[HN Gopher] The dark side of Shopify
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The dark side of Shopify
Author : danpalmer
Score : 111 points
Date : 2022-07-09 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| m0llusk wrote:
| Also sad that Shopify isn't all that good. Their scale enables
| them to have a community with helpful guides and videos and
| stuff, but the actual product is arguably less sophisticated than
| what competitors offer. What they have is a zinger of a name and
| a big marketing budget. Anyone in this space should really check
| out alternatives. Unless there is a specific plug in or use case
| you want to use there is not much good reason to choose Shopify.
| zippergz wrote:
| Sophisticated is not what is called for in a LOT of ecommerce
| setups. I have assisted employers and clients with Shopify,
| Bigcommerce, Miva Merchant, and selling on platforms like
| Amazon and eBay. For most "small business" style use cases, I
| find Shopify far better than the others, because it's a lot
| easier for the business owner (who isn't an ecommerce expert)
| to run, and they don't need or miss the flexibility that the
| others offer. Invariably it costs more to configure and run
| something like bigcommerce, and that's only justified if you
| actually need what they offer.
| Readywater wrote:
| What are some of the alternatives you'd recommend?
| jdjdjdjdjd wrote:
| Bigcommerce
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| An e-commerce site on which I have 4weekly subscriptions of
| multiple products has an astoundingly bad UX ... and it's
| driven by Shopify. Either Shopify's recurring order system is
| fundamentally broken, or this particular site is misconfigured.
|
| In either case, it's a deficiency of Shopify.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Shopify has no recurring system. They are using a plug-in.
| core-utility wrote:
| As stated, Shopify has no recurring subscription system
| (which is astounding since it seems basic enough for them to
| offer, but I guess they're getting profits either way). I've
| experimented with a few popular recurrence "apps" and I can
| say that one of the most popular ones was awful to setup and
| maintain. I chose a more indie option (Seal Subscriptions, if
| you're a Shopify store go check them out) and got much better
| results.
| soared wrote:
| Literally nobody uses Shopify because of its cms features. They
| use it because it quick cheap and easy to set up a really good
| looking ecom site that has tons of good integrations for
| shipping/business needs/etc.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Anyone in this space should really check out alternatives.
|
| Please quickly name your top three. Then we can check the
| veracity by seeing how they get dissected by HN pundits.
| disantlor wrote:
| I make my living as the developer for a few large e-comm
| businesses that all use Shopify and it works really really
| well. I never get why people (devs especially) call out
| whatever feature they think Shopify should have without
| realizing that pretty much anything you could want to do is
| enabled by their API.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| What are your favorite alternatives, particularly if there is
| one that allows for use of a pin pad for in-person sales?
| adventured wrote:
| Nortel syndrome takes over another would-be Canadian giant (what
| do I mean by that? read up on the crazy behavior of the bubble
| era Nortel; for Shopify there will be a pre bubble valuation
| crash era and a post valuation crash era).
| soared wrote:
| Why the hell would you continue using Shopify if they are
| freezing your accs/etc?
|
| Put a banner up on your site saying the shop is down temporarily,
| rebuild a barebones version of the site just for ecom, etc.
|
| Shopify needs to do better, but I can't help but question the
| business decisions made by op.
| AinderS wrote:
| It's time to legally compel platforms above a certain (modest)
| size to treat their customers and users "fairly", transparently,
| and without discrimination. Because giving a competitive
| advantage (from economies of scale) to actors willing to sell
| their independence to some giant corporation is rapidly leading
| us to where we are at the mercy of those corporations for even
| the smallest commercial activities, such as buying or selling a
| book.
|
| Such a state is incompatible with a free society, unless you
| redefine restrictions on freedom as only what is done by the
| government. A definition that is little comfort to businesses
| bankrupted by unaccountable corporations.
| crmd wrote:
| It makes perfect sense that as a firm's market power grows,
| it's regulatory burden scales appropriately.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| > It's time to legally compel platforms above a certain
| (modest) size
|
| I personally don't agree with "modest" but having two (or more)
| classes of corporations to divide laws and regulations between
| seems like an obvious step in the right direction. Right now
| there seems to be "monopolies" and everything else. Obviously
| Amazon or Shopify are not the same as a family owned business;
| treating them as such should be the exception not the norm.
| adrr wrote:
| I don't understand how shopify is predatory. Shopify isn't a
| merchant processor, they don't hold merchant funds. Stripe is the
| merchant processor for shopify payments. They are the ones that
| froze the payments. Freezing money has no benefit for Shopify.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Shopify has operated as their own payment processor for a few
| years.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > I responded with an email restating that the First Sale
| Doctrine makes such a request both nonsensical and illegal, and
| asked a few more questions.
|
| The rest of the thread notwithstanding, this is not what First
| Sale Doctrine does, at all!
| kitsune_ wrote:
| I just read the entire Twitter thread. What a Kafkaesque
| nightmare.
| [deleted]
| hoten wrote:
| Isn't this what lawyers are for? Seems like he's just spinning
| his wheels trying to get through at the customer support level.
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