Looking for an unbiased and honest review of commerce store builder Shift4Shop? I will share my opinions with you which will help you select the best ecommerce platform for your online store.
Related: Which Are The Best Ecommerce Platforms in India?
Founded in 1997, Shift4Shop powers more than 29,956 websites globally. Over the years, Shift4Shop has made its name as a robust ecommerce store builder.
Ecommerce is growing at a tremendous rate and ecommerce sales are expected to reach $4.9 trillion in 2021. Hence, to reap the success of ecommerce, you need a robust platform to grow your dream business.
Shift4Shop offers certain features that you won’t find on any other platform. It uses 40 technology products and services, including HTML, jQuery, and Google Analytics to help users build a great store.
But what makes Shift4Shop so special? Let’s take a look at my in-depth Shift4Shop review.
Who is Shift4Shop For?
Shift4Shop makes it easy for people with no coding skills to build a professional-looking ecommerce store. Whether you intend to sell physical products or digital downloads, Shift4Shop offers everything you need to start an ecommerce business.
Here are some types of websites you can create using Shift4Shop:
- Dropshipping
- Print-on demand products
- Apparel
- Furniture
- Electronics
- Books
- Downloadable ebooks
- Toys and games
- Hardware
- School or office supplies
- Music and band merchandise
Key Takeaway: If you want to build an ecommerce store, Shift4Shop is for you.
Is it Easy to Use Shift4Shop?
Getting started with Shift4Shop is very easy. Just signup for a free trial and Shift4Shop will help you with everything you need. The support team is very helpful. You can choose to be contacted by an ecommerce coach, who will help you make the most of the tool. Let’s go deep to understand the ease of using this ecommerce platform in this Shift4Shop review.
As soon as you complete the signup process, you will receive a welcome email and links to important tutorials and an option to schedule a free consultation.
The dashboard of Shift4Shop looks like this:
To create your store, all you need to do is “select theme,” customize it, add products, select a payment method, and set up your shipping methods.
What I loved the most about Shift4Shop is its chatbot that helps build the store at each step. For example, when I clicked on “select theme,” the chatbot says, “I’m not sure if you’ve settled on the design of your site, but I just saw an absolutely gorgeous theme that I think would work perfectly for your store.”
You can then use the Shift4Shop page editor to make the theme unique. Just go to Settings and click on Design. You will find options to edit store name, logo, homepage, language, and system messages.
To add products, go to Products and click on Products List. You will see a list of sample products. You can choose to edit them by clicking on the settings bar and then on edit. Or you can add new products directly.
Key Takeaway: My test of ease of use of the platform led me to conclude that it is a user-friendly website builder. However, you might need to spend some time learning about the tool.
Features of Shift4Shop
The best section of the entire Shift4Shop review is the features.
Shift4Shop provides everything you will ever need to start and grow your ecommerce business.
Here are the key features of Shift4Shop:
Website Builder
- Hundreds of themes available.
- Drag-and-drop HTML builder.
- Automatic integration of Google AMP.
- Tons of images to make the theme unique.
- Advanced customization options are available.
- Add unlimited products one by one or at once (by uploading a CSV file),
- Change your store language to ensure it appeals to local customers.
- Mobile-first, responsive design.
- AJAX implementation to minimize page reloads.
- Integrated blogging platform.
Shopping Cart
- Decide what happens when users click on the “add to cart” button (view cart page, take them to checkout, or add the product to the cart without taking them anywhere).
- Allow customers to view and edit their cart anytime.
- One-page or three-page checkout.
- Let customers create an account or offer guest checkout options to let them buy as they please.
- More than 200+ ways to accept payments.
- Connect your store to your shipping provider to send real-time delivery updates to customers.
- Set up sales tax to ensure you are charging the right amount to customers.
- Follow up with customers with autoresponder emails to build a relationship with them.
- Send automated emails to customers with abandoned carts to encourage them to purchase.
Manage Orders
- Customer relationship manager (CRM)
- New order notifications.
- Order management dashboard.
- Complete information on every order (invoice number, payment method used, comments given by the customer, reward points earned, billing, and shipping information).
- Provides insight into when a user decided to bounce back without purchasing.
- Process returns and exchanges with an efficient RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) system.
- Create subscription services.
- Dropshipping support to automatically forward orders to suppliers.
Manage Products
- Check and customize important features and details of each product.
- Product Q&A
- Bulk product import and export.
- Add any number of product images and videos.
- Built-in zoom capabilities to allow customers to inspect products in detail.
- Add unlimited product options and variants.
- SmartCategories feature categorizing your products in real-time based on discounts, free shipping, release date, etc.
- Upsell and cross-sell feature.
- Product comparison option.t
- Detailed inventory tracking and control.
- Set up discounts based on order quantity.
Marketing & SEO
- Targeted email marketing system.
- Time-limited daily deals.
- Digital gift certificates.
- Loyalty programs to retain customers.
- Customizable meta tags, page titles, and headings.
- Schema.org markup.
- Customizable URLs.
- Customizable image ALT tags.
- SEO-friendly navigation with breadcrumb links.
- Dynamic XML sitemap generation
- 301 redirects and 404 auto-detect.
Related: Best Email Marketing Companies
Hosting and Security
- Automatic domain name renewal (for free).
- 256Bit SSL Certificate.
- File Transfer Protocol (FTP) access to files.
- Daily backups of your store.
- 99.94% uptime and 24/7 monitoring.
- IP blocking security feature.
- Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) for improved loading speed.
- DDoS attack protection and migration.
- Scalable ecommerce hosting.
- Unlimited disk space.
Customer Support
- 24*7 customer support available.
- Knowledgebase for self-help.
- Hundreds of training videos on YouTube.
- Detailed HTML guide for customizing your store’s code.
- Online manual to help make the most of Shift4Shop.
- Learn how to build, promote, and market your business with the latest ecommerce trends in Shift4Shop’s online university.
Key Takeaway: Built especially for ecommerce, Shift4Shop has robust features that can help you build and grow your online store.
Integrations & Add-Ons
With more than 200 add-ons available in Shift4Shop’s app store, you will be able to easily extend your ecommerce store’s functionality.
You will find both free and paid integrations for various categories, including:
- Mobile commerce
- Cart abandonment
- Order management
- Email marketing
- Dropshipping suppliers
- Product feeds
- SSL certificates
- Sales tax software
- Inventory management
Shift4Shop also provides a RESTful API, enabling you to build custom connections if the apps you need aren’t available.
Key Takeaway: Shift4Shop’s App Store has almost every add-on merchants will ever need.
What Payment Gateways Are Supported? What Are the Transaction Fees?
An important part of Shift4Shop is the payment gateway. Shift4Shop offers over 200 payment providers across countries. All the major payment solutions are supported, such as:
- PayPal
- Visa
- Square
- Stripe
- Klarna
- Visa
- MasterCard
- American Express
- Bitcoin
You can also choose to add “buy now, pay later” option to offer financing programs to increase sales.
The best part is that Shift4Shop doesn’t charge you anything for transactions. However, you might have to pay 2-3% to your payment gateway provider for each sale.
Key Takeaway: Irrespective of which country you reside in or sell your products to, Shift4Shop has a payment solution for you, that too for free of cost.
What About Templates?
Shift4Shop review is incomplete without templates. Isn’t it?
Shift4Shop offers 103 templates, out of which 49 are paid, and 54 are free. The premium themes range between $149-$189.
The templates offered by Shift4Shop are good, but I feel it can be better. Here are some of the expensive options:
Here are some of the free templates:
The homepage of these templates is very different, but the internal pages often look very similar.
You can always edit the templates and change the layout to make them unique, but it is worth mentioning that Shift4Shop’s editing tools are quite limited for non-coders. If you are well-versed with HTML and CSS, you can edit the template entirely.
Key Takeaway: If you are just starting, I would suggest you choose a free template. However, if you have already entered the ecommerce business and have some technical knowledge, premium themes might be a better option.
What If I Need Help Building My Ecommerce Business?
Shift4Shop has great support options. The first one being the “live chat” option. In case you need immediate assistance while using the tool, leverage the live chat feature to get answers.
What I liked the most is the “ecommerce university.” That’s why I thought, it is best to include this feature in this Shift4Shop review. The platform offers free courses on best business practices, marketing tips, optimizing online presence, managing a blog, etc. If you are new to ecommerce, this would be very helpful to you.
The “Help Manual” in Shift4Shop provides answers to frequently asked questions. It is arranged in categories to allow users to find solutions to their issues quickly.
Shift4Shop also has a knowledge base where you can find answers to basic questions about email, payment, shipping, site design, marketing, etc.
If you can’t find a solution in the knowledge base, you can raise a ticket, and someone from the Shift4Shop team will contact you.
Related: Google Ad Extensions For Ecommerce Stores
Key Takeaway: After digging through Shift4Shop support options, I can confidently say you will get help whenever you need it.
Shift4Shop Pricing
There are five plans for businesses:
- Startup: $19/month for sales up to $50k
- Basic: $29/month for sales up to $100k
- Plus: $79/month for sales up to $250k
- Power: $129/month for sales up to $500k
- Pro: $229/month for sales up to $1 million
Irrespective of which plan you choose, you can add unlimited products to your store.
All plans include features like:
- Email accounts
- API
- Real-time shipping
- Inventory control
- Advanced product options
- Tax rates
- Upsell and cross-sell
- Two-factor authentication
- Basic SEO tools
- Built-in blog
- Mailchimp integration
- Mobile store
- Facebook shop
- Dropshipping support
- Payment gateways
Key Takeaway: Pick a plan based on how much sales you generate.
Final Verdict
I hope this Shift4Shop review will help you choose the right ecommerce platform for your business needs. I feel Shift4Shop is one of the best ecommerce platforms in the market right now. With hundreds of payment gateways, built-in SEO tools, a 24*7 support team, and affordable plans, Shift4Shop is a good choice. If I ever plan to get into an ecommerce business, I will definitely use Shift4Shop.
