Shopify Plus: 7 Limitations You Must Know Before Choosing The E-commerce Platform

Shopify has successfully paved a reputation of being one of the best e-commerce platforms available. Just like other e-commerce development frameworks available today, Shopify also has got some lacking points and having complete knowledge about these limitations is important to match your expectations from an e-commerce store. There are ample advantages of Shopify which makes it a preferred e-commerce platform. However this doesn’t mean that you forget about the disadvantages altogether. In this post, we point out the non-available features of Shopify Plus e-commerce online store. Keep on reading to know more about them.

Functionalities Not Available With Shopify Plus

Starting from design customization, store management to payment processing, Shopify Plus has some features not available which might affect your online business. So let’s have a look at these drawbacks.

1. Easy Customizable Backend

Shopify Plus offers the facility of easy customization for the storefront. However there’s no scope to personalize the back end. Also the process of making any modifications on the back end is tedious. You would require to perform any kind of modifications and additions through front end only. Again, you also require customizing the store’s API, which itself is quite complex. To add more, Shopify Plus is dependent on third-party apps for enabling modification and feature additions. This not only adds up complexity but also additional expenses for the store owner.

2. Transaction Commissions

Shopify deducts a small percent from every sales you make. This might appear both disappointing and ridiculous to several store owners. Worse part is that e-commerce platform owners cannot see this in Shopify pricing plans. The e-commerce development platform charges this commission without any marketing or performing any necessary activities for increasing sales of your stores. Many Shopify store didn’t notice that they would be eventually charged a sales commission.

3. Payment Gateway

Shopify provides the permission for customizing the look of an online store front end checkout. But it does not allows addition fields or functionality modifications for payment gateway. This has been the frustrating part for many store owners as it significantly affect international sales. Having a seamless checkout process is crucial for any successful e-commerce business and with this kind of lock-in, it’s difficult to ensure a smooth shopping experience for every shopper.

4. Multi-storefront Management

Shopify Plus doesn’t offers the facility to link multiple e-commerce domains to a single online store. Even you can’t manage several storefronts through different warehouses as it’s a challenging task to manage multiple brands for one store. Also the management of catalogs, B2B services and inventory management is tedious too. Those running a medium to large e-commerce store with diverse brands might find it a significant issue. Efficiently management of numerous brands and inventory with full control over multi-store management is important.

5. E-commerce Analytics

Another lacking feature here is in-depth analytics functionality. The absence of a full-blown in-built analytics dashboard makes it difficult to get useful insights, especially for large retailers. The analytics features have been specifically designed for small and medium businesses. So, fetching of sales data is a huge challenge for big businesses. For instance, an online retailer offering diverse products might face difficulty in getting customized reports from specific category.

6. Search and Filter

This functionality on Shopify stores might leave customers unsatisfied. It’s important to note that Shopify only offers basic product search features as of now. Say, if any shopper fails in typing correct product name, then nothing will get displayed in results. There is nothing like auto-correct in product search results. Also Shopify stores don’t offer suggestions while a shopper starts typing a product name unlike other advanced eCommerce platforms do. Be it e-commerce website or Shopify app development, this missing point is similar everywhere.

7. No International Support

E-commerce businesses cannot afford to limit themselves in geographic boundaries. This also makes it important for e-commerce platforms to provide extensive support when it calls for performing business activities in global circuits. Compliance with international rules and guidelines is important for prolong running of e-commerce. Shopify Plus doesn’t provide any tool for helping international customers deal with regulations or taxation procedures. The absence of extensive multilingual support also makes it tougher for store owners to expand internally.

Conclusion

Whether it’s multi-store management or self-business expansion, Shopify misses some crucial functionalities. These disadvantages are primitive factors why several big online retailers prefer Prestashop or Magento over Shopify Plus. However, Shopify still holds a top position in being selected as preferred choice among small and medium businesses. Small businesses select Shopify Plus due to its capability of ready-to-launch online store.

At Pro Web, we offer complete e-commerce consulting to clients before they finalize a solution. Our e-commerce services are capable to serve diverse needs of businesses. Follow our blogs to stay updated about everything eCommerce.