PayPal Zettle vs. Shopify

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PayPal Zettle
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
PayPal Zettle (formerly PayPal Here) is a POS and payment processing system that includes either a mobile card reader or a chip reader (hardware), and is powered by the mobile PayPal Here app. Admins can add up to 1,000 users per account, and the app also includes invoicing, reporting, and inventory management features. The pricing structure for payment processing is: 2.7% per US card swipe. 3.5% + $0.15 to key in cards. 2.9% + $0.30 to invoice. 1% for cross-border transfers.N/A
Shopify
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.
$39
per month
Pricing
PayPal ZettleShopify
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic Shopify
$39
per month
Grow
$105
per month
Advanced
$399
per month
Shopify Plus
2,000
per month
Shopify Plus
2,300
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PayPal ZettleShopify
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsA 25% discount is offered for annual billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PayPal ZettleShopify
Features
PayPal ZettleShopify
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
PayPal Zettle
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.7
Ratings
10% above category average
Product catalog & listings00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Product management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Bulk product upload00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Branding00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Mobile storefront00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Product variations00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Website integration00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Visual customization00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
CMS00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
PayPal Zettle
-
Ratings
Shopify
7.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Checkout user experience00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
PayPal Zettle
-
Ratings
Shopify
9.6
Ratings
15% above category average
eCommerce security00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
PayPal Zettle
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.4
Ratings
9% above category average
Promotions & discounts00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Personalized recommendations00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
SEO00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
PayPal Zettle
-
Ratings
Shopify
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-site management00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Order processing00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Inventory management00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Shipping00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Custom functionality00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PayPal ZettleShopify
Small Businesses
Square POS
Square POS
Score 10.0 out of 10
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Epicor Eagle
Epicor Eagle
Score 7.9 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PayPal ZettleShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PayPal ZettleShopify
Likelihood to Recommend
Despite the time that you have to wait to be able to receive the money for each transaction made through the PayPal Here POS system, I consider that it is a system that has a lot of potential and that, without a doubt, allows companies to obtain a lot of POS system cheaper, no need to pay for a bank POS system that is much more expensive and requires a more complex process to configure and register at the bank branch. I would definitely recommend PayPal Here for any small, medium or large company, it has excellent potential, the reading of the NFC chips is instantaneous and allows each credit or debit card to be recognized immediately and the transaction to be completed in a few seconds. It is a very advanced system, easy to use and very easy to configure, if you are looking for a system that is not so complicated to add a POS to your company, PayPal Here is the best option.
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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.
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Pros
  • Our customers can check out no matter where we are.
  • It is incredibly easy to use. Training new retail employees and volunteers takes almost no time.
  • When we were shopping around for solutions, Paypal Here was very cost effective.
  • Implementation with our current systems went very smoothly. The Paypal support team was great.
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  • 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
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Cons
  • The fees are a little bit high, although all POS and payment systems do charge fees.
  • Sometimes signing in and getting things to connect through our web store can be a challenge. It is great once it is set up but downloading plug ins and setting up initially is a challenge.
  • We have in-store pick up items that customers pay for at pick up and shipped items which customers pay for through the PayPal Zettle portal at checkout. This was very confusing to set up. I wish there was an easier way to mark items as payment upfront and payment later.
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  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
There are no monthly costs, the only expense is the card processing fee which is lower than nearly everyone else out there.
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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!
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Usability
The overall usability was good for our organization. We rarely experienced much downtime or errors when using PayPal Zettle for business transactions. Some of our IPhone users had login and security issues a few times. That was the exception to the rule and we have been able to operate consistently for the majority of the time.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
Adding skus was down for 1hr one day, otherwise have never experienced an outage.
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Shopify support is always available when you need them.
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Performance
Everything is very fast. Adding products, selling products, processing cards, and receiving funds.
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Shopify website speed is quite impressive. Even if we integrate couple apps, it does not hamper the site speed.
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Support Rating
Support hasn't been needed in the 2 years of using PayPal but I have received calls from the company in the past asking about my experience with the device that was sent to me and they were pretty helpful with advice. Support is all over the internet if needed but for emergencies, so it is best to contact them during business hours.
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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
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
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.
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Implementation Rating
It went very smoothly.
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Just start now and make the switch, the sooner the better. You will love it and it is really a simple process
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Alternatives Considered
Square has good software and is relatively easy to use. The Square payment screen is more advanced than the basic model that PayPal uses. However, PayPal was a service that I already used-- and the company made it easy to integrate it into our business. Convenience and ease of use were key.
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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.
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Scalability
Have not run into any limitations as of yet, with 500 SKUs entered and counting.
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Shopify has basic to high-end plans. The plans grow with the brand`s growth and I love that about Shopify.
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Return on Investment
  • One positive impact that PayPal here has had on our business is the ability to accept credit card payments which in itself increases our customer basis by 50%.
  • When PayPal fails, we have to pay higher fees to other processors, although I don't have an exact dollar impact.
  • When we struggle to take a payment using PayPal Here it makes our customers uneasy.
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  • 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.
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