This WSJ Shopify review compares some of the fees charged by Amazon and Shopify. It takes the author half the article before he starts sharing fee structures. (I’d have liked to see more statistics about fees charged and even a chart.)
Excerpts:
Shopify, founded in 2007 and now publicly traded, has 1.7 million sellers (note: that’s a brick-and-mortar store or a person in their basement; Shopify doesn’t differentiate).
A seller’s fees on Amazon averaged 14%. (The author doesn’t mention any flat fees from Amazon or specific costs directly. That would’ve been helpful.)
Shopify is valued at $130b and Big Commerce $4b. (Amazon is $1.5t.)
Shopify's fees start at $29/month. (...Why no free plan?) The author mentions a $2k plan but fails to mention the massive number of fees that will be accrued from subscribing to apps. That’s a key part of Shopify’s bread and butter: under deliver the software basics and encourage you to pay for an app that does it. Shopify then gets a cut of that app subscription.
The WSJ author reports that the software enables businesses to easily run an online store. I wonder if he has tried to setup an Shopify store because: the majority of people I’ve spoke with say that Shopify is hard to use. Maybe they’re just playing to their audience :)
Bridge offers many of the key features that Shopify does—and then some. Our price is also more indie friendly: we offer a free plan. We can offer this because a small part of the service’s cost may be underwritten by brands that the retailer sells.