Shopify review
We read the company’s pages and its help articles, and bought nothing. Every figure here comes from a page you can open.
- BySalwa Al-Otaibi · edited by Nora Al-Mutairi
- Read on
- Score6.7 / 10
We read the pricing page, the supported-countries list and the languages article on Shopify’s own site, on .
If selling is your business, the machinery and app store behind Shopify have no match on this page. Its score for what you get reflects that: the store, analytics, custom code and built-in multi-language are all named on its own pages.
The flaw is not the price but its condition. The company advertises a zero commission on sales, on condition you use its own payment product, and that product is unavailable in Egypt and Saudi Arabia by the list the company itself publishes.
How this review was built
We did not buy a Shopify plan. Speed and uptime are out of the score for that reason. The score rests on four criteria readable on the company’s own pages: price and billing, Arabic and right-to-left support, published features, and support availability.
We read past the pricing page: the list of countries where its payment product works, the article on selling in multiple languages, and its admin language list. What this review rests on came from comparing two of its own pages.
There is no buyer-reports chapter here. We opened no reports this round.
Buying and price
6.8
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 25%
The advertised price is {entry} a month billed yearly, rising on monthly billing, and the page prints both.
What the page does not print is the renewal after the first term. What it prints instead is an opening offer of a few months at a token price, then "standard monthly pricing" without saying what that equals after a yearly term.
The second price is the commission: Shopify prints on its plan cards a percentage taken on every sale that goes through a third-party payment provider; the percentage falls as the plan rises and disappears only by using the company’s own payment product No plan includes a free domain, and the trial runs a few days.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| $19.00/mo billed yearly | 8.60 |
| Paying monthly costs a good deal more | 1.58 |
| No commission on sales | 10.00 |
| A trial only, no free tier | 5.00 |
Arabic and right-to-left
3.5
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 20%
Shopify does better here than the bulk of this page, and discloses more honestly. The flaw sits elsewhere.
The company publishes its admin in dozens of languages including Arabic, so anyone running a store can work in Arabic. That counts in its favour, and few platforms on this page manage it.
The writing direction of the site itself it hands to the theme: Shopify states that a merchant must check for themselves that their theme supports right-to-left languages for the layout to be correct, and publishes no list of the themes that do That is a clear disclosure, but it leaves a buyer searching with no list to check against.
We found no published Arabic templates, and could not reach its support-languages page because it refuses our tools. That is written here rather than filled in with an assumption.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| An editor interface in Arabic | 10.00 |
| Publishes no right-to-left support | 0.00 |
| No Arabic templates published | 0.00 |
| No Arabic support published | 0.00 |
Published features
10.0
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 35%
What you get is the strength here: {feats} of the items we count, with a wide app store, analytics, built-in multi-language, custom code and an AI assistant, all named on its pages.
Selling is the product rather than a feature of it: unlimited products on every plan, and hosting with no published cap on bandwidth.
There is no free tier, only a short trial. Anyone wanting to try before paying has a narrow window.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| What you get: 7 of the 7 capabilities we could read | 10.00 |
Support availability
4.0
Basis: the company’s own pages · weight 20%
Support is published as round the clock, and the channel named on every plan is chat. Phone appears on the top tier alone.
We found no refund window on the pricing page, and did not open the terms of service this round.
The renewal price is not written on the page, which lowers its trust score however wide the support is.
| Value | Points |
|---|---|
| support around the clock | 10.00 |
| Contact by chat only | 3.33 |
| No refund window published | 0.00 |
| No renewal price on the page | 0.00 |
Speed and uptime: we did not measure them
We did not measure the speed or uptime of a Shopify store, and bought no plan.
We opened no buyer reports, and could not reach its support-languages page because it refuses our tools. What we did not check is written here.
The full calculation
| Sub-score | Value | Weight | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | 6.8 | 25% | 1.700 |
| Arabic | 3.5 | 20% | 0.700 |
| Features | 10.0 | 35% | 3.500 |
| Support | 4.0 | 20% | 0.800 |
| Total | 6.700 → 6.7 |
If not this one, then what
Both picks are computed from the scores rather than written by hand: the first is the one directly above it in the ranking, the second the one that beats it by the widest margin on the criterion it loses on.
Strikingly
6.7The service directly above it in the ranking.
$8.00/mo billed yearly, and no renewal price published
Read the reviewSalla
7.2What this page offers instead on the criterion it loses on — Arabic and right-to-left.
82.50 SAR/mo billed yearly, or 99.00 SAR/mo month to month, and no renewal price published
Read the review
Bottom line
For anyone selling from the UAE or outside the region who wants depth, Shopify is a strong and clear choice.
For anyone selling from Egypt or Saudi Arabia, the commission has to be counted on every order, because the condition that removes it is unavailable to them by the company’s own page. That difference shows up on every invoice, not once.
Questions
Is Shopify’s commission really zero?
It goes away by using the company’s own payment product, and that product is unavailable in Egypt and Saudi Arabia by its own published country list. The UAE is on the list.
Does Shopify support Arabic?
Its admin is published in dozens of languages including Arabic. The writing direction of the site itself it hands to the theme, and it publishes no list of the themes that support it.
Is there a free plan?
No, only a short trial of a few days.
What we know, and where from
Every figure on this page, where it came from and when we read it.
| What we say | How we know | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify prints on its plan cards a percentage taken on every sale that goes through a third-party payment provider; the percentage falls as the plan rises and disappears only by using the company’s own payment product | the company states it | Shopify — Pricing | |
| Shopify states that a merchant must check for themselves that their theme supports right-to-left languages for the layout to be correct, and publishes no list of the themes that do | the company states it | Shopify — Selling in multiple languages |