The short answer
If you mainly sell products online, a Shopify store can be your whole website. If you sell your time or a service, you need a website instead.
Shopify gets talked about as if it's only a shopping cart. It's more than that. A Shopify store has a homepage, an about page, a contact page and a blog, which is everything most small-business websites have. So if you sell things, the question isn't "website or shop?". It's whether a shop is all the website you need.
The short rule
If most of your money comes from people buying products online, a Shopify store can be your website. If most of your money comes from your time, like appointments, projects, quotes or classes, you need a normal website, maybe with a way to take bookings or payments added on.
Most businesses fall clearly on one side. The rest of this article is for the ones who don't.
When a Shopify store is enough
- You sell physical products and want people to buy them without messaging you first.
- You have more than a handful of products, with sizes, colours or stock levels to keep track of.
- You need shipping rates, discount codes, taxes and order emails to work without you doing them by hand.
- You sell digital downloads or gift cards alongside physical things.
In any of those cases, building a separate website and bolting a shop onto it means two systems, two logins and twice the upkeep. Shopify's own pages are perfectly good for your story, your FAQs and your contact details, and the theme you choose will make them look like part of the same place.
When you need a website instead
- You sell a service: haircuts, legal advice, building work, coaching, cleaning.
- Every job is quoted, so there's nothing to put in a basket.
- You want to rank on Google for lots of local or specialist searches, with a page for each service.
- You mostly want enquiries, calls or bookings, not orders.
Shopify can technically do some of this, but you'd be paying a monthly fee for a shopping system you barely use, and working around it. A website built for enquiries is simpler for you and for your visitors. If you're unsure what that website should be, our piece on the difference between a website and a landing page helps you size it.
The grey areas
A few kinds of business sit in between. Here's how we usually advise them.
- A salon that also sells products: website first, with bookings. If product sales become a real part of the business, add a small Shopify store later, or use Shopify's lighter options.
- A bakery that takes cake orders: if orders have fixed options (size, flavour, date), a Shopify store works well. If every cake is a conversation, a website with a good order form is kinder to you.
- A course or workshop business: a website with a booking tool is often enough. Shopify makes sense when you also sell physical kits or merchandise.
- A maker selling on Etsy: when you're ready for your own shop, Shopify is the natural move. Read what changes when you leave Etsy first.
What about costs?
The running costs look different. A website usually costs a domain name each year and some hosting, which for a small, fast site can be very little. A Shopify store has a monthly plan on top, plus card fees on each sale and any paid apps you add. At the time of writing, Shopify's Basic plan in the US is $39 a month, or $29 a month if you pay yearly.
That monthly fee buys you a lot, though: payments, stock tracking, shipping labels, order emails and security, all maintained for you. If you'd otherwise pay someone to build and look after those things, Shopify is cheap. We've broken the full bill down in how much a Shopify store really costs.
What Shopify is less good at
It's worth knowing the limits before you commit. Shopify is built around products, so a few things feel awkward on it:
- Long-form content. The blog works, but it's basic compared with a site built for writing.
- Complex bookings, like appointments with staff calendars, deposits and reminders. These need an app, and the good ones cost extra each month.
- Very custom page layouts, unless the theme is custom too.
- Quotes and enquiries. There's no natural place for "tell us about your project" in a checkout-shaped system.
None of these stop a product business. They just mean that if your business is mostly one of these things, Shopify is the wrong home for it.
Questions to ask whoever builds it
- Will I be able to add products, change prices and edit text myself?
- Whose name will the domain and the Shopify account be in? (The answer should be yours.)
- What will I pay each month, to Shopify and for any apps, once it's live?
- How will people find the shop, and what's set up for Google?
- What happens if something breaks after launch, and how long are small fixes included?
Can you switch later?
Yes, though it's work either way. Moving a service website onto Shopify when you start selling means rebuilding your pages inside a theme. Moving off Shopify means exporting products and customers and pointing your old links at new pages so you don't lose your Google rankings. Neither is a disaster, but it's cheaper to start on the right one.
One thing that makes switching easier: keep your domain name registered in your own name, not your web designer's. Then whatever you build, the address stays yours.
How to decide this week
- Look at the last three months of income. What share came from products bought online?
- If it's more than half, or you want it to be within a year, go Shopify.
- If it's mostly services, build a website and add booking or payment links where they help.
- If you're genuinely split, start with the side that earns more and plan the other for later.
We build both, so we have no reason to push you one way. If you want a second opinion, book a free call and describe what you sell. You'll know which one you need by the end of it. Or read about our Shopify stores and websites and landing pages first.
