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This is absolutely the worst news for Shopify. A very large portion of SMBs want to sell a handful of things without the overhead of maintaining and paying ove

This is absolutely the worst news for Shopify. A very large portion of SMBs want to sell a handful of things without the overhead of maintaining and paying over the top for a e-commerce cms. This plus social media will be a huge win for a lot of businesses

zyang 5y ago
Shopify is fine. They have a nice eco-system of devs and integrated apps. Gumroad should be worried.
- throxwaway98123 5y ago
  Shopify is fine is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Shopify is the 2008 equivalent in the tech world. Hugely overvalued, no secret sauce (pretty web fronts that are powered by stripe) Shopifys moat is nonexistent.
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    Shopify's moat is its ecosystem of developers and apps, for many of the same reasons WordPress still powers 39.5% of all websites in 2021. Shop Pay also provides many of the same benefits of Stripe -- global one-click payment across all their stores and more. I run into Shopify sites while shopping all the time and am always pleasantly surprised that I don't have to fill out anything to check out, it already knows me. Then those orders magically show up in the Shop app on my phone for order status and delivery tracking. Here's a screenshot. I did not make an account with any of these completely independent websites. Yet I checked out on all of them without typing my address or payment info. And all my orders appear here with tracking. https://i.imgur.com/D4XfvnJ.png https://i.imgur.com/D4XfvnJ.png
    - throxwaway98123 5y ago
      Wordpress is a free product. Shopify is not. Shopify built a good ecom cms and they’ll be right for some companies, but they’ve also cornered themselves as that company that makes ecom software. Remember Shopify POS? Me either. Anyways, consumer trends change. The way people buy online will change. There’s a future where ecom websites are basically the back catalogue of the future.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        Shopify is $29 per month on the cheapest plan. That's not going to make or break anyone's online store.
  - mod 5y ago
    I sort of agree with some of your points, but I think you're ignoring what shopify is actually good at. It is one more software offering that lets you build a store online. You can have a store up in an hour or something. You don't have to integrate software from various places. It's a one stop shop. That's worth a fair amount. I'm a web dev, and I've still chosen shopify in the past for side projects. I didn't want the headache of my own stack. They have competitors, sure, but they're a solid option in the space.
picardo 5y ago
Maybe for the very small sellers, yes. But Shopify will be fine without them. They provide a lot of value to medium size sellers with a lot of turn over, through their app marketplace and integrations.
- theturtletalks 5y ago
  And they can actually give you lower rates than 2.9% if you pay a higher subscription fee. Stripe won't drop below 2.9% unless you do $1M+ and even then it's not a guarantee.
  - ThalesX 5y ago
    They provide me with 1.4% + $0.24 for European cards which is a whole lot less than even national banks offer me...
    - awwaiid 5y ago
      ... don't they use stripe as their shopify-branded processor?
      - theturtletalks 5y ago
        Yes but their contract with Stripe let's them give you lower rates. The catch is that Shopify's API can't be used like Stripe's API to handle payments, you're locked into Shopify's checkout page. If you get Shopify Plus ($2000+/month), you can use Shopify's API akin to Stripe's API and accept payments without using the Shopify checkout page.
iamben 5y ago
Is it? Most people will still have a website of some sort to actually promote what they're selling. And if you hope to sell more than a handful of items a week, you have to start thinking about fulfillment and customer emails etc. This is definitely very cool, but I think Shopify still offers a lot (and still has their simple checkout this for $9 a month of whatever, which has a bunch of useful features).
- throxwaway98123 5y ago
  We’ll see for how long. Shopifys success is largely due to the fact that they were willing to do the messy dirty work of making a Ecom CMS that works and doesn’t run on Wordpress. Tech has changed and is catching up. With stripe handling the hardest part about ecom, other companies will sneak up behind Shopify because of better tech and replace traditional websites
  - iamben 5y ago
    There are better solutions than wordpress. But the ecosystem - developers, plugins and those capable of developing for it - is huge. Same with Shopify.
  - arkitaip 5y ago
    I like this offering by Stripe but it won't attract any Shopify customers except the tiniest ones who are basically one product shops. Even then you want lots of features that Stripe Payment Links simply doesn't offer. Now, if Stripe could offer their own hosted ecom solution... Hey, Stripe, get on this, it makes all the sense.
Elidrake24 5y ago
Is it? PayPal has offered the same service for nearly a decade; it even supports subscriptions (I'm not positive if this does or not).
CallMeJim 5y ago
Having a huge market player release a feature that seems to overlap with your business can seem like bad news, but hearken! it's not all downside. The case study here is Facebook introducing the ability to schedule posts in Facebook directly, theoretically hurting Buffer et al. Take a look at Buffer's publicly-available revenue data [1]. Can you see when this change occurred? In general, by lowering the barriers to entry into an activity, MORE people participate in it. This makes the general market larger. A portion of those users have a measure of success and end up wanting more advanced functionality, so they move to a tool that will give them more advanced functionality. In this case: Stripe Payment Links will enable a lot more people to conduct ecommerce, most of who would never have tried. Some of those people will be successful, find that ecommerce merchants need a lot of tools to manage their businesses, and will acquire those tools. I believe this is good news for Shopify, rather than bad. [1] https://buffer.com/revenue https://buffer.com/revenue
- orliesaurus 5y ago
  No I don't see when the revenue got a hit? Pretty sure scheduling post has been around for a couple of years at this point?
  - mediaman 5y ago
    That's his point: you can't see where revenue got hit, despite the functionality being replicated by Facebook.
pc 5y ago
Shopify is aggressively and successfully expanding their e-commerce product offering... if you're running a business that sells physical goods, the checkout is one of the simplest parts of the whole thing, and I don't think this will matter either way to them.
Rafert 5y ago
Shopify has had the Buy Button for years. Combine with the Lite plan for $9 a month (https://www.shopify.ca/lite https://www.shopify.ca/lite) and room to grow if the business takes off without replatforming.

zyang 5y ago

Shopify is fine. They have a nice eco-system of devs and integrated apps. Gumroad should be worried.

throxwaway98123 5y ago
Shopify is fine is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Shopify is the 2008 equivalent in the tech world. Hugely overvalued, no secret sauce (pretty web fronts that are powered by stripe) Shopifys moat is nonexistent.
- dangrossman 5y ago
  Shopify's moat is its ecosystem of developers and apps, for many of the same reasons WordPress still powers 39.5% of all websites in 2021. Shop Pay also provides many of the same benefits of Stripe -- global one-click payment across all their stores and more. I run into Shopify sites while shopping all the time and am always pleasantly surprised that I don't have to fill out anything to check out, it already knows me. Then those orders magically show up in the Shop app on my phone for order status and delivery tracking. Here's a screenshot. I did not make an account with any of these completely independent websites. Yet I checked out on all of them without typing my address or payment info. And all my orders appear here with tracking. https://i.imgur.com/D4XfvnJ.png https://i.imgur.com/D4XfvnJ.png
  - throxwaway98123 5y ago
    Wordpress is a free product. Shopify is not. Shopify built a good ecom cms and they’ll be right for some companies, but they’ve also cornered themselves as that company that makes ecom software. Remember Shopify POS? Me either. Anyways, consumer trends change. The way people buy online will change. There’s a future where ecom websites are basically the back catalogue of the future.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Shopify is $29 per month on the cheapest plan. That's not going to make or break anyone's online store.
- mod 5y ago
  I sort of agree with some of your points, but I think you're ignoring what shopify is actually good at. It is one more software offering that lets you build a store online. You can have a store up in an hour or something. You don't have to integrate software from various places. It's a one stop shop. That's worth a fair amount. I'm a web dev, and I've still chosen shopify in the past for side projects. I didn't want the headache of my own stack. They have competitors, sure, but they're a solid option in the space.

picardo 5y ago

Maybe for the very small sellers, yes. But Shopify will be fine without them. They provide a lot of value to medium size sellers with a lot of turn over, through their app marketplace and integrations.

theturtletalks 5y ago
And they can actually give you lower rates than 2.9% if you pay a higher subscription fee. Stripe won't drop below 2.9% unless you do $1M+ and even then it's not a guarantee.
- ThalesX 5y ago
  They provide me with 1.4% + $0.24 for European cards which is a whole lot less than even national banks offer me...
  - awwaiid 5y ago
    ... don't they use stripe as their shopify-branded processor?
    - theturtletalks 5y ago
      Yes but their contract with Stripe let's them give you lower rates. The catch is that Shopify's API can't be used like Stripe's API to handle payments, you're locked into Shopify's checkout page. If you get Shopify Plus ($2000+/month), you can use Shopify's API akin to Stripe's API and accept payments without using the Shopify checkout page.

iamben 5y ago

Is it? Most people will still have a website of some sort to actually promote what they're selling. And if you hope to sell more than a handful of items a week, you have to start thinking about fulfillment and customer emails etc. This is definitely very cool, but I think Shopify still offers a lot (and still has their simple checkout this for $9 a month of whatever, which has a bunch of useful features).

throxwaway98123 5y ago
We’ll see for how long. Shopifys success is largely due to the fact that they were willing to do the messy dirty work of making a Ecom CMS that works and doesn’t run on Wordpress. Tech has changed and is catching up. With stripe handling the hardest part about ecom, other companies will sneak up behind Shopify because of better tech and replace traditional websites
- iamben 5y ago
  There are better solutions than wordpress. But the ecosystem - developers, plugins and those capable of developing for it - is huge. Same with Shopify.
- arkitaip 5y ago
  I like this offering by Stripe but it won't attract any Shopify customers except the tiniest ones who are basically one product shops. Even then you want lots of features that Stripe Payment Links simply doesn't offer. Now, if Stripe could offer their own hosted ecom solution... Hey, Stripe, get on this, it makes all the sense.

Elidrake24 5y ago

Is it? PayPal has offered the same service for nearly a decade; it even supports subscriptions (I'm not positive if this does or not).

CallMeJim 5y ago

Having a huge market player release a feature that seems to overlap with your business can seem like bad news, but hearken! it's not all downside. The case study here is Facebook introducing the ability to schedule posts in Facebook directly, theoretically hurting Buffer et al. Take a look at Buffer's publicly-available revenue data [1]. Can you see when this change occurred? In general, by lowering the barriers to entry into an activity, MORE people participate in it. This makes the general market larger. A portion of those users have a measure of success and end up wanting more advanced functionality, so they move to a tool that will give them more advanced functionality. In this case: Stripe Payment Links will enable a lot more people to conduct ecommerce, most of who would never have tried. Some of those people will be successful, find that ecommerce merchants need a lot of tools to manage their businesses, and will acquire those tools. I believe this is good news for Shopify, rather than bad. [1] https://buffer.com/revenue https://buffer.com/revenue

orliesaurus 5y ago
No I don't see when the revenue got a hit? Pretty sure scheduling post has been around for a couple of years at this point?
- mediaman 5y ago
  That's his point: you can't see where revenue got hit, despite the functionality being replicated by Facebook.

pc 5y ago

Shopify is aggressively and successfully expanding their e-commerce product offering... if you're running a business that sells physical goods, the checkout is one of the simplest parts of the whole thing, and I don't think this will matter either way to them.

Rafert 5y ago

Shopify has had the Buy Button for years. Combine with the Lite plan for $9 a month (https://www.shopify.ca/lite https://www.shopify.ca/lite) and room to grow if the business takes off without replatforming.