[beshrkayali]

Shopify is a terrible experience overall, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone looking to start a quick ecom business online, especially if you don't have technical experience _or_ you don't plan exactly what you'll do if you grow over it. I had to work with some clients that wanted to move away from Shopify and I was surprised at how certain types of paccounts are required to access certain parts of the API for their store. For example, you could retrieve orders but not promocodes, or not users, I can't remember exactly now, but they either had to pay more or put up with CSV parsing with limited amount of information and details. These services would probably not have had the "success" they're seeing if it wasn't for these dark patterns they implement to ex(tract|tort) money from their most likely non-technical clientele.

With that being said, I don't see a problem in requiring their users to use a specific PSP that makes more business sense for them. But yes, like other have pointed out, it's way up there on the hypocrisy chart to do this while complaining about Apple. Apple's 30% cut is not unfair, neither is theirs.

[smaryjerry]

Sadly there aren’t a lot of better options. Spotify has to be the worst bang for your buck option though if you actually have customers. The most basic functionality sucks without apps so you have to get them and sure most apps are “free” until you actually get customers but then you get slammed with fees. Wordpress is similar where if you want it to actually perform like a half decent store you need to pay for a ton of add-ons but it’s even worse because even if you have no customers you have to pay for the addons.

[beshrkayali]

I'm not entirely sure that's true, there are plenty of good options. But none of them are as easy to start with for sure, but it's deceptive. Like you said, basic functionality sucks and for any decent behavior if you have customers you need to know which addons to use and pay for them. There is no reason for them to be free, but at least if you're using Wordpress with addons you're in full control of your customer data. Holding your data hostage to force you to pay more is incredibly hostile.

If you're serious about your ecom and you're in it for the long run, it's worth it to pay for a custom solution. Control your code and your customers data.