Guide
Shopify or a website?
Shopify comes up constantly when small business owners start looking, because it is the most heavily marketed option there is. For most service businesses it is the wrong tool — not a worse one, a different one. Here is how to tell which side of the line you are on.
What Shopify is actually for
Shopify is ecommerce infrastructure: product listings, inventory, a checkout, payment processing, shipping, abandoned cart recovery. Basic runs $39 a month, or about $29 billed annually.
That is a genuinely good deal for a business shipping physical products. Everything in it exists to move an item from your shelf to a customer's door.
If you are a plumber, a salon, a law firm or a landscaper, you will use almost none of it. You are not shipping anything. You are trying to get someone to call.
The real cost is higher than the plan
The subscription is the starting point, not the total. Most merchants end up paying two to three times the plan fee once apps, transaction fees and a paid theme are added.
So Basic at $39 a month is realistically $80–$120 a month for a working store — roughly $2,900–$4,300 over three years, on a platform built for a job you are not doing.
What a service business needs instead
A phone number that is impossible to miss. Most service enquiries are calls, not forms. The number belongs in the header on every page.
Pages for each service you sell. People search for their problem, not your business name. A page per service is what makes you findable.
Pages for the areas you cover. Local searches are the highest-intent traffic there is, and they need a page naming the place.
Proof. Photographs of finished work, reviews, licence numbers. Services are bought on trust because the customer cannot inspect the product first.
Prices, or at least ranges. The single most common reason someone leaves a service website is that it did not tell them what anything costs.
When a service business does want Shopify
There are real cases. A salon selling retail products online. A bakery taking cake orders with deposits. A gym selling apparel and supplements.
The pattern is the same in each: you are shipping or selling a physical item as a genuine second revenue line. If that is you, Shopify alongside your main site is reasonable.
If the products are an afterthought, a simple payment link on your existing site does the job for a fraction of the cost and none of the maintenance.