[J_Shelby_J]

I don’t understand how Shopify can maintain market dominance as just a middleman value extractor. Probably why they’re forcing their app. I deleted my account and haven’t used Shopify since they wouldn’t let me get my order tracking any way besides the app. As someone who worked adjacent to logistics it was just the hardest hard “no” of all time for me. Money moves to easily now days to build a monopoly on e-commerce.

[WheatMillington]

Value extractor? I'm a non tech guy so I have a different perspective. I started a side business selling online. I have no idea where I would even start on my own, between setting up a website and handling payments etc. Shopify allowed me to literally stand up an ecommerce platform in an afternoon, and soon enough I was accepting $6k per month. The cost was something like $39/month, which was phenomenal value for money.

[southernplaces7]

If you don't mind my asking, what do you sell with your side venture that let you reach those numbers fairly soon?

[WheatMillington]

Metal and plastics for engineering and machining hobbyists. It's an unfulfilled market here in New Zealand.

[lockhouse]

I completely see the value in using something like Shopify. Collecting money from customers online in a safe, trustworthy manner, that is fully in compliance with multiple countries laws, to include charging the proper taxes and duties would take more time than developing the product you’re actually trying to sell.

[AlfeG]

Always wonder why Shopify is needed. In my case a lot of banks provide consistent APIs or buttons for payments. Numerous providers that aggregate those APIs, but no one forcing You. No need to pay middleman

[Dah00n]

Most require programming skills (and then you are the one that need to make it secure) or use a CMS plugin (WordPress) and then you are back where Shopify fish for customers.

I use to run our businesses webshop with my own code but having less time to keep up on it I gave up and switched to OSS CMS instead. Not Shopify though as they take (at least back when I checked) a huge chunk of money for the service. I can't remember the amount but it was something like 3%? For a medium business that's enough to hire developers to create your own! Now I use a payment provider (bank) instead and it costs nothing except the payment processor fee I already had to pay.

[hintymad]

Similar to how Alibaba did with Taobao and TMall in China and Southeast Asia? Aggregators do offer values.