Shift4Shop (formerly 3DCart) vs Shopify (2024) – Which one is best for Business?

In this post, we are comparing two of the most popular options for building an ecommerce website, which are Shift4Shop and Shopify, but which one is the best ecommerce platform?

To answer this question, we are going to be doing an in-depth comparison of the two ecommerce platforms looking at the most important aspects to consider when choosing a platform to build your online store.

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Shift4Shop vs Shopify: Quick Summary

Shift4Shop vs Shopify: which one is best? Shopify came out as the clear winner between the two platforms for a number of reasons:

1. It’s easier to use – Shopify is easier when it comes to setting up your store, customizing your site and managing your inventory and has much better and efficient workflows
2. Better website builder – in terms of theme selection and customization, Shopify offers more options, control and it is much easier to customize than Shift4Shop
3. Larger community – this includes a larger selection of themes and apps but also a lot more resources to help you with building, running and growing your store

There are two areas where Shift4Shop beat Shopify and that is the pricing and the number of standard features but as an overall package, Shopify is a clear winner.

3.8/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Shift4Shop

4.4/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Shopify

Pricing

Try Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop End-to-End: Free

Try Shopify

Shopify Basic: $39/m
Shopify Standard: $105/m
Shopify Advanced: $399/m

One of the biggest changes with the Shift4Shop rebrand has been the introduction of the end-to-end plan which is completely free as long as you meet the following conditions:

1. You are processing at least $500/m in sales
2. You don’t use PayPal for your payments

If you don’t meet these conditions, then Shift4Shop costs $29/m but the plan includes all of the features that the platform offers. Shift4Shop is only currently only available for US merchants.

Shopify is much more traditional in their pricing as they offer three plans which appeal to businesses of different sizes but they all come with transaction fees for any online payment that is processed by a third-party payment gateway such as PayPal or AmazonPay and these are:

• Shopify Basic – 2%
• Shopify Standard – 1%
• Shopify Advanced – 0.5%

If you use Shopify’s in-house payment gateway Shopify Payments, you are not charged this fee and this can make choosing the right package a bit tricky but you can use tools like our Shopify fee calculator to help you figure out which one will be the best option.

If your business really starts to grow, then you can move on to Shopify Plus, which is a custom package designed specifically for big businesses and starts from around $1500/m.

Free Trial

Shift4Shop doesn’t have a free trial due to their only option being the free package.

Shopify offers a 3-Day Free Trial and the first month only costs $1.

Features

As two of the biggest names in the industry, it is expected that they all offer a good range of features for their users and below is a summary of the features that they offer for the packages listed above.

Shift4Shop

As standard features go, Shift4Shop has one of the best offerings out there and there are so many features that we can only list a few below but if you want to see a more in-depth breakdown of the features available, check out our full Shift4Shop Review.

With Shift4Shop, you can pick and choose some of the features that are active on your store by using their Module system, which allows them to be quickly and easily turned on/off. Now the amount of modules available does depend on the package that you are on.

The modules that are available are a combination of features and functionality along with integrations with third-party platforms.

Shopify

As the biggest name in the industry, it is not surprising that Shopify comes with a good selection of features as standard and below is a short summary of what is available:

If you would like to see a more in-depth breakdown of the features that Shopify has to offer, then check out our full Shopify Review.

Shopify App Store

As you can see Shopify does come with a very good selection of features but due to Shopify allowing third-party developers to develop apps, the amount of features that can be added to a Shopify store is pretty incredible.

To make these apps accessible, Shopify has created its own App Store, which currently has over 3,000 apps available. This selection is a combination of apps made by Shopify and third-party developers.

Unfortunately, not all of these apps are free to use but many offer free trials or packages, if you want access to all of the features, then you are going to have to pay and if you are not careful, it can make Shopify become quite expensive.

Website Builder

Shift4Shop

Shift4Shops website builder includes over 100 free-to-use, mobile responsive themes and this is one of the largest selections of any fully hosted ecommerce platform.

But unfortunately, the theme customization doesn’t do their selection of good-looking themes justice as the process is not only limited but also disjointed, this is because Shift4Shop has number of different editors, including:

• Theme Editor – this lets you change the colors and typography on your store (shown in the screenshot below)
• Template editor – where you can change the HTML and CSS
• Homepage Editor – this is where you can change your homepage by adding sections (but you can’t edit or remove some existing sections) and the preview bar for the sections is so small that they aren’t easy to see

Then there are different areas of the dashboard to change your logo and customizing the header and footer is done with a text editor.

Creating and editing pages with Shift4Shop is also not a straightforward process and unless you know where to click (we Googled it), you won’t find them and when you do, you get a basic text editor to help you create your pages.

The one area of Shift4Shops website builder that is pretty good is the built-in blog as while the bulk of the content is added with the text editor they use a lot, you can add sections to your post using the page editor and this means you can create some good looking blog posts.

But overall, Shift4Shops website builder is frustrating to use and doesn’t give you as much control over your website as you get with Shopify.

Shopify

One area where Shopify has always excelled is its website builder and it is still one of the market leaders.

In terms of theme selection, there are over 100 free and paid themes in the Shopify theme store (paid themes range from $200-$350) but there are also thousands available through marketplaces such as ThemeForest and direct from developers.

Where Shopify’s website builder really excels is the customization as it lets you create custom page templates for nearly all of your site’s pages, with blog posts being the only exception and within the customizer, you can:

• Add, rearrange and remove sections for all types of pages
• Change settings including colors & fonts
• Customize your header and footer, including your navigation menus
• Create custom page templates

You also get access to the theme code, should you need to change anything at that level but overall, there isn’t much you can’t do when it comes to customization with Shopify.

As mentioned above, you can create custom pages and there are two ways to do this, the first is using the text editor or you can create a custom template using sections from the theme customizer.

The only area where Shopify isn’t very strong is the built-in blog as you can only use the text editor to create posts and you don’t get access to any of the sections available in the customizer, which is a shame but there are page builder apps that can be used to create custom blog posts.

Support

Running an ecommerce website can be challenging at times and you require some help, so what support do you get from these platforms?

Shift4Shop

All of the Shift4Shop packages include 24/7 phone, live chat and ticket support.

Contacting the support team is very easy, with the live chat icon available directly from the admin dashboard and other support options displayed in the help center. Shift4Shop also has its own community support forum, which can be a great source of information.

Shopify

Shopify made some changes to their customer support in 2023, with an overhaul of the help center and all support moving to live chat (with the help of an AI chatbot) and email.

This has made contacting their support easier and it is available 24/7, you just have to figure out how to get past the chatbot so that you can speak to a human operator.

They also have a community forum that is frequented by their support staff and other users will also offer help and advice where they can.

Hosting & Performance

Both Shift4Shop and Shopify platforms are very open and honest about the hosting environment that they use for their websites and they all offer the following:

• PCI Compliant Hosting
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Storage
• 99.9% + Uptime
• Global CDN
• Free SSL Certificate

This all looks great right, but how well does this actually work? Well to test out the platforms, we took five customer example sites from both platforms and ran them through Uptrends Speed Test tool (New York Server) and Google’s Page Speed Insights, once a day for three days to get some good data.

Desktop Load Time:
2.38 Seconds
Desktop PageSpeed Score:
76/100
Mobile Load Time:
2.6 Seconds
Mobile PageSpeed Score:
44/100

Desktop Load Time:
3.07 Seconds
Desktop PageSpeed Score:
79/100
Mobile Load Time:
3.6 Seconds
Mobile PageSpeed Score:
34/100

Shift4Shop does just edge Shopify when it comes to performance, with the most notable difference being load time but ideally, both platforms should be aiming for sub 2-second loads times.

To see how both platforms performed against the competition, then check out our annual ecommerce performance testing results.

Ease of Use

Facts and figures are one thing but what are these platforms like to use and how do they compare to each other? Well, that is what we are going to be looking at in this section.

Getting Started

Shift4Shop

Signing up to Shift4Shop is a very simple process and you don’t need much more than your email address and to create a password in order to her started.

Once you have completed the sign-up process, you will be taken through to the admin dashboard and on your first sign-in, you will be greeted by a short intro video that gives you some basic information about the platform and how to get started.

There is also a short setup guide with prompts to set up parts of your Shift4Shop store.

Navigating your way around the Shift4Shop dashboard is simple enough as they have gone for a sidebar navigation menu, with clearly labeled headings and sub-headings.

The only real downside to the navigation menu is that some sections that you would expect to have their own heading, such as design are nestled under another heading, in this case, settings. This means that it does take a little bit of time to figure out exactly where everything is.

Shopify

Getting started with Shopify is really easy to do, as it is simply a case of going to the Shopify website and entering your email address and creating a password.

Once you have done this, you will be taken to a page where you are asked what stage your business is at such as just getting started or turning over X amount a year along with some other questions. You will then be asked to enter your business information, which is your name, store name and address.

After you have done all this, you will be taken into your dashboard for the first time and be greeted by a short setup guide.

As you can see in the image above, the setup guide doesn’t include that many steps and is missing out on very important ones such as setting up your payment gateway and delivery methods.

Fortunately, they have created a very useful set of videos in their academy, that are worth watching as they not only show you how to get started with Shopify but also include some tips and tricks to get you up and running.

Outside of the setup guide, the Shopify dashboard is a very nice place to be. It has a simple, uncluttered layout and the sidebar navigation menu is clearly labeled, making it very easy to not only find out where everything is within the dashboard but also to move from one section to another.

Managing Your Inventory

Being able to manage your stock efficiently and effectively is a hugely important part of running an online store and for me, there are three main areas to this and they are:

• Adding products
• Organizing your Products
• Managing your inventory

Shift4Shop

At first glance, adding a new product to Shift4Shop looks very easy as when you click to add a new product, you are taken through to a single page layout with many of the options you need to create a product such as title, description, media and pricing.

The problem is that to access all of the options for your product listing, you need to create a new product and then go back in and edit it, this will bring up additional tabbed pages that include a host of additional options.

It is a similar story when it comes to organizing your products as creating a new category is simple and comes in the form of a pop-up but if you want to add any options such as a description or image, you need to go in and edit the category once it has been created.

This back and forth between pages means that Shift4Shop is less than optimal when it comes to workflow and is quite frustrating to use.

When it comes to managing your inventory, Shift4Shop offers a selection of editors but once again the workflow isn’t optimal and they would be much better served by combining them all into one easy-to-use editor than having one for inventory and one for price.

Shopify

Adding a new product is really easy to do on the Shopify platform as they have gone for a simple, one-page layout, which has a nice flow from one section to the next. They haven’t gone overboard with the options and you get the right amount of sections to really help sell your product.

Shopify does things a little differently when it comes to organizing your inventory as they have developed their own collections system and there are a couple of different options on how this can be used.

The easiest way is the manual method, which works very similar to a traditional category-based system but the automatic method takes a little getting used to as it works of rules that you set up using product tags and to get it working effectively, it is worth reading through the documentation.

Managing your inventory is pretty easy to do in Shopify as they have included an inventory section, that allows you to update your stock quantity in bulk but if you want to make changes to the pricing, SKU code or any other field from the product, then you need to select the products you want to edit from the product overview screen and then click the edit product button, which allows you to make updates in bulk.

Managing Orders

Shift4Shop – Order management in Shift4Shop is pretty good as you can quickly and easily manage your orders, such as printing invoices and/or packing slips, updating order statuses and exporting orders in bulk or individually, directly from the order overview page.

Shopify – While the order management system in Shopify isn’t bad, it does miss one very useful feature and that is the option to print order invoices in bulk, directly from your order dashboard, which can only be achieved by installing an order printer app.

There are some bulk features such as being able to update order statuses, print packing slips and exporting all of your order information in CSV format.

Summary

Conclusion

Shift4Shop vs Shopify – Which one is the Best Ecommerce Platform?

Overall, Shopify comes out on top as it offers one of the best ecommerce solutions on the market and outperforms Shift4Shop in basically every area as it is:

1. Easier to use
2. Has a larger selection of additional features
3. Has a much better selection of themes
4. Offers a great theme customizer

Shopify is strong in every area and while it isn’t perfect, with the transaction fees and requiring apps to do certain features that are included with other platforms, it does offer a very good ecommerce platform.

The only area where Shift4Shop beats Shopify is standard features, as Shift4Shop boasts one of the best standard feature sets but the rest of the platform isn’t great as the poor workflow makes it frustrating to use, theme customization is very poor and the dashboard is starting to feel quite dated.

So there it is, our complete comparison between these two ecommerce platforms and as with all business decisions, it comes down to what YOU and YOUR business require.

3.8/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Shift4Shop

4.4/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Shopify

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Paul Haywood

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Hi, I'm Paul, the Owner and Founder of EcommerceGold.
I ran my own Ecommerce Business for over 7 years and now help others start their own online retail empires!

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