Shopify's monthly rent increased by 34%, and sellers said they would not play with it anymore

In the years when e-commerce was developing the fastest, there was a saying that half of the shop owners on a commercial street in New York had opened their own Shopify websites. In China, more and more cross-border e-commerce practitioners are choosing to start their e-commerce journey through Shopify.

For sellers, it is very important to have their own website, which not only increases conversion opportunities outside the platform, but also leaves a brand impression in the minds of consumers.

Therefore, the skills of operating websites have become increasingly important for cross-border e-commerce sellers, and the excellent solutions provided by Shopify can enable newly entered sellers to get started quickly and help sellers gain a foothold in the fierce e-commerce circle as soon as possible.

Since its inception, this Ottawa-based e-commerce service platform has been praised by users for its high-quality service and stable prices, but this situation has recently changed.

Last week, Shopify announced that the price of its basic package will increase by $10/month, a 34% increase . Many small and medium-sized sellers can't help but start to wonder, is it still meaningful to continue to stick to their Shopify stores?

Shopify's revenue model is simple: it mainly comes from annual or monthly fees paid by platform users and sales commissions from sellers. After a crazy run in the past few years, Shopify has grown from 165,000 merchants in 2015 to 4.4 million in 2022.

According to BuiltWith, Shopify's largest markets are the United States and the United Kingdom, followed by Australia. Even Canada, where Shopify is headquartered, ranks only fourth.

In a letter to merchants last week that presumably explained the price increase, Shopify said the decision to increase plan pricing "will enable us to continue investing in innovation and give our merchants access to all the resources they need."

Some of these innovative features have already been added to the platform, including Shopify Markets, which helps Shopify stores expand internationally. There is also Shopify Flow, which was added in 2022 to help sellers automate tasks and processes. In the same year, the email marketing feature Shopify Email was also added, which enables chat-like functions on e-commerce websites.

Despite this, users are clearly not buying it. Some sellers feel that they have survived the most difficult year, and the platform not only does not provide any benefits to sellers in the new year, but also raises prices, which is really disheartening. Many small sellers have said that they will "find another way out" in the new year.

In fact, Shopify's price increase must have been a helpless move. In the past year, the company has experienced multiple blows such as plummeting stock prices and layoffs. In order to resume normal operations as soon as possible, the management should have made this decision after careful consideration.

Shopify

Price increase