Sellfy or Shopify, which online store builder would be a better pick in 2023?
Read this in-depth Sellfy vs Shopify comparison to make a wise decision.
With the increasing technology and availability of eCommerce platforms, setting up an online store is not a problem anymore, even if you don’t have any web development skills.
These eCommerce platforms provide all the essential features and tools that help run a successful online store, reach a greater audience, grow the store, promote your business, increase the security, performance, and speed of your store.
What you have to do is to select the best one for your brand. You will also see marketplaces but a dedicated eCommerce platform lets you create a standalone store that also promotes your brand unlike in the marketplace. So how can you find the right eCommerce platform amongst tons of platforms available in the market?
The perfect way to make a wise decision is to compare the two eCommerce platforms against numerous categories. That is why we have compared both Sellfy and Shopify against eCommerce features, pricing, customer support, template library, integrations, ease of use, and customizability.
So stick around if you want to make a wise decision for your eCommerce store.
In a rush? Check out the summary of the Sellfy vs Shopify comparison below.
Comparison At a Glance
About Sellfy
Sellfy focuses on creators providing them with a platform mainly to sell digital and print-on-demand products. It is pocket-friendly, easy, and simple allowing you to effectively set up an online store within minutes.
About Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one SaaS eCommerce solution that gets you everything you need to set up any kind of eCommerce website. You can sell everything here as well. Thanks to its scalability, robust features, astonishing app market, 24/7 customer support, reasonable pricing, and template library, it has become one of the biggest names in the eCommerce world. This makes it suitable for beginners as well as experts.
1. eCommerce Features
Winner: Shopify. With the outstanding list of eCommerce features of Shopify, you can successfully run a feature-rich online store. Sellfy does not even come close to Shopify in terms of features.
2). Template library
Winner: Shopify. Shopify takes the lead here due to an impressive template collection while Sellfy does not offer a choice of templates at all.
3. Ease of use and customizability
Winner: Shopify. Although Sellfy is comparatively more intuitive, the way Shopify balances its ease of use along the dozens of customization features and creative freedom is outstanding.
4. Pricing
Winner: Sellfy. Both of them offer reasonable pricing plans and taking Shopify’s feature-set into account, it offers better value for money. However, Sellfy is cheaper as it also has a free plan.
5. Integrations
Winner: Shopify. Shopify comes up with a huge app store with 2000+ integrations as opposed to only 7 integrations at Sellfy.
6. Customer Support:
Winner: Shopify. Shopify obviously wins here due to various support options and numerous self-help resources whereas Sellfy lacks essential support options but has a great Help Centre.
Sellfy Vs Shopify: Short Verdict
Shopify is the ultimate winner of the Sellfy vs Shopify comparison as it prevails over its competitor in almost all categories. Sellfy is pocket-friendly, simple, and easy to use, but Shopify with its robust features, impressive template library, outstanding customer support, huge app market, creative freedom, tons of customization options, reasonable pricing plans, and intuitive interface, provides everything you need to run a complete feature-rich eCommerce store.
1. eCommerce Features
Features are the main core of running an eCommerce store successfully.
Sellfy’s Features
Sellfy lets you set up an online store to sell physical, digital products, print-on-demand goods, and earn through subscriptions. It will automatically print the print-on-demand orders and send them to your customers.
The store is customizable as well as the sales page to index it well with your brand and to promote it. You can make multiple changes through its customization options and features. For every product, you can set its name, description, image, and even set different prices for the same or different variations of a product, along with “pay what you want”.
Besides the full shopping cart functionally, the ability to connect own custom domain name or host store directly through the Sellfy platform, and translate the store into multiple languages depending on the visitor’s geographical location is quite impressive.
Some of the essential features include no storage limit, no unlimited product listing, and the ability to set up product categories to organize the store.
The next step after setting up a store is to pave its way to success. That’s what Sellfy helps you do through a bunch of its marketing and analytics tools.
Amongst these features is the ability to upsell products during customer checkout, send discount codes to intrigue their interest into your store eventually increasing sales. Moreover, through its email marketing features, you can send product updates to customers and get newsletter subscribers.
As far as designing emails is concerned, that is also made easier through Sellfy email templates and customization options including the ability to add images, links, HTML code, etc. You can track the performance of your email through stats like open rate, click rate, etc. The Sellfy analytics section shows deep stats including total revenue, conversion rate, traffic, top products, visits, traffic, countries, etc
Sellfy allows payment processing through PayPal and Stripe. The transactions are secured, customer data is secured (PCI-compliant), along with unique download links, limit download attempts, and PDF stamping. Moreover, you get the amount right away.
The highlight of Sellfy features is its embedded options to promote your business. With this, you can transform any of your websites into an eCommerce store by adding a “Buy Now” button, embedding all or certain products from your Sellfy store. You can use this feature on YouTube end screens, by sharing product links on social media. Likewise, you can connect to Facebook, Wix, and WordPress as well.
Now let’s see what Shopify brings to the table.
Shopify’s Features
Shopify, on the other hand, is packed with eCommerce features and tools providing you with everything you need to set up and grow your online store. Not only does it allow you to set up an eCommerce store, but it also comes with a full-featured content management system and blogging functionality, so you can even host an entire website on Shopify.
For Commerce store, it lets you sell physical and digital products, subscriptions, memberships, and videos. However, unlike Sellfy, it does not have a built-in print-on-demand feature, but still, you can do that through third-party applications.
The store is fully customizable thanks to the plethora of customization and designing options. You can also connect to your retail stores via the Shopify POS feature.
There is no limitation on product listing while you can add multiple images of products, offer different product variations such as different materials, setting up different prices for different variations. You can also add and manage video, 3D assets, and make use of its stunning inventory management feature.
Don’t get surprised when you see analytics and reports of Shopify. Those are just amazing, comprehensively providing all stats with an ability to adjust timeframe as well. The stats include visitors’ location, traffic, customer rate, top pages, conversion rate, average order value, etc. You also get tons of reports, including reports of sales, retail sales, profit, customers, marketing, inventory, and so on.
Commendably, you also get a mobile app to manage and run your store anywhere with ease. It includes managing inventory, contacting customers, tracking trends, fulfilling orders and much more.
Shopify also made arrangements for cross-border selling, so that you can reach a global market to grow your business. Shopify can convert product prices to over 133 currencies, translate in over 50 languages, set up custom domains, automatically calculate import fees, and provide secure payment gateways.
In addition to that, you get abandoned checkout recovery, dropshipping features, free SSL certificate, built-in mobile commerce shopping cart, automated tax handling, ability to set shipping rates, offer free shipping, and over 100 payment gateways.
SEO settings at Shopify are also quite effective while being intuitive helping you rank well and gain more customers. Notably, you can add custom URLs, 301 redirects, add title, descriptions, and so much more.
You can also offer discounts and gift cards, use email templates, generate a sitemap.xml, sell on Facebook, and do much more through plenty of its marketing tools.
In conclusion, Shopify is far more feature-rich than Sellfy, as it provides a wide variety of must-have eCommerce features dealing with all aspects of running a successful eCommerce store.
Winner: Shopify
2. Template Library
Templates lay down a foundation for your eCommerce website so that you can effectively build an impressive storefront with ease. Who do you think will win the Sellfy vs Shopify template comparison? Let’s find out.
Sellfy, unfortunately, does not offer a template library. It comes with a basic default theme to build your storefront. Nevertheless, you can still customize the default theme via its Store Customizer tool to give it a bit of a different look and feel, however, it would give generic results.
It allows you to modify colours, add a logo, create a layout, edit content, and add new pages. Along with it, you can make use of advanced customization features to make further tweaks to align it with your taste.
The storefront theme is responsive to all different sizes of screens including laptops, mobile phones, and tablets, so your storefront would not be distorted when opened on other screen sizes.
Now let’s take a look at Templates of Shopify.
Shopify provides an elegant template library containing over 70 themes, only 10 of which are free. All of these are skillfully designed by world-renowned designers in order to help you create a unique and eye-catching storefront that delights your customers.
The themes are divided into several categories such as Art and photography, Electronics, Home and Garden, Electronics, Sports, Health and Beauty, etc, to make it easy for you to find the perfect template you need.
Shopify also grants you a preview option so that you can look into all the details before selecting your preferred theme. The themes are also mobile-responsive and you can even preview the theme in a mobile layout version. You can start with a free theme if you want, instead of going with a premium one, especially if you are a beginner.
However, free ones would be relatively less attractive encompassing fewer features. Surprisingly, Shopify also gives a free trial on some premium templates.
Every template at Shopify comes with its own theme settings allowing you to easily customize your templates without coding. Amongst a wide range of template editing options, notably, you can change the logo, fonts, colours, add banners, slideshows, customize the homepage layout, more sections, and much more. You also get complete creative freedom through access to HTML/CSS coding.
In addition to that, unlike at Sellfy, you can have a completely custom eCommerce design by hiring a Shopify web designer expert.
In short, Shopify is miles ahead of Sellfy in terms of templates as it provides an enchanting template library with better template editing options, unlike Sellfy which does not offer a template library at all.
Winner: Shopify
3. Ease of Use And Customizability
Ease of use is one of the most essential factors to look into if you don’t want to find yourself banging your head against the wall in frustration. Likewise, customization features are what make your store distinguished and appealing to your customers.
Sellfy lets you start with your store in just a couple of clicks, so just start entering your store’s information, name, product categories, pages, etc and you are good to go. It uses a bold tagline “A beautiful storefront in five minutes” promoting the fact that it keeps complexity far from its system. The interface is also straightforward with options neatly sorted.
When it comes to customization, you can customize the storefront with its user-friendly Store Customizer. It allows you to make a fascinating store by adding different modules like Navigation, header and Footer, Products Module, Text panel, hero block, contact form, newsletter, etc.
You can modify colour, border, alignment, logo, add pages, shopping cart encouraging users to make more than one purchase, landing pages, and even create a layout that matches with your brand. Unlike at Shopify, you get to sell digital products easily without adding a 3rd party app.
Let’s take a look at how Shopify performs in this category.
Shopify’s onboarding process is also straightforward. It is not an exaggeration when we say that you can start running your store at Shopify within minutes.
It is a perfect eCommerce match designed to meet the needs of beginners as well as experts. Start by filling in your store’s name, time zone, email, password, currency, password, and other related details. You start with a basic template but you can then choose from the given template library and customize it with its various customization options and an intuitive editor.
The dashboard is also simple with a menu on the left to select different options and features, which can be used to modify the store on the canvas at the right.
Shopify also guides its users with the store development process. At customization, you get a drag-and-drop functionality to customize your storefront to give it a unique look and feel. You can drag blocks, simple contact forms, and sections and place them on the canvas.
Moreover, you can customize your store’s layout, content, typography, colours, add collections, pages, shopping cart, checkout, and much more. The theme editor also lets you edit the existing content of the store, in the theme sections. With its Editor, easily add image banners, product pages, headings, collage, announcement bar, header and footer, and newsletter signup.
Furthermore, you can even host your entire business website as Shopify not only allows you to add a store, but it’s also a full-fledged CMS. You can also revert the changes you have made during the customization process. In addition to that, for pro users, Shopify grants complete access to HTML and CSS so that they can take their store off-limits building a mesmerizing storefront.
To cut the long story short, Sellfy is easier to use than Shopify but Shopify has an upper edge over Sellfy, as it perfectly balances ease of use with its outstanding customization options.
Winner: Shopify
4. Pricing
It is necessary to know the amount of cash that will flow out of your pocket in investing in these eCommerce platforms in exchange for their exceptional features. Who do you think will win the Sellfy vs Shopify pricing comparison? Let’s check it out.
Sellfy, amazingly, offers a forever free plan which allows you to set up an online store and make unlimited sales per year with no transaction fee at all. You all also get access to full store customization, tax settings, discount codes, and the ability to sell physical and print-on-demand products.
However, it lacks numerous features. You can only list up to 10 products and you will get a sellfy.store domain.
In addition to that, Sellfy even allows you to explore its features and functionality and get used to it, however, you won’t be able to sell any product during the trial phase as product checkout would be disabled.
Once the trial is over, you will be asked to upgrade to any of the premium packages, whichever you see perfect to your requirements. Sellfy comes up with 3 premium pricing plans ( starting at $29 a month)
Following are the details of Sellfy’s pricing structure:
| Sellfy Plans | Regular Price | Discounted Price |
| Starter Plan | $29 | Check Price |
| Business Plan | $79 | Check Price |
| Premium Plan | $159 | Check Price |
It suggests its users contact their customer support for a custom plan if they make more than $200k in annual sales. Sellfy does not charge any transaction fee however the payment processors like PayPal and Stripe would charge you the fee (typically 2.9% + $0.3). At Sellfy, you can choose to pay on a monthly or on a yearly basis which would save you 34% of the total cost.
Now let’s jump to its opponent to see how affordable it is.
Shopify lets you start with launching your store with complete access to its features without entering any payment details. After its 14-day trial is completed you can choose from any of its plans that you deem fit for you.
It has 3 main pricing plans (starting at $29) and an additional 2 separate pricing plans; Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus.
Shopify Lite allows you to add a buy button to your existing website or blog and accept payments, however, you won’t have a standalone online store. But you will get access to numerous eCommerce tools and features like Shopify interface, Shopify’s system to manage sales and to sell in person, and much more.
Another is Shopifyplus, aimed at large-scale businesses and merchants that generate high volume sales. It offers enterprise-level features like high security, quality of fulfilment, dedicated account manager, API integrations, etc
The pricing detail of all of its pricing plans is as follows;
| Shopify Plans | Regular Price | Discounted Price |
| Shopify Lite | $9 | Check Price |
| Shopify Basic | $29 | Check Price |
| Shopify | $79 | Check Price |
| Shopify Advanced | $299 | Check Price |
| Shopify Plus | Varies | Check Price |
It does not charge you any setup fee or transaction fee if done through Shopify Payments. Otherwise, for external payment gateways, there will be additional fees ranging from 0.5% to 2%. Additionally, it charges payment processing and conversion fees.
At Shopify, you can either pay month to month or pay upfront by subscribing for an annual or 2-year period. You will get a 10% and 20% discount on annual and biennial plans respectively.
In summary, both of these eCommerce platforms has reasonable pricing plans but Sellfy is more pocket-friendly as it even allows setting up a store for free.
Winner: Sellfy
5. Integrations And Addons
Integrations are meant to increase the functionality of your store by many folds. Let’s take a look at who provides better and more integrations between Sellfy and Shopify.
Sellfy allows you to connect with third-party applications but there are only 7 of them. These are Google Analytics, Facebook live chat, Facebook Pixel, Patreon, Webhooks, Twitter conversion tracking, and most importantly Zapier.
Sellfy makes use of Zapier (an online platform) that lets you integrate your store with over 750 apps to grow your business. So if you are ok with using Zapier to meet your integration needs then it may work out for you, otherwise, lack of a proper app market is Sellfy’s major dropdown.
Thinking about how Shopify is going to compete?
Shopify, on the contrary, comes up with an enormous app store containing more than 2000 apps and integrations with anything you can think of. It does a great job dividing into categories like store design, merchandising, marketing, store management, etc which are then in turn divided into further categories and subsections.
Like for design store you get PageFly landing page builder, Privy, Fontify, Ultimate Sales boost, etc. You also get integrations for shipping and delivery like Pirate Ship, Order Printer, Auto DropShipping, iPacky, and many others
For dropshipping, you have apps like Obelo and Spocket, or apps such as Printful and Printify for print-on-demand requirements. Not to mention there are tons of apps for Email marketing, Advertising, SEO, merchandising, inventory management, inventory planning, managing and fulfilling orders, shipping solutions, and many more.
Shopify provides such a diverse variety and number of apps that it would be a separate topic to just talk about the apps and integrations it encompasses. Besides these, it also allows integrating with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms like eBay, Walmart, Amazon, WordPress, and even Zapier.
In short, Shopify prevails over Sellfy in terms of integrations as it has one of the largest app stores in the market with every app one may need, whereas Sellfy only has 7 integrations.
Winner: Shopify
6. Customer Support
No matter how expert you are, you may often find yourself struggling with your online store. At that point, you need your platform to provide the best support to get you out of the problem. So let’s examine both Sellfy and Shopify for their customer support.
Sellfy provides a huge help Centre that contains articles and how-to guides comprehensively covering various topics and issues. These articles contain pictures and video tutorials for a better understanding of solutions for both store owners and buyers. Furthermore, these are neatly categorized into several categories along a search bar for ease of browsing.
Other self-help resources include FAQs, blogs, social media platforms, and YouTube Calculator. If you want to reach out to their excellent technical support team, you can send them a message via a contact form or send an email 24/7.
Now it’s time to jump to Shopify’s customer support.
Shopify also comes up with an enormous Help Centre containing articles and guides in order to solve your issues effectively. These are also structured and arranged perfectly into different categories and subcategories along a search bar for ease of searching for solutions.
In addition to that, you also get access to tons of video tutorials, FAQs, numerous social media platforms, webinars, blogs, podcasts, a Business encyclopedia, guides, and business courses to get further information on a wide range of eCommerce and Business topics.
You can also ask questions on the community forum where product experts, developers, and other fellow merchants will surely help you out. Shopify also provides multiple ways for contacting its support team. These include 24/7 live chat, email, and a call-back service where LiveChat gives the quickest response of all.
In short, it’s obvious that Shopify wins here due to numerous support options and self-help resources that are lacking in Sellfy.
Winner: Shopify
Final Thoughts
Sellfy and Shopify both are powerful eCommerce platforms that make it easy and intuitive to set up and run an online store. However, there is much that sets them apart. Sellfy is better if you wish to have a simple, easy, and pocket-friendly online store with no transaction fee and in-built print-on-demand tools. Although, you will fall short on many robust features.
Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform like no other in the market. It is best for both beginners and experts who need a customizable, strong, and complete eCommerce platform. Shopify provides amazing customer support, an enchanting template library, top-notch security, a humongous app market, outstanding features, creative freedom, and an intuitive interface. In conclusion, Shopify is the obvious winner of the Sellfy vs Shopify comparison.
