LemonStand, of course!
Ok, I’m just joking. But you would expect me to pick LemonStand over Shopify, wouldn’t you? I work for LemonStand, after all.
Well, actually, I don’t always suggest LemonStand. In fact, whenever people who are just starting out in eCommerce ask me which platform they should pick, I usually say Shopify. Heck, I sometimes tell potential LemonStand customers to consider them.
To be honest, we’re not actually competitors, even though many review sites rank us as the top two eCommerce platforms. Shopify targets businesses that are just starting out, with many of them making less than $1,000 a month. On the other hand, LemonStand targets larger businesses who earn between $100,000 to $20 million in annual revenue. We’re actually more comparable to Shopify Plus, which is their enterprise plan.
A quick look at pricing plans will tell you all you need to know about our positioning. Shopify’s regular “DIY” platform ranges between $9/month to $179/month, while Shopify Plus starts at $999/month. LemonStand’s plans are between $49/month and $599/month. We’ll dig deeper into the pricing later.
So when it comes down to picking a platform, it depends on what stage your business is at as well a few other factors. Each platform has its pros and cons and in this post I’ll be comparing the two so that you can decide which one works best for your business.
Before we start, you’re probably wondering why you should listen to me. Well, before joining LemonStand I used to run a Shopify store. I know both platforms and I’m going to be objective in this post. Let’s begin!
Customization
Shopify: B
LemonStand: A
LemonStand was built with customization in mind. That’s basically our value proposition. We allow retailers to customize every aspect of their store and create unique shopping experiences. Our data shows that retailers who use agencies to create custom stores actually do better than those who stick with a pre-made theme.
Shopify is not as customizable. When they started out, their value proposition was – “A shop in minutes, a business for life.” Sure, you can try different themes and change stuff here and there, like colors and fonts, but if you want to do something advanced and create a unique experience, it’s very challenging. Shopify was built to get your store online fast, not to get you a unique store.
“The ability to customize the entire design was much easier than it would have been on any other platform.” – Brent Pepitone, Legnd
Ease Of Use
Shopify: A
LemonStand: B
There’s always a trade-off between ease-of-use and customization. For any website builder software, you have a spectrum with one end being ease of use and the other being full customization. As I mentioned earlier, Shopify is not as customizable but they are extremely easy to use. I’d say the easiest to use out of all the eCommerce platforms I’ve tried. Magento is on the other end of the spectrum and is a beast to use, or so I hear!
LemonStand is slightly less easy to use than Shopify because of the customizability aspect. Yes, you can add pages and products with the click of a button, but if you want to do some advanced stuff like adding dynamic content, you’ll need to know a bit of code.
This is why we suggest using agencies. They’re the experts and can help you create a custom store. After that, managing products and inventory in LemonStand is very easy, on par with Shopify.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Shopify: B
LemonStand: A
There are two aspects to SEO – on-page and off page. Now off-page SEO is all the stuff that you, as a retailer, would do to improve your rankings, like link building, social media and so on. Off-page is entirely dependent on you and not the platform you use.
On-page, however, can change depending on your platform. It includes things like image and text optimization, URL structures, and page speed. So if your platform is bulky, generates garbage URLs and does not support mobile sites, your on-page SEO will suffer.
Shopify and LemonStand are neck and neck on most aspects of on-page SEO, like page speed, image optimization, and title and tag optimization. However, a key difference that puts LemonStand ahead of Shopify is the URL structure. Shopify auto-generates URLs and you can end up with long unnecessary URLs that don’t contain your main keywords. With LemonStand, you have the ability to customize them, making them short, keyword-rich and Google-friendly.
Another important feature that’s only available on LemonStand is the ability to enable SSL to every page of the site, making your entire store secure. Shopify only enables it on the checkout, leaving the rest of your site non-secure. This is an important feature because Google has started to rank secure sites higher.
“We were able to do advanced SEO like structuring data and customizing URLs. Categories page doesn’t have to be /categories. You can make it anything you want.” The Oyster Bed
Checkout
Shopify: D –
LemonStand: A
The checkout is probably the most sensitive part of an eCommerce store. We know that cart abandonment costs retailers billions of dollars in lost sales here, which is why the ability to customize and optimize the checkout is extremely important for eCommerce stores.
In the early days, when Shopify built their platform for maximum ease-of-use, they decided to host the checkout on their own domain, meaning retailers can’t customize it at all. Have a look at any regular Shopify store and you’ll see that on checkout you’re redirected to checkout.myshopify.com.
You’ll also see that the look at feel of the checkout is much different from the actual store because you can only use the template Shopify gives you and you can’t change much. So if you want to move elements around, add trust symbols, or A/B test the checkout on Shopify, you’re out of luck. Shopify says that they designed that template based on best practices, but the products, audience, and buying behavior varies with each store, so you can’t generalize this. It needs to be tested and tuned for each business.
That should get them an F, but I’m also taking into account Shopify Plus which allows retailers to host the checkout on their own domains. Unfortunately, you still can’t customize it! However, it’s a step in the right direction, even if you have to pay $999/month for that privilege, so it only takes them up to a D minus.
LemonStand treats the checkout the same as every other page. You can customize and optimize it like you would a product page. You can test and tweak till you have something that works best for your business. It’s hosted on your domain so your customers aren’t redirected off your site. You basically have full control over it, meaning you can actually do something about your cart abandonment.
“I really like the shopping cart. You don’t feel too locked in. Building on platforms like Magento are a horror.” – Jim Hill, Hillrigs.com
CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization
Shopify: B
LemonStand: A
Much like the checkout, you want to be able to optimize every other part of your store. Both Shopify and LemonStand allow you to plug in a tool like Optimizely to run A/B tests. However, because of the checkout issues above, Shopify doesn’t allow you to see which tests lead to higher revenue. So while you can optimize for click-throughs and other metrics on Shopify, you can’t optimize for revenue which kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn’t it?
Integrations
Shopify: A
LemonStand: C
When it comes to integrations, Shopify has the most. Most new eCommerce software start with a Shopify integration before even considering any other platform.
While most apps can be integrated with LemonStand using a script or Zapier, many still require a deeper integration. The question you need to ask yourself when looking at integrations is, do you really need them all? Sure, Shopify has hundreds but you’re only really going to use two or three at most.
Support
Shopify: A
LemonStand: A
Support is great on both platforms. Sure there are some pros and cons for each, but not much to separate the two. For example, Shopify is a much larger company than LemonStand, so they have more support resources. On the other hand, LemonStand has deeper relationships with our retailers, so we offer more personalized and 1-1 support.
Merchant Maverick has some objective data on support for both platforms. Here’s what they’ve said –
About Shopify
“My overall experience with Customer Service and Technical Support was positive. I submitted one general question and one technical one, and in both cases, I got a satisfactory response the same day.”
About LemonStand
“I am very, very impressed by their excellent customer service. Every email query I sent to their Customer Service yielded a surprisingly informative and timely response. In under 12 minutes, i had a reply in my inbox, full of very helpful information.”
Price
Shopify: B
LemonStand: A
As I mentioned earlier, Shopify has the regular pricing plans you see on their site, plus an enterprise plan called Shopify Plus which starts at $999/month.
In addition to their monthly pricing, Shopify also tags on a transaction fee if you want to use the payment processor of your choice. The transaction fee is basically a percentage of your monthly revenue. If you’re doing $1,000 or less in sales each month, that’s pretty insignificant, but as you grow and start selling more, that transaction fee can hurt. The pricing structure for Shopify Plus is unclear too except that you can expect to pay well over $1,000 per month.
LemonStand’s pricing is very straightforward. We have three plans that start at the higher end of Shopify’s regular plans, but stop way lower than their Shopify Plus plan. You pick a plan and you pay the same amount each month. There are no setup fees, hidden charges, or any other unexpected costs. Essentially, we offer what Shopify Plus does at a more reasonable rate.
“Shopify takes a chunk off every purchase. It is a big turn off. LemonStand doesn’t take off the top. No transaction fees is a big plus.” – The Oyster Bed
Conclusion
Ultimately, many of the issues Shopify has revolve around customizability, which impacts things like the checkout, SEO and CRO. On the other hand, LemonStand has issues with ease-of-use because it’s more customizable and, hence, a more technical product.
As I said before, I sometimes recommend Shopify because I think it’s a great platform for beginners. If you’re just getting started in eCommerce and you want to test out some products, use Shopify. You can get up and running quickly and see if there’s any demand at all for your products. At a very early stage, you want to focus on product-market fit rather than customization and conversion rate optimization.
Then, once you’ve established product-market fit and you start growing, you can switch to an advanced platform like LemonStand where you can customize and optimize the shopping experience to further increase sales.
Sounds like a plan?
Did you think I missed anything in this post? Feel free to let me know in the comments!