Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, and for a long time it was also one of the easiest to recommend.

Years ago, it genuinely felt like the “safe choice,” a simple way for a small business to get a store online quickly without needing to be super technical.

But over the past several years, my opinion has changed.

After working with Shopify stores for clients (and dealing with the day-to-day reality of maintaining and improving them), I’ve run into the same problems again and again: basic design changes that turn into custom code projects, “simple” features that require stacking paid apps, support that’s far less helpful than it used to be, and (most concerning) how easy it can be for a false DMCA claim to take a store offline at the worst possible time.

This post isn’t meant to bash Shopify or convince everyone to abandon it.

It’s just my honest take on why I don’t recommend building a store on Shopify anymore, what I’ve seen go wrong in real businesses, and what I think is a better approach for most people today.

Design & Customization: Simple Changes Aren’t Simple

When you build a Shopify store, the first big decision you make is your theme. That theme doesn’t just “influence” how your site looks, it basically defines your layout, your page structure, your styling, and what you can (and can’t) change through the admin.

The problem is that most themes (even pricey premium ones) are surprisingly limited once you step outside the handful of settings they include.

Typically, you can adjust things like colors, fonts, and maybe a few homepage sections, but as soon as you want to do very normal, everyday design tweaks, you start running into walls.

Here are some examples of “simple” changes that often become harder than they should be on Shopify:

In a lot of site builders, you’d handle changes like these with a visual editor or modular page builder.

With Shopify, once you go beyond what your theme settings allow, the main way forward is custom development inside the theme files.

And that’s where Shopify’s templating language comes in: Liquid.

Liquid is the coding language Shopify uses to generate pages and pull in store data (products, collections, prices, variants, etc.).

If you want to truly customize layouts, add new reusable sections, or create a custom template for a specific type of page, you’re usually editing theme templates and writing Liquid code.

The biggest problem is that Liquid is Shopify-specific.

Outside of Shopify, Liquid isn’t a skill most developers need, so there’s less incentive for people to learn it compared to widely used coding languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or PHP.

That means:

Pages are another place where this becomes obvious.

Shopify technically lets you create “pages,” but the default editor is very basic,  it’s mostly a simple content field where you can add text and images, almost like writing a blog post.

If you want a page with a real design (like a sales page, a service-style layout, a comparison table, a split-column section, testimonials, icons, a feature grid, etc.) you’ll usually need to:

So from a design and customization perspective, Shopify tends to push you into one of three paths:

I unfortunately do not know how to code in Liquid so I can’t help you build a Shopify site, unless you’re fine with the limited customization options that come with your theme.

DMCA Abuse: How Easy It Is to Get a Shopify Store Taken Offline

One of the scariest things about running a store on Shopify is how easily a third party can trigger a takedown by filing a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint, and how quickly Shopify can respond by disabling your site while you “sort it out.”

I saw this happen to a client of mine in 2025.

Her store was using a Shopify theme, and the theme developer claimed she didn’t have a valid license. They filed a DMCA notice with Shopify, and Shopify took the store offline.

At that point, the store owner was stuck in a really unfair position: she wasn’t trying to pirate anything, but she also couldn’t easily prove the purchase.

The person who originally built her site probably bought the theme license years earlier, but that developer was long gone, unreachable and there wasn’t a clean paper trail.

To get the site back up quickly, she ended up paying $400 to the theme developers to get them to remove the copyright claim.

And the bigger issue is that this isn’t just about themes or licensing disputes.

If you google something like “Shopify false DMCA claim” you’ll see all kinds of horror stories like competitors filing DMCA claims at strategically brutal times (right before Black Friday, during a big product drop, or in the middle of an ad campaign) because they know even a short takedown can cause serious damage.

Even if the claim is completely bogus, the process can still hurt you.

If you respond with a counter-notice, that alone can take days or even weeks to work through.

People often mention timelines like 10-14 business days just for processing, and in e-commerce that’s an eternity.

You don’t just lose revenue; you lose momentum:

And what really bothers me is that Shopify’s incentives are not aligned with yours here.

Shopify is a platform provider, they’re trying to avoid liability. In practice, that can mean the safest move for them is to take the store down first and let the store owner and claimant fight it out after the fact.

It feels a lot like the way YouTube handles copyright strikes: “We’re not judging who’s right, we’re just removing the content while you dispute it.”

To be clear, I understand why DMCA processes exist.

Real copyright infringement is a thing. But the low barrier to filing a complaint, combined with the high impact of a takedown, creates a situation where bad-faith claims can be weaponized and the store owner pays the price.

This is one of the reasons I feel much more comfortable with stores that are hosted independently (for example, WordPress + WooCommerce on your own hosting).

It’s not that you’re immune to DMCA complaints, but it’s much, much harder for someone to get your website taken down and you don’t have worry about a single platform flipping the switch on your entire business.

The “Basic Features” Problem: Everything Turns Into an App (and a Monthly Fee)

Another one of my biggest issues with Shopify is that a lot of features you’d assume are built-in end up living behind the app store.

And at first, it doesn’t feel like a big deal because each app solves a real problem.

Subscriptions. Upsells. Related products. Bundles. Loyalty points. Reviews. Advanced shipping rules. Better search. Store locator. Wishlists. Product options. You name it.

But over time, the store turns into a stack of add-ons… and that’s where the friction (and the cost) really starts to build.

Example: Recharge subscriptions adds complexity customers don’t expect

Take Recharge. If a store wants “subscribe and save” products, Shopify doesn’t really provide a full, native subscription management experience out of the box so a lot of stores use Recharge.

The downside is that Recharge introduces a separate-feeling subscription portal experience.

Customers can log into the Shopify account area to update their address, view orders, etc., and then they’re expected to use a separate “Manage Subscriptions” flow to update or cancel subscriptions.

In theory, it’s logical. In practice, customers get confused constantly:

That’s not because the store owner is doing something wrong, it’s a very common side-effect of bolting critical store functions on via apps.

You end up with multiple interfaces, multiple systems, and a customer experience that doesn’t feel unified.

Example: Rebuy and the trap of à la carte pricing

Another great example is Rebuy, which stores often use for related products, upsells, cross-sells, and “you may also like” widgets.

I had a client who wanted something that sounds incredibly basic: show related products in a few places around the site.

That turned into a chain reaction of subscriptions and limitations:

So now you’re paying for:

That’s the Shopify app ecosystem in a nutshell: everything is modular, everything is “optional,” and everything has its own pricing ladder.

The hidden cost isn’t just money, it’s complexity

The pricing adds up, but the workflow cost is just as painful:

And this is where the “it’s only $19/month” mindset becomes dangerous. It’s rarely just one $19/month app. It’s five apps at $19/month, plus one at $49, plus one at $99, plus a Shopify plan upgrade… and suddenly you’re paying hundreds per month just to have a store that feels “complete.”

Shopify is often marketed as an all-in-one platform, but in real-world stores, it can feel more like: Shopify + a paid theme + a pile of apps + a pile of monthly fees and the more you grow, the more those fees (and that complexity) tend to grow with you.

Shopify Support Has Gone Downhill

Another reason I don’t recommend Shopify anymore is how much their support experience has changed.

Years ago, if something broke or you hit a weird issue, you could contact Shopify support and actually get somewhere.

You’d reach a real person, explain the problem, and in many cases they could either fix it, point you to the exact setting you needed, or at least give you a clear, practical next step.

Now, the experience feels completely different.

In my experience, the first line of support is usually an AI-driven chat flow that’s great at repeating help articles, but not great at understanding real-world problems.

If your issue is even slightly nuanced (something theme-related, app-related, checkout-related, or a conflict between features) the conversation quickly turns into a loop of generic troubleshooting steps that don’t solve anything.

And even when you do manage to reach a human, a lot of the time the response is basically:

I get it on some level, Shopify doesn’t want to be responsible for custom code, third-party apps, or the thousands of themes and setups people run.

But from the store owner’s perspective, it’s incredibly frustrating.

You’re paying Shopify every month, you’re paying for apps every month, you’re paying for a theme, and then when something isn’t working, the official support channel often feels like it has one job: deflect and redirect.

The end result is that “support” stops feeling like support and starts feeling like a gatekeeper:

And that’s a big part of why Shopify can feel deceptively easy at the beginning but stressful later.

When your store becomes a stack of themes, apps, and customizations, the one place you’d expect to help you untangle issues often can’t (or won’t).

Shopify Is a Storefront First (and Everything Else Feels Like an Afterthought)

Shopify is built to do one thing really well: run an online store. Products, variants, inventory, payments, shipping, basic promotions, this is Shopify’s home turf.

But the moment you want to build a real website around that store (content marketing, lead generation, education, SEO-driven landing pages, downloadable guides, quizzes, resource hubs, long-form articles, custom layouts) it starts to feel like you’re fighting the platform.

Blogging and content are weak compared to real CMS platforms

Yes, Shopify has a blog feature, but it’s basic. It works if all you need is “publish posts sometimes.”

If you want your content to be a core growth engine, Shopify quickly feels limited:

And the big missing piece is that Shopify isn’t really a true content management system. It’s commerce-first, and it shows.

Lead magnets, funnels, and marketing features tend to become app spaghetti

Want to add a lead magnet (PDF guide), a multi-step opt-in, a quiz funnel, a resource library, or a content upgrade inside blog posts?

On Shopify, you’re usually stitching together a mix of:

It’s doable but it’s rarely clean. It often becomes another layer of monthly fees and another set of tools that don’t feel truly native.

WordPress is simply better at “website” things

This is where WordPress shines. WordPress was built from the ground up as a website and publishing platform, and it has two huge advantages:

And if you want e-commerce inside WordPress, you can use WooCommerce (or another e-commerce plugin) and keep everything under one roof: one site, one login, one theme system, one content strategy.

The “Split site” problem: WordPress main site + Shopify store

A lot of businesses eventually land on a two-platform setup:

On paper, that sounds fine. In reality, it’s often a headache because now you’re effectively running two websites.

Here’s why that’s not ideal:

Most importantly: when your blog, landing pages, and lead magnets live on one system and your products live on another, you lose the “everything flows together” simplicity that makes a website feel cohesive.

Why one website is almost always better

When everything lives on one platform, you get a cleaner, more scalable foundation:

That’s why, for businesses that care about content marketing, lead generation, and building a brand (not just launching a storefront) I usually prefer WordPress as the foundation.

Shopify can be great at selling products, but as an all-in-one website platform, it often ends up feeling like you’re forcing it to be something it was never meant to be.

Conclusion and Why I Just Can’t Recommend Shopify

At the end of the day I just don’t think it’s the best solution anymore for most small businesses, and I definitely don’t think it’s the simple, friendly platform it’s marketed as.

Right now, the setup I recommend most often is a WordPress website with WooCommerce for the online store. WooCommerce isn’t perfect (no platform is), but in my opinion it’s the best all-around option available today. It’s flexible, it can grow with you, and it can absolutely do anything Shopify can, without forcing you into the same level of theme lock-in, app sprawl, and platform risk.

And here’s the thing: even for beginners with no web design experience, Shopify isn’t “easy” anymore.

Once you start adding apps, dealing with theme limitations, and trying to make basic customizations, it can become complicated and expensive fast.

For someone with a small business who just wants to launch a simple online store without a bunch of technical headaches, I’d honestly be more likely to recommend Squarespace at this point.

It’s not the most powerful platform in the world, but for a straightforward store with a clean website, it’s often easier to manage and easier to customize without constantly hitting walls.

Shopify spends a lot on marketing, and they were one of the earliest major e-commerce platforms but today, I just can’t recommend them.

To be fair, there are a few things Shopify does really nicely.

One example: they have a fantastic bulk product editor where if you need to update hundreds of products all at once you can do it through a nice interface instead of having to export a spreadsheet, manipulate that in Excel and re-upload.

Also their coupon code interface is genuinely a bit cleaner and easier to use than WooCommerce’s.

You can do the same things in WooCommerce (percentage discounts, fixed amounts, free shipping, usage limits, exclusions, etc.) but if you put both coupon screens side by side and forced me to pick which UI I like more, I’ll give that one to Shopify.

Their store backend for managing products, orders, etc. is pretty good too because ecommerce is Shopify’s main focus.

But these don’t outweigh the bigger issues for me.

In the end, my two biggest reasons I can’t recommend Shopify are:

If Shopify is working for you today and you’re happy with it, great.

But if you’re deciding where to build your store from scratch (or you’re tired of the limitations and surprise headaches) my honest recommendation is: build your site on WordPress, run your store on WooCommerce, and keep everything under one roof.