eCommerce platforms have been around for quite some time now, but Shopify has the distinction of being one of the earliest solutions in the market that helped business owners set up online stores in a faster and more efficient manner. Shopify has been around since 2004, and is the brainchild of the Canadian developer Tobias Lutke. The main purpose of the solution was to make building an online store faster and simpler, and in Lutke's own words, Shopify makes it possible to do in just 20 minutes, what it used to take months before the product was launched.

Changing the rules of the game

Shopify has been a game changer in every sense of the word. The platform uses Ruby on Rails to power itself, instead of the commonly used PHP for web applications, and offer extensive support to its users. It is a paid software solution which the owners have marketed using a software as a service license, and allows for quick deployment of entire eCommerce stores in a very short time. The company also ensures that its clients get prompt support for any problems that their store is facing. Monthly pricing of the platform makes it cost effective for business owners to try the service, and Shopify includes a wide range of services and features that can help your online store become the next big thing.

Features offered by Shopify

Shopify has gained such commercehq because it has made it exceedingly simple to run an online store. Hundreds of premium themes are offered by the service, and you can customize every aspect of them according to your requirements. If you do not like any of the themes that Shopify offers, there are hundreds of Shopify Experts who can create a template exactly as per your specification. Once your basic website layout is ready, all you need to do is upload the pictures of your products along with relevant information about them. The entire platform is designed to do as much work as it can on its own, so that you only have to take care of the bare minimum and still get great results. Your monthly subscription gets you:

Setting up an online store requires a considerable amount of investment. The development of the portal, the subscription to payment gateways, and the round the clock maintenance team for the website can end up costing you a lot. Shopify eliminates all this, and lets you set up a complete store for your products in less than one hour, that too or a fraction of what it would have cost you to set up an eCommerce store on your own. Everything is preconfigured, and your store can start selling your product the very day.