Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Shopify VS Mail-in-a-box

Compare Shopify VS Mail-in-a-box and see what are their differences

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.

Mail-in-a-box logo Mail-in-a-box

Mail-in-a-Box provides webmail and an IMAP/SMTP server for use with mobile devices and desktop mail software and also includes contacts and calendar synchronization.
  • Shopify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-08
  • Mail-in-a-box Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21

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)

Mail-in-a-box videos

Setup and Install your Email server easily with this Free, Open Source Option - Mail-In-A-Box.

More videos:

  • Review - Mail-in-a-Box Setup Guide (v0.16 - January 2016)
  • Review - Setting up your own mail server with Mail-In-A-Box

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Shopify and Mail-in-a-box)
eCommerce
100 100%
0% 0
Email
0 0%
100% 100
eCommerce Platform
100 100%
0% 0
Self-hosted Email
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Shopify and Mail-in-a-box. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

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.

Mail-in-a-box Reviews

15 Best Email Hosting for Small Business (2019)
Mail-in-a-Box is an open source software bundle that make it easy to turn a cloud server into your own email server for multiple domains.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Mail-in-a-box should be more popular than Shopify. It has been mentiond 116 times since March 2021. 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.

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: 10 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 / about 1 year 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: about 1 year 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: about 1 year 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

Mail-in-a-box mentions (116)

  • Ask HN: Do you run your own DNS servers?
    Mail-In-a-Box (MIAB)[1] comes with a built in nameserver. I think you may use it as a standalone DNS even for the domain names whose email is not managed by MIAB. Not sure about any benefit of doing it this way though. [1] https://mailinabox.email. - Source: Hacker News / 26 days ago
  • Ask HN: Self Hosting an Email Server?
    I've been using https://mailinabox.email on a small VPS where I host a few other websites and projects. I'd recommend it for the management aspect: It has backup scripts and a UI for let's encrypt and dns entries. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Sandstorm, Tempest, and the Future
    I don't see why we are a long way away. At the sandstorm end, we need to get to the point, where all updates (of both sandstorm and the apps) on the user machine are automatic. Much like they are automatic on various OSes (mobile OSes in particular but also MacOS/Windows). This is not impossible if a single OS like Debian-testing is targeted. Mailinabox [1] almost does it. They target Ubuntu stable, and upgrades... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • [advice needed] - Selfhosted Mail Server
    If you have a better solution, for example a good provider who offer agency packages which allows many domains and there is no catch, for example very small disk space, then hit me right away. Otherwise, please share your experience with hosting your own mail service. I found https://mailinabox.email/ and https://www.iredmail.org/ for example, but never had any experience with neither of them. Source: 11 months ago
  • what to use for self hosting email
    Mailinabox.email works great on a basic vps. Source: 12 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Shopify and Mail-in-a-box, you can also consider the following products

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

mailcow - An open source mailserver suite.

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

iRedMail - A fully fledged, free email server solution, an open source project (GPL v2).

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

Modoboa - Modoboa is a mail hosting and management platform including a modern and simplified Web User Interface.