Ko-fi VS Shopify

Ko-fi Reviews

Shopify Reviews

1. Beard    

   9 months ago
   Shopify - the best no code platform.

   Creating my online store for small dog products on Shopify was a remarkably smooth and rewarding experience. Shopify's user-friendly platform guided me through each step of the setup process, making it easy even for someone without prior experience. Their range of customizable templates gave my store a professional and appealing look, and the analytics tools provided have been invaluable for tracking my store's performance and customer trends. Additionally, Shopify's 24/7 customer support was always ready to assist whenever I encountered any roadblocks. Overall, launching my business on Shopify has been a positive experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to start their own online store.

   🏁 Competitors: Tilda, WooCommerce
2. Lori Appleman    

   Founder at Redline Minds | over 3 years ago
   Strong Option for New DIY Stores Serving Consumers

   Shopify is a powerful marketing machine that has driven incredible growth. It's an excellent choice for the store owner who needs to do it themselves, on a shoestring budget, who does not sell complex products and who does not plan to run a hybrid - a store that serves multiple customer bases such as retail and wholesale.

   Due to its sheer market share, there is a robust marketplace of apps that can be added to shape the store to fit most needs. There is an equally robust selection of themes and developers who can assist with any size project. They have a terrific knowledge base which I strongly recommend store owners use as it teaches the basics for e-commerce in general and online marketing. This learning should be done prior to developing a plan for your site. That will help root your project for success.

   Unfortunately, it's also oversold based on name recognition even when the platform is a poor choice for a specific business. There are both policy and technical limitations that impact suitability.

   Shopify stores require many apps, which adds monthly costs and can greatly slow your store down. While ALL online stores end up with some app use, because this allows you to choose the features you want and need, much of what is native in other carts like their most direct competitor, BigCommerce, is not. So you'll spend more money each month and it can be harder to get a fast site.

   Among the stores that should probably NOT use Shopify: - Sells items that are generally prohibited on the platform which includes weapons, weapon-related items, sex objects, tobacco (for some odd reason Vape is currently on the platform but for how long is anyone's guess), alcohol.
   - Sells items allowed but that don't qualify for Shopify Payments which expands the above list to include supplements, CBD, vape products and other items. - Just as above, any store that can't qualify for Shopify Payments or who has good reasons to use another payment gateway. Why? Because if you don't use their payment gateway which they profit from, they will take 1/2-2% of your gross revenues soley because you are using another gateway. For small merchants, this isn't much, for big ones it's a significant cost. - Stores with multiple price structures or catalogs - such as those who offer VIP tiers or wholesale clients. Why not? Because you can't create true customer groups which on other platforms let you segment the catalog and content for each customer group. Groups are really important for B2B. To accomplish multiple audiences on Shopify requires either a separate app (at an added cost) or multiple storefronts, or ShopifyPlus (which is still creating multiple sites). This can greatly increase your operational costs and work efforts. - Stores with complex products - these are items with many options, also known as configurable or customizable products. While Shopify does offer the ability to offer up to 3 options per product with a maximum of 100 skus per product, this limit is very easy to exceed. There is also no native path to add modifiers such as those one would use for personalized products (like custom embroidery. While these issues can be overcome with apps, that adds both load time and costs.

   🏁 Competitors: BigCommerce, Magento, Miva, WooCommerce, Workflow

   👍 Pros:    Easy to use|Low price|Flexible|Large developer base|Great documentation|Reliable|Low maintenance

   👎 Cons:    Limited features|No customer groups for wholesale|Some product types forbidden|Must use their gateway or pay extra fees|Limited api calls|Limited capabilities for products with options

Ko-fi mentions (91)

• Show HN: I made a privacy friendly and simple app to track my menstruation

  Doing necessary work. How can I sponsor or otherwise provide fiat for this work? https://buymeacoffee.com/, etc. - Source: Hacker News / 1 day ago

• Flattr: 404 – Service No Long Exists

  A few alternatives for micro donations that people have mentioned: https://ko-fi.com/ https://github.com/sponsors https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ Any others, let me know. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago

• Making 3D porn is "easy money"?

  I still have to try https://ci-en.net/, https://slushe.com/, https://ko-fi.com/, https://catbox.moe/, I heard they were possible good alternatives. But I couldn't say, dunno yet. Source: 5 months ago

• Rogue System Reboot

  I did, however, remember another crowdfunding platform that may be the best of both worlds here (second highest voted so far being Patreon). Ko-fi: it offers both monthly and one-time donations as well as a store where we could sell things like early access keys or things like that. Their fees are very low as well, capping out at 5%. Source: 5 months ago

• Regarding Somerton's supposed drop in Patreon support earlier this year

  With everything going on with Patreon lately that's probably why I've suddenly started hearing about Ko-fi this year. Source: 5 months ago

Shopify mentions (42)

• shopify.com vs store.link, what do you think is better one?

  Shopify.com vs store.link which one is better? Source: 8 months ago

• Forget Shopify Why MedusaJS Is the Future of Headless Ecommerce

  With a traditional e-commerce platform like Shopify, you're locked into their ecosystem. You have to use their templates, checkout, and backend. Headless platforms like MedusaJS give you the freedom to build the front end however you want, using any framework or library. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago

• Allow Rules not given priority over block?

  For example, if you want to load firewalla.com, just allowing "firewalla.com" will not work, you will have allow shopify.com and few other stuff ... You can see what sites loaded using chrome dev mode. Source: 11 months ago

• Confused on Sales Tax

  If the shipping and sales tax scares you, it may be better to sell through Etsy since it is a marketplace facilitator and is required to collect sales tax from customers when purchasing your items that are sold. People go to Etsy to find something, not sgalv02.com to find your items. I believe Shopify will help you create a site to sell on, but people don't go to shopify.com to purchase various items like they do... Source: 11 months ago

• Seeking suggestions to start a business.

  Create a online website using dukaan.io or shopify.com and then sell something.. Source: 12 months ago