Getting Started

Designing Your Shop

The Shopify Community

Orders and Shipments

Accepting Payments

Your Account

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Getting Started

What does Shopify do?

Shopify is a hosted application that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments through payment gateways, track and respond to orders — all without the hassle of running a physical store.

What doesn't Shopify do?

Shopify doesn’t handle any money or ship any packages for you. It does, however, integrate really nicely with services that do.

How do I install Shopify?

There’s no installation required! We host Shopify so you don’t have to worry about installing or upgrading any software. You only need a modern web browser such as Firefox or Safari and you’re ready to go.

What do I need in order to start selling?

You need:

  • Something to sell
  • One of our supported payment gateways to accept payments from your customers
  • A modern web browser (with javascript and Adobe Flash enabled) to use your online store's administration interface
  • A valid credit card to pay for your online store

Can I use my own domain name with my shop?

Yes! This can be a great way to help Shopify integrate with an existing site. Just get your domain registrar to point your domain to our servers, and your customers will enjoy a seamless integration between your main site and your online store.

Which countries and currencies are usable with Shopify?

Shopify is usable by merchants in any country and currency. However, we have more support for services, such as payment gateways, in some countries than in others.

Which languages are supported?

The administrative interface of a shop is in English, but the storefront, checkout, email communications, etc, of a shop can be in any language.

Designing Your Shop

Do I need to be a designer/programmer to change my shop design?

Not at all! Shopify comes packed with a wide variety of pre-designed templates that you can apply to your shop. New designs are added periodically so you can always keep your online store looking fresh, and our Theme Editor allows you to change the look of your store with a graphical interface that is easy to use.

What is Liquid?

Liquid is the template language used by Shopify. It is written inline with your theme’s HTML and lets you display your shop’s content however you see fit. You can get more information on using Liquid over at the Shopify Wiki. Liquid is open source software, meaning anyone can contribute to it.

What is Vision?

Vision is an application for designers that runs on Windows and OS X. It allows designers to develop themes for Shopify stores right from their desktop by simulating how each template would look when used with a real shop. Vision lets you create and test your theme with any editors and web browsers you like, then package it as a single file which you can upload and apply to your online store in just a couple of clicks.

The Shopify community

Where can I discuss tips and techniques with other Shopify users?

You can get advice from other Shopify users and share your tips and tricks in the Shopify forums. The forums are full of experienced shop owners and designers who are eager to help each other out, and the Shopify development team regularly contributes to the discussions.

Where can I find tutorials and guides?

In addition to the integrated help system provided in the shop management interface, you can find detailed tutorials and guides at the Shopify Help Wiki. Since it’s a wiki, the content there is a collaborative effort between the Shopify development team and users like you.

Accepting payments

What methods of payment can my customers use?

Shopify integrates with many different payment processing services, and more are being added all the time. Just give Shopify the details once you’ve set up an account with one of them.

What is a merchant account?

Every payment made with a credit card involves the transfer of funds to a merchant account, which a merchant (that is you) holds directly with a bank. The merchant has full responsibility for the transactions that occur with their account, and each bank has its own terms of service to which account-holders must adhere. If you want to accept credit card payments through your Shopify store, you will need either a merchant account of your own or the services of a third-party payment processor like PayPal (see below).

What is a payment gateway?

A payment gateway is a service that authorizes credit card payments and processes them securely with a user’s merchant account. Often, a merchant account and payment gateway are set up in one process through the same company.

What is a “third-party payment processor”?

A third-party processor such as PayPal lets you accept online payments without a merchant account of your own. Instead, they let you use their merchant account under their own terms of service, usually with very little setup required.

Direct Payment Processors

Offsite Payment Processors

Checkout Replacements

Can I accept funds manually?

Yes, absolutely. You can accept mailed cheques or money orders, direct bank transfers, or perhaps have an option to pay for an order in-store. Just give your manual payment method a name and an optional set of instructions for your customers, and they can select it like any other payment option.

Orders and shipments

What do I do when I get an order?

After you get a new order notification by email, RSS, or mobile text message, you would log in to your account and check out the details screen for that order. If you need to get more information from your customer, you can send them an email right from within Shopify using the convenient form. Then just package up the order, send it to the shipping address provided, then mark the order as shipped within Shopify to keep track of things. If your payment processor is set up to separately authorize and then capture funds, you have control over how much money is transferred after the order is placed and you can follow best online business practices by only completing the transaction when you ship the order.

Can I get someone else to take care of shipping?

Yes! Shopify can integrate with fulfillment services just as with payment gateways. Right now we support Fulfillment by Amazon, Shipwire, and Webgistix and will be adding services from more companies in the future. Just send a bulk shipment every once in a while to your fulfillment provider, and Shopify can let them know whenever an order comes in that they need to ship.

Your Account

How much does Shopify cost?

We have several pricing plans for you to choose from in order to best suit the size and nature of your business.

How can I pay?

You will need a Visa, Mastercard or American Express to pay for your online store.

How do I get billed?

Once a month you will be sent an invoice email linking you to a page that shows all the transaction fees that you will be charged as part of your price plan for that billing period. At that point you have seven days to “dispute” the fees for transactions which do not represent real sales, such as orders you’ve made for testing purposes. Once the seven day period is up, you credit card will automatically be charged.

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