When you are running a business you need to be sure that you are using the best tools and software to run it. There are a lot of tools and software but you need to choose the best out of them.
Overview About Spocket & Shopify
Spocket and Shopify are two very popular eCommerce. When you are starting a business you need to be sure you choose the best one. Today, we are going to compare the two platforms.
What Is Spocket?
Spocket is an app that helps you to drop ship products. Dropship is one of the most popular businesses for beginners. Spocket is a platform designed to aid people in their dropshipping business. But what is dropshipping? Dropshipping is a method of selling products without having them in stock. When a product is ordered, you order it from a third party and then ship it directly to the person who ordered it.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a platform that helps you to make custom online stores and sell your products there. It also provides aid in running your offline store and growing it overall. It provides you with tools like chat, a discount calculator, and a barcode generator.
There are three monthly subscription plans with which you can sell your items from Shopify. You will need to purchase the monthly subscription plan to sell or display your offerings. Shopify does not let merchants sell their offerings using the free trial offer.
You must go through a few more steps to complete the sign-up process. Check the list below for the second phase of the free trial sign-up in Shopify.
- Shopify will now ask your Country/Region. Choose your country and then click on “Next.”
- Once you select your country or region, it will take you to the next page, where you need to create your Shopify account. Choose the type of account with which you want to proceed in Shopify.
- Once you have created your store, it will take you to the online store admin dashboard. Here you can design, add products or services and make other possible changes.
- The confirmation mail is the last step to sign up for a free trial in Shopify. Confirm your online store at Shopify from the email that you will receive.
When you complete all these steps, Shopify will create your online store for the free trial period that Shopify offers.
Shopify And Spocket Compliment Each Other
At the first glance, you might feel that since these two are different platforms then they surely must be competitors. But in reality, they actually complement each other. Both platforms have their own unique selling point.
Spocket is a platform which was developed keeping dropshipping in mind. They have a ton of different products listed on their site which you choose from. They provide features like print-on-demand for custom t-shirts.
Shopify, on the other hand, is a platform that aims at helping people create an online store for their businesses. Shopify provides you with tools that will help grow this business. Shopify lets you set up your online store quickly and easily. The services are so simple to use that even a non-tech person can also do everything on their Shopify account. They give you the ability to freely customize your website, give special discounts, organize sales, and everything in a user-friendly way.
Both of the platforms have different aims but when you combine both of them you can easily grow your business and if you are a beginner then this can be a good idea to start a business. These platforms are great on their own but when combined they are even better.
We now know that both of them work great, so, let’s focus on how we use them together. Spocket is a great place to find products which you can sell if you don’t make your own products. They have a huge catalog with verified sellers so you can choose the products you want to sell. Once you have selected the items, list them at your preferred price on your Shopify website. Once someone orders from you, you place an order using the credentials of that person on Spocket. The seller then simply ships the product to them. The method to earn money in dropshipping is that. You list the price of the product at a little higher price than you will buy it. And only buy it once an order has been placed with you.
To use Spocket you would need any site to integrate it with. You can use platforms like WordPress or Wixsite but choosing Shopify is a great choice. Shopify has features which are necessary and helpful for businesses. They provide great analytics and reports that you can use to improve the points of improvement of your business.
Pros Of Spocket
1. Personalized Branding
Spocket provides the option for personal branding. Branding is what differentiates you from others. For a business, branding is crucial and Spocket understands that. They give you the ability to use your custom logo on the products you sell.
2. Free Samples
Spocket provides you with an option to order sample products. This is important for you and your brand because when you are selling you need to make sure that the product you are selling is of good quality. You would not want your customers to complain about the low-grade products they got. Selling low-quality products also risks losing your customers. By getting a sample delivered to you, you can check the quality and be sure whether you want to sell it or not.
3. Faster Delivery Time
A good portion of the sellers are US and EU based this drastically improves the speed of delivery and reduces the delivery time taken. The faster you can deliver the product to the customer the happier they are.
4. Qualified Sellers
Before the seller gets listed on Spocket they go through a process of verification. During the verification, the Spocket team makes sure the seller is qualified and meets the standard to sell on Spocket. By doing this, Spocket reduces the chances of you getting scammed by a scammer. This makes Spocket overall very safe to use. The sellers are also habitual in shipping out the products as fast as they can. This prevents delays in delivery from the seller’s end.
5. Ease of Returning
In case your customer wants to return their purchase for any reason, Spocket makes it very easy to return the product. The customers can simply opt to return the product. The customer then ships back the product and submits the tracking number. Spocket will refund the money used by the customer to return their purchase.
6. User-Friendly
Spocket has a simple User Interface to make sure that anyone can use their platform. It is very easy to use and operate. It is also incredibly smooth which makes the overall user experience quite good.
7. Automatic Inventory
Spocket will automatically update your inventory after each purchase.
8. Great Profit Margins
Spocket gives a generous amount of profit margins to retailers. You can easily earn up to 60% profit by selling just one product.
9. Automatic Currency Conversion
If you are a retailer from another country or your seller is then Spocket automatically converts the price from the seller’s currency to your currency. This is very helpful when you are selling a wide range of products.
10. One-Click Import
Spocket allows one-click import on all the products you want to add to your store. This makes the process of adding products to your shop very hassle-free and efficient. This is a great feature when you are adding a lot of products to your shop.
11. Premium Products Available.
If you want to sell premium products to your customers then Spocket gives you the ability to do that as well.
12. Addition Of New Sellers
Spocket acts as a marketplace between sellers and retailers. That’s why there are new sellers on Spocket on a regular basis. You can buy from these new sellers and expand your shop and business.
13. Free Trial
Spocket provides a free trial period without a credit card so you can try Spocket before you subscribe.
14. Automatic Order Fulfillment
This feature automatically sends the order details to the seller without you manually doing it. This saves a lot of manual work. It is very helpful for stores which get huge amounts of orders daily.
Cons Of Spocket
1. Not Compatible With All Platforms
Spocket is still not available for all the platforms. Though it is very well integrated and optimized for Shopify. It is still not compatible with eBay.
2. Inability to Contact Suppliers
Spocket still doesn’t have the option for retailers to directly contact the sellers.
3. Limited Supplier Locations
Sellers on Spocket still don’t deliver worldwide.
4. Prices Don’t Include Taxes and Import Duties
Prices shown on the platform are the base prices. These prices need to be adjusted by taxes and import duties (if required) before they are sold.
5. No Custom Packing
Even though you get the ability to put custom branding you still can not customize the packing of the product.
6. No Android App
There is no android app for Spocket.
7. Non-impactful Free Plan
The free plan of Spocket is not that useful.
Pros Of Shopify
1. Customizable Store
Shopify allows you the ability to customize your online store. You can customize your site easily by using the theme editor. You can also upload your code to customize your site.
2. Cost Effective
The pricing of Shopify is very cost-effective. Each of the plans is priced in such a manner that you can opt-in for a plan which suits you the best.
3. Privacy and Security
Shopify takes privacy and security very seriously. They only use the necessary data for their personal use. After the use, they delete all of the data.
4. Self Hosted Platform
Shopify is completely self-hosted. That means you don’t need to get a subscription to any other platform like WordPress.
5. Built-In Marketing Tools
Shopify has tools which are oriented for growth in marketing. These tools are very helpful in growing your business.
6. Great Customer Support
Shopify provides great customer service to you and your customers. They do this by using the features like live chat and technical support.
7. Sell Anything
You can sell anything on Shopify. You don’t need to restrict yourself to physical products. You can even sell digital products like ebooks on your Shopify store.
8. Industry Leading Payment System
Shopify has the industry-leading payment system for online stores. This payment system ensures that all of the transactions happen smoothly with fewer failures. A great and smooth payment process is a crucial part of the buying process for the customer.
9. Prebuilt Themes
Shopify offers a wide range of prebuilt themes so you can select a theme which suits best to your store and get going. This is very helpful for people who want to start a business as soon as possible without spending time creating their custom theme.
Cons Of Shopify
1. Recurring Payment
Shopify is a subscription-based service which means you need to pay at regular intervals. If you stop paying then your subscription will be stopped and your store goes offline.
2. Extra Charges For Third-Party Payments
Along with the charges of credit and debit cards, if a user opts for paying using a non-Shopify method then there is an extra charge of 2% in the basic plan. This charge decreases to 0.5% at the higher plans.
3. Expensive Paid Themes
Shopify has a lot of themes but there are only 9 free themes. The other themes are quite expensive. Though the theme is a one-time payment only but sometimes themes are priced at $350 – $400.
4. Integrated Apps Can Expensive
Shopify offers the ability to integrate other apps to improve your store. But to do this you need to pay. Generally, these apps tend to be subscription based as well.
5. Migrating To Other Platform Is Tough
Migrating to Shopify is easy but migrating from Shopify, on the other hand, is a tough thing to do. The content of your blogs gets locked which forces you to copy and paste all of your blogs manually.
6. Use Of Less-Known Language
All of the competitors of Shopify like WordPress and WooCommerce use languages like HTML and CSS to code their sites. These languages are used to generate websites and are very popular. For these reasons, it is easier for people to use these languages to customize their websites. But Shopify uses Ruby which is less popular. This makes it harder for people to customize their sites using Ruby.
7. Limited Blogging Interface
When compared to other platforms like WordPress, Shopify has a very limited blogging interface. This makes it hard for users to create more blogs. It is a very simple-looking blog and requires more features for the blogging interface too.
8. Poor Content Management
Shopify has an issue with poor content management. Shopify faces a lot of bugs while handling things other than shopping and payment.
9. Data Flow Is Through Shopify Only
Each and every bit of the data passes through Shopify. Shopify stores the data in its own servers and looks through them.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify has 5 different plans which are according to the needs of what suits the user. They are:
1. Shopify Lite: It is priced at $9 per month. It has the bare minimum features. You can add Shopify to your existing site but you can not create your own store using this plan.
2. Shopify Basic: It is priced at $29 per month. It is the most popular plan. It gives you all the tools and features you would need to run your store. It also provides you with analytics and reports.
3. Shopify Standard: It is priced at $79 per month. Along with all of the tools and features are given in the Shopify Basic plan, this plan has other features as well. You can increase the number of staff with more reports.
4. Shopify Advanced: It is priced at $229 per month. In this, you get more staff members with more extensive reports and analytics.
5. Shopify Plus: It is the most expensive plan priced at $2000 per month. In this feature, everything is done to keep things convenient for you. You get a team that helps you migrate to Shopify.
Spocket Pricing
Spocket offers 4 different plans which can be used by people according to their own needs. They are:
1. Free: This is the most basic and simple plan of Spocket. This plan is aimed at people who are trying it out and not willing to spend money. You will get the bare minimum of features.
2. Starter: Priced at $29.99 per month. It is the cheapest paid plan on the list. It provides you with email support too.
3. Pro: It is the most popular plan priced at $49.99 per month. It has features which help in handling business with huge amounts of orders. These features include image searching and branding.
4. Empire: It is the most expensive plan of Spocket priced at $99.99 per month. This plan unlocks all of the features which Spocket has to offer.
How To Use Spocket On Your Shopify Store
It is very easy to use Spocket on your Shopify store. Once you have made accounts on both platforms follow the given steps to use your Spocket on the Shopify store:
- Go to Spocket and login into your account.
- From the toolbar on the left select Shop.
- Enter your Shopify URL after selecting the Shopify option.
- On your Shopify account download Spocket.
- Allow the required authorizations.
Conclusion
Spocket and Shopify are two different platforms but they are more like companions rather than rivals. Each platform works very well with the other platform. In the end, using them together will help you in growing your business at a very good pace. Shopify and Spocket are not competitors because their niche is not the same.
