Ask HN: $500k revenue business – Shopify vs. Custom website?

[jimmygatz]

Hi HN,

I run an e-commerce business which now turns over ~$500,000/year. It was initially built on Shopify but I am currently looking to invest some money into rebuilding the website and am considering all my options.

I assumed it would be cheaper in the long-term to invest in having it custom made, but with the new Shopify online processing fees it seems this is not the case.[1] Shopify payment fees are 1.8% + 20p compared to Paypal which is 2.9% + 30p and Stripe which is similar. Even with the unlimited Shopify plan which works out at $2148 a year it's still cheaper for me to use Shopify as I save ~$5000 on online processing fees.

My questions are:

1. If Shopify payment fees are nearly 1% lower than Paypal/Stripe, why does anyone still build their own custom website outside the Shopify platform? Is there some kind of catch I'm missing?

2. Are there any other platforms I should be considering building my website on?

Would really appreciate any thoughts or feedback you might have. If you need any more information please ask and I'll be happy to answer.

Thanks in advance for your time,

[1] https://www.shopify.co.uk/pricing

[MarkCole]

Well with regards to #1 a lot of vendors with your revenue find themselves able to negotiate better rates with payment processors, particularly in combination with a merchant account. Shopify have obviously negotiated a deal with their payment processor based on their volume.

People build their own still for a multitude of reasons, one of these being may be that they don't want to be locked in to a single platform. If Shopify shut down tomorrow, would your business be in trouble?

People also want custom features, better analytics, control over SEO, and all those extra things that aren't currently possible with Shopify.

At 500,000 a year, a sum like 5,000 is nothing, especially if you feel that you can increase your revenue by 1% or more with a new custom site.

[sjs382]

You've had 3 threads about this today, one of which was killed (presumably because it's a dupe).

Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10455956

[jimmygatz]

Apologies, couldn't find the thread I originally made and the 2nd one I put too little information. Thanks for that.

[amac]

> People build their own still for a multitude of reasons, one of these being may be that they don't want to be locked in to a single platform. If Shopify shut down tomorrow, would your business be in trouble?

This is correct and sums up the hosted vs self-hosted arguement. It really depends on your needs and resource - if you have Devlelopers/IT folks for example then building out your own site would be sensible. Yet if you have less of those and more marketing people, hosted might make more sense.