Sellfy vs Shopify: Which is Best for You in 2023 ?
Making an online store be a rewarding experience. However, before you begin creating, it is essential to choose the most suitable ecommerce platform to run your online business. Nowadays, the ecommerce platforms have a range of built-in Ecommerce tools, marketing tools that can help your e-commerce business start its journey. At present, two of the popular ecommerce platforms are Sellfy and Shopify.
In this piece, we're going to compare Sellfy vs Shopify for you to assist in deciding which platform to use for your website.
It's crucial to know that Shopify is popular for online shops that offer physical goods, while Sellfy focuses more on digital items (with a touch of tangible print-on demand products). For the purposes of comparing both platforms fairly and objectively, we'll focus on the functions that relate to the creation of websites and selling digital products. We'll dive into.
Here's a quick link to various sections within this article:
- Sellfy Overview
- Sellfy Essential Features
- Sellfy Pricing
- Benefits of Sellingfy
- Disadvantages of Sellfy
- Shopify Overview
- Shopify Core Features
- Shopify Pricing
- Advantages of Shopify
- Disadvantages of Shopify
- Shopify vs Sellfy Comparison at a glance: Which one is better?
Sellfy Overview
Sellfy is among the popular ecommerce platforms that lets you sell physical and digital items in your online store. Sellfy was founded in 2011 , by Maris Dagis and Kristaps Alks in Latvia.
Sellfy Core Features
- Sell any item: Sellfy provides functionalities for users to offer physical as well as digital items. Sell any kind of digital product including videos, ebooks and more. Or physical products via print-on-demand. The platform allows you to stream videos through the platform and offer online courses or webinars. Or even offer services with monthly billing. The complete platform for e-commerce can be used to offer any kind of merchandise you'd like to offer in your online store.
- Customizable website builder It allows you to customize the website of your ecommerce business in multiple ways, such as the layout, color and adding the logo. It is also possible to automatically translate the content of your website in accordance with the geographical location of your clients, making it great for international sales.
- Optimized for mobiles: A majority of customers who shop online purchase using their phone. Your Sellfy store is designed for mobile devices to ensure an effortless shopping experience via their phone or tablet.
- Numerous marketing options: Shoppers selling digital and physical products can benefit from marketing tools that are available through Your Sellfy store. It is possible to offer discounts, email marketing newsletters, sales to your customers and add tracking pixels easily.
- Embeddable: When comparing Sellfy vs Shopify and Shopify, you'll be happy to know that Sellfy provides a variety of embeddable functions. You can include an Buy Button, product links or product card as well as store embeds more on your website or on any other site you own. That means you don't need to offer products via your Sellfy store by itself. It is also possible to promotions for your items on different third-party websites.
- Security: This program also allows you to sell online securely. E-commerce stores can process payment transactions through PayPal and Stripe. And for digital products, you can include PDF stamping as well as limited downloads to stop the theft of your product. When looking at the comparison of Shopify vs Sellfy both, it is important to do a deep dive into security features to ensure your product is sold in the most secure way possible.
Sellfy Pricing
Sellfy offers three pricing levels depending on the plan you're currently on. The Starter package costs $29 per month, Business plans cost $79/month and Premium $159/month. If you earn over $200,000 annually, you can request offers from high volume sellers, but the costs per month associated with the plan can't be disclosed.
Benefits of Sellingfy
1. Money-back Guarantee
Sellfy proudly showcases its money-back guarantee on their website , to make sure that customers are aware they're the real deal. If you join Sellfy but realize that it's not the right platform for you, you can get the full amount back within 30 days of joining or updating your website. That way, you can try out the platform in the hopes of generating some salesand observe what happens to your website. If it's a success, good! If not, you can have the option of shutting down your Sellfy shop and receiving the money refund.
2. Quick setup
The process of setting up your Sellfy shop can be accomplished in a short time. In just a few minutes of time it's possible to set up your website and get it functioning. You'll be able to quickly create your website without having any design skills, and start selling online from day one.
The disadvantages of selling to Sellfy
1. Customization of website and limited modules for websites
If you're trying to design an extremely customized site, Sellfy won't be a great fit for you as the feature for building websites offers six different web-based modules (i.e. the customizable sections of your website which you drag and drop into your site - check out the left hand navigation on the image above). In contrast, Shopify has over 16 website sections that provide better customizability for each section.
2. Limited types of digital products
If you're able to offer digital files, or downloads like PDFs, ebooks, printables, and more however, you aren't able to sell other types of digital items like coaching or online courses. So, you'll need seek out additional online platforms in order to create additional revenue sources to support your online venture.
3. Limited functionalities for memberships
While you can sell memberships/subscriptions where you get to charge your customers on a recurring basis, Sellfy does not have the right functionalities for you to be able to distribute rich content to your subscribers such as various rich media posts (polls, videos, images, announcements, scheduled posts), engagement with subscribers with post likes and comments, and membership tiers. The features you need are usually offered on different platforms including Patreon or maybe the applications that are available on Shopify the app store.
4. Pricing plans change based on income
If you're looking at Sellfy with Shopify, Sellfy's pricing plan caps lead to its downfall. If, for example, you have more than 10,000 in sales per year, you'll have upgrade your Starter Plan to Business. There are other ecommerce platforms that allow you to grow your online store without having to alter plans. Having to upgrade your plan as your business reaches certain financial goals can be difficult in terms of user experience.
5. The integrations of the limited variety are
Unlike Shopify There is no application market on Sellfy and the number of integrations available is limited. There are integrations for Google Analytics, Webhooks, Facebook, Patreon, Zapier, and Twitter.
6. No forever-free plan
This is a disadvantage that is applicable to both Sellfy and Shopify as both platforms do not offer a forever-free program. If your business is beginning its journey and you have the smallest amount of funds, you may want to look into other platforms Shopify, which offers a great no-cost plan.
View of Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular Canadian eCommerce platform that caters to retailers and online stores. You can sell both digital and physical products through Shopify, however you can sell physical goods through Shopify. The company was created on the 6th of July 2006 Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand Scott Lake and Daniel Weinand Scott Lake in Ottawa, Ontario.
Shopify Core features
- Over 70 customizable themes: Directly on Shopify You can buy premium themes for your website. All of these themes allow to customize your store and work through Shopify's store builder built in. It is easy to customize your site using themes that allow you to alter aspects like fonts, colors photographs, etc. Additionally, you can find a range of free themes that are available through the platform. Ecommerce platforms like Shopify have enough popularity to source themes outside the marketplace, for instance the Creative Market or ThemeForest.
- Hosting is included: Shopify's monthly service includes bandwidth, hosting, as well as storage. It is not necessary to set up an additional hosting service.
- Countless Shopify Apps available: The Shopify App Store has over 6000 apps that are able to be customized to the appearance of your Shopify store in a variety of ways. This app market allows you to find dropshipping apps that allow you to find items to sell, email marketing tools like abandon checkout recovery apps, applications for managing inventory, apps for social media platforms to allow you to sell your products via social media and more.
- Over 100 payment services International sales on Shopify is made easy with over 100 payment providers that you can choose from. In the countries you're based in, you'll find common payment providers for that country. For instance, in the United States, you'll find various payment options, including Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay as well as many more. users can safely enter their payment details online for safe transactions. Keep in mind, that you'll most likely have to pay for transaction charges and these can be different according to the service you select.
- Many reports available: Getting access to information is essential to your success as a Shopify retailer. You can find reports for the analysis of your finances, analytics, live view, products, inventory, marketing, and much more. These tools will aid you in understanding how your shop is performing and help you in how to make it better.
- Unlimited items: When you use Shopify You can offer any number of items through your site. It means you're able to add as many products as you want on any plan , with no limit. Also, if you're huge online retailer that has tens of thousands of products on your online store it is possible to add all your products and plus more, with no limits.
- A wide range of Shopify customer service: Shopify provides live chat, and email support. Some support reps are even available in languages other that English. Apart from Shopify's customer service, there is also a multitude of resources to assist you in the process of building your store online, such as Shopify's blog, online training courses, as well as help docs. Anyone can access Shopify's customer support and resources without any subscriptions required.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify has multiple pricing tiers for online stores that you have the option of choosing from. The biggest downside to Shopify's pricing structure is the fact that there aren't price tiers that are free for the platform. This can be steep for a beginner just exploring the platform for e-commerce. In addition, Shopify's trial offer lasts only 3 days.
The Shopify monthly price is $29 per month for the Basic plan. $79/month with the Shopify plan and 299 monthly for the advanced plan. In addition to these three plans There's Shopify Plus which starts at $2000/month for premium online shops as well as Starter which costs $7/month for advertising on messaging and social applications.
The advantages of Shopify
1. Simple to set up
Shopify is an online e-commerce without code platform that makes running an online store simple for those who are not developers. It is possible to install Google Analytics, add tracking pixels, set up discount coupons and many more , without having to learn how to code on Shopify. There are countless apps that allow you to customize your site with no technical skills.
2. Grows with your business
Shopify is an e-commerce platform you can expand to. From the side hustler selling on WhatsApp to the enterprise online shop with hundreds of thousands of buyers, you are able to build and run a Shopify store no matter what stage your business is in.
Many big names like Kylie Cosmetics, Red Bull, Gymshark, BBC, and others use Shopify for their web development platform. This is a testament to the extent to which Shopify's platform can be scaled to accommodate sellers of any size.
3. Decent customizability
In contrast to Sellfy that only offers the option of six distinct website sections, Shopify has about 16 section of websites with more flexible customization options for each one of its website sections. There's a good chance that you'll be able to build a site that will match your brand aesthetics.
4. Massive community of partners of the Shopify app store
Shopify is one of the most extensive application stores that are related to the eCommerce platform. The app store of Shopify is home to thousands of third party applications which can add additional functions to your site, such as marketing tools, distinctive web design and aesthetics, as well as tool for sourcing products, and many more.
Advantages and disadvantages of Shopify
1. Not the best way to sell digital goods.
Shopify doesn't have integrated tools to allow the sale of digital goods such as ebooks, courses as well as memberships and other items. When most people think of Shopify it is when they imagine physical items. There are however a myriad of digital products that can be available online for sale.
Although it's possible to offer digital items via Shopify however, you'll have to use a third party app and those apps usually come with additional subscription fees which will increase the cost of running your company. There are a limited number of apps as well as products available for digital sellers is also quite restricted. If you're a creator of courses It can be very difficult to offer online classes on Shopify and even ebooks.
If you're selling physical products via dropshipping, Shopify might be one of the top e-commerce platforms. However, if you're selling code, ebooks, images, video, classes, or different kind of digital goods it's a good idea to consider alternatives for example .
2. Can get expensive / No forever-free plan
When you're making thousands of dollars every month, the cost of just $29 per month may not seem as a huge difference. The reality is that most online stores do not make thousands of dollars every month. Making the right decisions to run a successful ecommerce store takes time. Currently, there's no free plan that allows you to try out and gain knowledge during the initial months. Plus, as your online store starts succeeding it will likely be necessary to upgrade your plan in order to be able to manage your company and expenses for growing businesses are high.
This disadvantage applies to both Shopify as well as Sellfy because both platforms aren't able to offer a perpetually free plan. It is worth looking at other platforms like that provide an affordable free plan, especially for those who are just beginning their journey and have limited funds.
What's a better alternative?
In the process of comparing Shopify and Sellfy You might be asking yourself if the two services are the most effective on the market or if there's actually another alternative. However, there's. While Sellfy and Shopify are both excellent web-based store building platforms, is another platform that is popular that sells both digital and physical products but with a twist. It's free.
offers tiered pricing plans on their website. There's also a Free Forever plan with a 5% transaction fee that can be used throughout your life without having to pay for an upgrade. Contrary to Shopify vs Sellfy which has all its options, unlimitless products and revenues on its free plan. If you're looking for a budget-friendly platform, beats other e-commerce platforms on price alone.
Below are the best features of :
- A very generous and free plan This forever-free subscription gives users access to the entire platform. accessibilityto the full platform's capabilities
- Unlimited product listing Unlimited product listings, unlimited customers, and unlimited revenues
- A free, fully hosted domain (you may also join to a domain you have created)
- Easy drag and drop site and landing page creator and extensive flexibility to customize.
- Instant payments through Paypal and Stripe
- Automatic collection and transfer for VAT of UK & EU VAT
- Product bundling feature. You can bundle a digital download (e.g. ebook, printables, etc) along with an online online course within a single listing of products
- is well-known for having a simple and user-friendly interface. It also offers a variety of videos that will guide you to you're successful in creating your own online business
- The most advanced marketing tools like the referral system, affiliate program cross-selling, upselling, coupon codes, marketing via email and many more are accessible on the no-cost plan
Sellfy vs . Shopify Comparison at a glance
These platforms are compared against one another:
Sellfy vs . Shopify which one should you pick for 2023?
What's the best option in the year 2023? Shopify vs Sellfy? If you're trying to create a modest business offering digital items or any amount of printed-on-demand items you might want to consider exploring Sellfy. If you're the owner of a $100 million-dollar online store that has thousands of clients, Shopify might be the choice for you.