your online store Shopify apps can break and conflict when there's an upgrade and the more apps that you have the more points of failure that you have another drawback is that shopify's blogging platform sucks this isn't new information but here's another thing about blogging that you probably have not considered most bloggers these days hire contractors to write blog posts in quantity and at my Peak I had five writers for my blog plus a bunch of occasional guest posters over at mywi quitter job.com but Shopify limits the number of users to two on the basic plan and 15 for the $299 a month plan let's say you want a lot of different guest bloggers to contribute to your site you either have to limit the number of writers to the number of users your account supports or pay Shopify more money now the tone of this video has been overwhelmingly negative about Shopify but don't get me wrong Shopify is a great e-commerce platform that's very easy to use my main beef with the platform is that the whole point of going with a platform like Shopify is to own your own store and to be in full control over your own property but this clearly isn't the case with Shopify being one of the most popular eCommerce Platforms in the world has its drawbacks and I'm sure that all the pressures of being a public company and complying with the court of public opinion has taken its toll on the company furthermore Shopify is easily one of the most expensive shopping carts to use because you have to pay for so many third party apps which apparently also have the power to take down your shop as well so bottom line shop can control what you sell how you sell it and how much you can charge for your products and if it wants to it can shut you down whenever it feels like this doesn't sound much better to me than Amazon for those of you who want more control over your platform consider going with an open source shopping cart or with another company who doesn't exercise as much control over what you can sell now that you know the ugly truth about Shopify watch this video here to learn about my favorite Shopify alternatives

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

Views: 7,315

Keywords: shopify store, shopify training, shopify case study, shopify scam, shopify tutorial, shopify review, shopify brand, ecommerce 2023, shopify dropshipping 2023, shopify store setup, shopify store review, shopify store creation, shopify 2023, shopify rebellion, shopify payments, ecommerce platform, best ecommerce platform, online store, shopify platform, bigcommerce, shift4shop, shopify design, shopify theme, shopify alternative, shopify overview, shopify cons

Id: T0iTxWeW3GU

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2023