Kentico Xperience vs. Shopify

Well suited for marketers that do not have in-house web programming or web designing resources available. Less appropriate for people that aren't computer savvy (i.e. don't know how to use basic programs like email, Excel, PowerPoint) or for those who are not detail-oriented because if you skip certain steps when adding/editing content, your webpage won't render correctly and/or create negative impact for search engine optimization without you knowing it.

Incentivized

Shopify is perfect for companies who are looking to run a simple-to-medium base e-commerce system and aren't looking to get too fancy with integrations. Those companies, though, that have more complex integrations (especially with checkout) might be better off using another e-com system out there where you have access to the full core code.

Incentivized

• Ease of use for the developer, content authors, and internet marketers that use it. The user interface in Kentico 8 truly is amazing and easy to pick up with no training.
• Strong customization and integration capabilities, including the built in REST service, Integration Bus, and elegant API. I love the fact that if there is anything not in the box we can use the system to extend it or connect it to any CRM, ERP, or other third party service very easily.
• Large out of the box functionality. There is an extremely high level of value that the platform provides. Instead of having to build extra modules for things like Event Booking, Forums, Polls, or E-commerce, they are already there for us to use.
• Ability to control the HTML output of the site at a very fine level. Creating HTML5 is very easy in Kentico and implementing any design, as responsive, is totally possible in the system.
• The ability to get a very high level of insight into the visitors journey through the website and market back to them with the Contact management, Lead Scoring, and Marketing Automation modules is very impressive.
• The scalablity of the system is impressive. Running a very highly trafficked web site is totally possible with Kentico and its strong caching and web farm capabilities.
• The support that Kentico provides is top notch, 24/7 global support is included with any purchase, 7 day bug fix policy, and excellent documentation
• The development community is engaged and ready to help if you are a developer learning Kentico, and the Kentico partner community is very strong as well.

Incentivized

• Constant support and guidance on global policies that might affect your business
• Flexible app integrations with an open storefront to allow developers to create helpful services for businesses as they grow
• Extremely customizable - allowing a business to shine and operate in their own unique way

Incentivized

• Their slogan - "Right First Time Technology" - I get what they mean, but some things may be lost in translation. This is a sentence fragment in English, and some clients may be turned off by it.
• Easier to understand documentation - their official documentation could use an overhaul. All of the information is there, but most of their code examples need to be fleshed out a bit. This aspect of their product can be very hard to navigate for first-time Kentico developers.
• Email Queue - this should be in the same section as Email Marketing; currently this is under Configuration

Incentivized

• Basic requests for store management are not out of the box. Shopify puts a lot of stock in their apps and app partners to bring some of the features that I expected to be out of the box. I've used Shopify for multiple clients and ran into roadblocks for each when we were unable to do basic things. Sometimes the apps are free and it's no big deal. Other times you have to pay for another service to do something as basic as set up stock out reports and notifications.
• Their support/team communication is poor. Again, working on multiple stores with license on all their levels and the support was consistently unresponsive or unhelpful.
• If you're a partner managing multiple stores, the log-in between the partner dashboard and your individual stores is confusing. I'm often found in a loop searching for the right place to log in because you can't access the stores you are a partner on in the same way as the other Shopify stores. Seems minor, but it's a frustrating thing I encounter often.

Incentivized

We are locked into Kentico for the long haul. It provides us with an easy and flexible solution for a very non technical company to create a site and have the features they want, especially with the inclusion of EMS into our license. Now we have a true platform to build and grow our solutions.

Nothing we have used in the past or have seen thus far even comes close to offering what we get with Shopify Plus, especially for the price. You cannot even come close to getting what we are getting at the price we pay. We are beyond thrilled and Shopify Plus meets and exceeds all of our needs and expectations. We love it!

Incentivized

It seriously is one of the best interfaces I have ever used. I also love the fact that I can use UI personalization to secure any functionality by user or role that I don't want that role to have access to. The best part is the customization of the UI, I can add in any button, tab, or menu item I want through it, no code required.

Incentivized

It is fairly easy to use Shopify regardless of what task you are attempting to perform. Most things are customizable to a degree without requiring coding ability. I have very limited coding experience and have still been able to navigate my way around changing features of the website that require edits to the code with the use of AI and trial-and-error. This previously wasn't possible with the WooCommerce platform.

Incentivized

Shopify support is always available when you need them.

Incentivized

Shopify website speed is quite impressive. Even if we integrate couple apps, it does not hamper the site speed.

Incentivized

Their support staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and will work with you until your issue is fixed. This could take a few phone calls back and forth, but they are very diligent in helping you.

Incentivized

In terms of support I give Shopify a 9 out of 10 because they're always very friendly and thorough, and they personally can't solve my problem for me they always point me in the proper direction with the proper information I need to move forward

Incentivized

Shopify offered us several trainings to setup a Shopify store, how to build a brand, SEO, product photography etc. All this content have been super helpful in our journey.

Incentivized

The system provides many opportunities to integrate and enhance the platform and makes it easy to do so.

Just start now and make the switch, the sooner the better. You will love it and it is really a simple process

Incentivized

Previously we used Microsoft SharePoint as a content management system and it was very limited, required a ton of support, and we encountered bugs on a weekly/monthly basis. All of the negatives that we had associated with SharePoint went away when we switched to Kentico. It was really night and day and Kentico has really helped us move forward and become much more efficient.

Incentivized

Shopify out of the box had more features and did what we were looking to do that BigCommerce could not do without extensive customizations using a third-party vendor. That made it a very easy choice to switch to Shopify. Most of the customizations needed in Shopify we were able to do ourselves.

Incentivized

Shopify has basic to high-end plans. The plans grow with the brand`s growth and I love that about Shopify.

Incentivized

• Kentico has allowed us to deliver to clients more quickly, more cheaply, and with high quality to our clients. It's an inexpensive licensing model, an easy development platform, and powerful enough we can deliver amazing results to our clients.
• Kentico's quick setup and deployment model has allowed me to very quickly ramp up new developers. This saves money and time.
• We routinely see extraordinary returns in visits, time on page, and other critical metrics after rolling out Kentico-based systems/applications.

Incentivized

• It got the store up quickly so the client could start selling. She was previously selling products on Etsy and Facebook and wanted to consolidate everything onto one website, so the main thing Shopify solved was to reduce the store owner's time in managing all her products on multiple sites. Also, we had previously built a website on Wix with all the custom functionality and branding she needed - a truly great, high-end website - but it performed so slowly that it was unusable. So the speed at which Shopify can be set up and then works on the page is appreciable.
• The website was manageable by the client - she could figure the system out herself after a while so she saved money on costs for hiring developers. She did have to hire developers to customize some of the plug-ins but costs are all relative; it wasn't a high investment compared to building a full e-commerce website. With the complexity and size of her product base and the functionality and branding she wanted to have in a website, and the potential of her business, she would have needed to invest well over $10,000 to get to where she really needs to be. In the end she kept the budget under $5000.00.
• Costs kept climbing with plug-ins having to be added with everything. My client became more involved in building the website and began to try multiple plugins, and she did not have the skill base to evaluate the plugins functionalities so she chose plugins that did not do everything she needed, and then ended up paying the plugin developers to customize the plugins. So on one hand, it's pretty amazing to be able to bring up an e-commerce website as quickly as a week or so, but on the other hand if you need anything customized or deeper functionality in regards to product searching and filtering on the web page, and management on the backend, it quickly goes beyond the skills of the average person to manage, and above their expected budget as well. In the end my client really did not get anything close to the functionality for the website we had originally envisioned.
• Shopify was the easiest way we could find to bring the client's products to a global market. We evaluated several other platforms and the functionality simple did not seem to be adequate, so Shopify seemed like the only solution that could do enough of what we needed and still stay within this client's budget. Really the problem in this project was not platform per se but that the budget wasn't large enough. Shopify managed to provide a solution for an ecommerce store with thousands of products on a tiny budget, so in the sense of pure functionality it provided the best value of all the platforms we evaluated. The solution still isn't big enough for this client's business though so, without having insights into this client's post-build sales results, my guess is that because her new website did not make her products easier to sort through, and she likely didn't have much more budget left to invest in SEO and other marketing of the website, her sales probably didn't increase substantially as a result of having built the website. So I think this project all in all did not likely have a high ROI.

Incentivized