SAP Commerce Cloud vs. Shopify

For a straight forward B2B shop with a simple frontend the whole SAP Commerce Suite is pretty robust yet fairly expensive. It is still not a true and full blown headless solution so if your enterprise is on a MACH strategy then this product would not be the foundation for it. If a company wants to build rich CX frontend experiences, then Spartacus is probably not the best and a custom frontend would be recommended, in that case you compromise on the advantages of a full blown solution from one vendor

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

• Centralized Data Management: SAP Commerce Cloud excels in centralizing data from various operational sectors, which is pivotal in the chemicals industry. This feature allows for better oversight and management of complex supply chains, regulatory compliance, and customer interactions. Having a single source of truth for crucial business data minimizes discrepancies and promotes informed decision-making.
• Real-Time Data Processing: The real-time data processing capability of SAP Commerce Cloud is invaluable. It aids in timely adherence to regulatory changes and helps in meeting customer demands promptly. In a sector where regulations and market conditions are ever-evolving, real-time data processing is fundamental for maintaining compliance and ensuring customer satisfaction.

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

• Some procedures in the CMS are usually very slow, specifically in the CMS Cockpit; I cannot use most of the templates or manage certain content. For this reason, I try to find other alternatives, but they are not as efficient as CMS Cockpit should be.
• There are some functions that are a bit outdated, more like the user interface; it is worth mentioning that this is a very important tool because it is the first contact that customers have with the software and the company as such.

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

I truly enjoy leading Hybris development projects and participating in new feature development for the platform. I see huge potential for growth and hope to be instrumental in bringing Hybris to the bleeding edge of presentation layer technology.

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

Besides SmartEdit and Product Catalog, the rest of the application is very good. Including the customer support in case of a need. There are 3rd party offerings for a better content management or Product Management but these not only require additional expensive licensing, they also bring additional development efforts and dependencies to external companies

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.

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Shopify support is always available when you need them.

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

Incentivized

We have the right to open a ticket or submit request to SAP support teams for all the problems we have experienced. They also provide solutions for critical issues within 48 hours. In addition, the product has support documents such as a user guide and admin guide. In addition, there is a strong community of users. In this way, we can access solution of some specific problems that we have fallen on from there.

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.

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Scalability of the product was good Seamless integrations were helped in reducing the implementation for the development team to integrate with the SAP ERP Product framework helped customer to customize and adapt the new features which were developed basis business processes and ease of customer experience. Deployment and creation of the build becomes very easy with the CCv2 setup.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

We selected SAP Commerce Cloud over Spryker because SAP Commerce Cloud offers more robust and comprehensive capabilities that align with our business needs.We already had a team who was skilled in hybris (old SAP Commerce) and experience with hybris in the past was good

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

Its easy to update my catalog and inventory. I have added more SKUs and expanded to international shipping. My items resonate to worldwide markets and I now have the opportunity to sell to them. SAP Commerce Cloud should allow me to scale the company and really touch worldwide. I may also add other products to the portfolio.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Order value has increased, sales volume has increased, and IT costs have been greatly decreased.
• Infrastructure costs are decreased since human work is eliminated, saving time and energy; order values are also raised as a result of smooth and effective storefront administration.

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