[HN Gopher] The dark side of Shopify
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The dark side of Shopify
 
Author : danpalmer
Score  : 111 points
Date   : 2022-07-09 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
 
web link (twitter.com)
w3m dump (twitter.com)
 
| m0llusk wrote:
| Also sad that Shopify isn't all that good. Their scale enables
| them to have a community with helpful guides and videos and
| stuff, but the actual product is arguably less sophisticated than
| what competitors offer. What they have is a zinger of a name and
| a big marketing budget. Anyone in this space should really check
| out alternatives. Unless there is a specific plug in or use case
| you want to use there is not much good reason to choose Shopify.
 
  | zippergz wrote:
  | Sophisticated is not what is called for in a LOT of ecommerce
  | setups. I have assisted employers and clients with Shopify,
  | Bigcommerce, Miva Merchant, and selling on platforms like
  | Amazon and eBay. For most "small business" style use cases, I
  | find Shopify far better than the others, because it's a lot
  | easier for the business owner (who isn't an ecommerce expert)
  | to run, and they don't need or miss the flexibility that the
  | others offer. Invariably it costs more to configure and run
  | something like bigcommerce, and that's only justified if you
  | actually need what they offer.
 
  | Readywater wrote:
  | What are some of the alternatives you'd recommend?
 
    | jdjdjdjdjd wrote:
    | Bigcommerce
 
  | thanatos519 wrote:
  | Indeed.
  | 
  | An e-commerce site on which I have 4weekly subscriptions of
  | multiple products has an astoundingly bad UX ... and it's
  | driven by Shopify. Either Shopify's recurring order system is
  | fundamentally broken, or this particular site is misconfigured.
  | 
  | In either case, it's a deficiency of Shopify.
 
    | flappyeagle wrote:
    | Shopify has no recurring system. They are using a plug-in.
 
    | core-utility wrote:
    | As stated, Shopify has no recurring subscription system
    | (which is astounding since it seems basic enough for them to
    | offer, but I guess they're getting profits either way). I've
    | experimented with a few popular recurrence "apps" and I can
    | say that one of the most popular ones was awful to setup and
    | maintain. I chose a more indie option (Seal Subscriptions, if
    | you're a Shopify store go check them out) and got much better
    | results.
 
  | soared wrote:
  | Literally nobody uses Shopify because of its cms features. They
  | use it because it quick cheap and easy to set up a really good
  | looking ecom site that has tons of good integrations for
  | shipping/business needs/etc.
 
  | jancsika wrote:
  | > Anyone in this space should really check out alternatives.
  | 
  | Please quickly name your top three. Then we can check the
  | veracity by seeing how they get dissected by HN pundits.
 
  | disantlor wrote:
  | I make my living as the developer for a few large e-comm
  | businesses that all use Shopify and it works really really
  | well. I never get why people (devs especially) call out
  | whatever feature they think Shopify should have without
  | realizing that pretty much anything you could want to do is
  | enabled by their API.
 
  | jamal-kumar wrote:
  | What are your favorite alternatives, particularly if there is
  | one that allows for use of a pin pad for in-person sales?
 
| adventured wrote:
| Nortel syndrome takes over another would-be Canadian giant (what
| do I mean by that? read up on the crazy behavior of the bubble
| era Nortel; for Shopify there will be a pre bubble valuation
| crash era and a post valuation crash era).
 
| soared wrote:
| Why the hell would you continue using Shopify if they are
| freezing your accs/etc?
| 
| Put a banner up on your site saying the shop is down temporarily,
| rebuild a barebones version of the site just for ecom, etc.
| 
| Shopify needs to do better, but I can't help but question the
| business decisions made by op.
 
| AinderS wrote:
| It's time to legally compel platforms above a certain (modest)
| size to treat their customers and users "fairly", transparently,
| and without discrimination. Because giving a competitive
| advantage (from economies of scale) to actors willing to sell
| their independence to some giant corporation is rapidly leading
| us to where we are at the mercy of those corporations for even
| the smallest commercial activities, such as buying or selling a
| book.
| 
| Such a state is incompatible with a free society, unless you
| redefine restrictions on freedom as only what is done by the
| government. A definition that is little comfort to businesses
| bankrupted by unaccountable corporations.
 
  | crmd wrote:
  | It makes perfect sense that as a firm's market power grows,
  | it's regulatory burden scales appropriately.
 
  | throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
  | > It's time to legally compel platforms above a certain
  | (modest) size
  | 
  | I personally don't agree with "modest" but having two (or more)
  | classes of corporations to divide laws and regulations between
  | seems like an obvious step in the right direction. Right now
  | there seems to be "monopolies" and everything else. Obviously
  | Amazon or Shopify are not the same as a family owned business;
  | treating them as such should be the exception not the norm.
 
| adrr wrote:
| I don't understand how shopify is predatory. Shopify isn't a
| merchant processor, they don't hold merchant funds. Stripe is the
| merchant processor for shopify payments. They are the ones that
| froze the payments. Freezing money has no benefit for Shopify.
 
  | tehwebguy wrote:
  | Shopify has operated as their own payment processor for a few
  | years.
 
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > I responded with an email restating that the First Sale
| Doctrine makes such a request both nonsensical and illegal, and
| asked a few more questions.
| 
| The rest of the thread notwithstanding, this is not what First
| Sale Doctrine does, at all!
 
| kitsune_ wrote:
| I just read the entire Twitter thread. What a Kafkaesque
| nightmare.
 
| [deleted]
 
| hoten wrote:
| Isn't this what lawyers are for? Seems like he's just spinning
| his wheels trying to get through at the customer support level.
 
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