Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Rakuten VS Shopify

Compare Rakuten VS Shopify and see what are their differences

Rakuten logo Rakuten

Feel the Joy of Cash Back. Find coupons and Cash Back in just 1 click with the Rakuten browser extension

Shopify logo Shopify

Shopify is a powerful ecommerce platform that includes everything you need to create an online store and sell online. Try it free for 14 days.
  • Rakuten Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-22
  • Shopify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-08

Rakuten videos

Rakuten Cash Back Review | Used for 9 Years | Does It Work?

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How does Rakuten (Ebates) work? Does it really work? Review & full tutorial
  • Review - Rakuten Review: Best Cash Back Website?

Shopify videos

Shopify Review 2020 - Is it still worth it in 2020?

More videos:

  • Review - SHOPIFY REVIEW MID 2019 - Is Shopify Worth It For The Money? Pros & Cons
  • Review - THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE USING SHOPIFY (IN 2019)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Rakuten and Shopify)
Online Shopping
100 100%
0% 0
eCommerce
0 0%
100% 100
Coupons
100 100%
0% 0
eCommerce Platform
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Rakuten and Shopify

Rakuten Reviews

Top 20 Airbnb competitors and alternative booking sites
Rakuten has a particularly strong presence in Japan, and although it has listings in a total of 200 countries, its global brand awareness isn’t as strong as Airbnb’s.
25 Best Coupon Websites
Rakuten is a coupon site that gives you cash back for your shopping purchases. You can get up to 40% back depending on the store. Currently, they feature over 2500 stores to choose from.
16 Best Coupon Apps of 2022
Shopping is fun, but earning cash back for buying stuff? Well, that’s what dreams are made of. Meet Rakuten, the app that gives you cash back on your purchases plus all the coupon codes you need in this lifetime. And you don’t have to wait for a check to hit your mailbox . . . These guys will pay you through PayPal. Not impressed yet? They’ll even give you 10 bucks just for...
Best Coupon Apps for Online Shopping
Rakuten blends the benefits of a cash-back app with a discounts and coupons app. With Rakuten, you can get paid to shop at your favorite stores, including Walmart, Sam's Club, Macy's, PetSmart, Lowe's, and more.
25 Best Sites Like eBay To Sell and Buy Stuff in 2022
Rakuten offers cash back rewards for using their platform to shop. These rewards can vary from product to product, but some Rakuten sellers offer up to 20% back on purchases.

Shopify Reviews

  1. 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. 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

Top 10 Web Content Management Systems
This is the first pick on my list of best CMS options in 2024 that goes in a different direction from what we’ve seen so far. Shopify, as the name suggests, is a web CMS that primarily caters to online shops and retailers. While it is designed for running an eCommerce website, don’t let this make you think that it is a subpar CMS in other fields. It is a full CMS package...
Source: cloudzy.com
Top No Code Website Builders in 2023
Shopify presents three pricing categories, including Basic Shopify ($29/month), Shopify ($79/month), and Advanced Shopify ($299/month), with more features like advanced reporting and shipping discounts available in higher-tier plans.
15 Best Hosting Trial No Credit Card 2023 – Try It Out 100% Risk Free [Cancel Anytime]
Shopify is one of the pleasant alternatives if you seek out a free trial website hosting trial with no credit card.
13 Best No-Code Website Builders 2023
It starts with a simple wizard that asks some questions about your new online store. After choosing the appropriate answer, it moves to the second step and asks you to add more details about your online store and your personal information. Once finished, you navigate to the Shopify dashboard.
Source: codeless.co
15 Best Web Hosting Free Trial 2023 (No Credit Card Required)
Click on this unique link to get a 14 day free trial of Shopify web hosting. When you click on this link you will see a free ‘Start Free Trial’ button, click on this button to start your 14 day free trial.

Social recommendations and mentions

Shopify might be a bit more popular than Rakuten. We know about 42 links to it since March 2021 and only 37 links to Rakuten. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Rakuten mentions (37)

  • Samsung flagship s23 ultra, watch, and buds bought for less than 900 dollars.
    Third: Used rakuten.com to get 15% cashback which resulted to about 150$ cashback in Paypal. Using referral code gives you 40 dollars bonus. Source: 6 months ago
  • [Lenovo] Legion Pro 7 AMD gaming laptop - RTX 4090 (175 W) - 16" 1600p 240 Hz 500-nit display - 7945HX CPU - 32 GB RAM - 2 TB SSD - $2750 with codes EXTRA5 and GAMINGCTO - $2298 after Rakuten sign up and 15% rebate - additional 5% education/military/healthcare discount via id.me
    1: Start through Rakuten itself. Go to rakuten.com or pull up the app, search for the store you want, click the "Shop Now" button (after which you'll see a "Congratulations, you're on your way to Cash Back" loading screen), then you'll be on the store's website and you can go from there. Source: 6 months ago
  • Bi-Weekly camping gear deals (USA) - Weeks of July 9 and July 16, 2023
    Use cashback sites like Activejunky.com, topcashback.com, rakuten.com to stack additional savings. Source: 11 months ago
  • Ordering or already ordered from Lenovo website? Then ask for an additional discount!!!
    Also, if you don’t use a cash back app, I would use it for Lenovo. I use rakuten (ref) | (non-ref). I mainly use them to seek coupon codes and I also get the cash back if I shop using it. Source: 11 months ago
  • Buying gift cards to get fuel points
    Buy gift cards from raise.com. Dominos cards are always 15+%. My app says I've saved $1500 in the last 5 years, and cards are guaranteed for a year. I've only had one gift card issue, and they refunded my purchase with no issue. You can also pair it with a shopping portal like rakuten.com for another 1+%. Source: 11 months ago
View more

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: 9 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 / 12 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: 12 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: 12 months ago
  • Seeking suggestions to start a business.
    Create a online website using dukaan.io or shopify.com and then sell something.. Source: about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Rakuten and Shopify, you can also consider the following products

RetailMenot - The RetailMeNot mobile app allows you to find deals on the go for both online shopping and in store shopping.

WooCommerce - A freely available eCommerce plugin that enables shop facilities on your WordPress website. Functionality enabling extensions & beautiful themes available.

Honey - Honey is a browser extension that automatically finds and applies coupon codes at checkout with a single click.

Magento - Magento is the eCommerce software and platform trusted by the world's leading brands. Grow your online business with Magento.

Slickdeals.net - Slickdeals: The Best Deals, Coupons & Discounts on everything

BigCommerce - BigCommerce provides ecommerce software solutions and shopping cart software for online businesses. Try it free and start selling your products online today!