So, what is the Shopify Basic Plan?
The Shopify Basic Plan should not be confused with the Lite version. The Basic plan is the entry-level account type for all Shopify members and subscribers, but the Lite plan is a smaller version of it.
The Lite plan costs $9 per month, while the Basic plan costs $13 per month. The Lite plan only allows you to sell on your social media channels, but you will not have your online store.
Here, we will be taking a look at the Basic plan, and we will say right off the bat that this is the better plan since it has more features than the Lite one, with a difference of only $4 per month in terms of prices.
Here are the features you will get from the Basic Plan.
Online Shopify Store
With this plan, you will be able to build your online store, upload the products, the descriptions, and their photos. You do not need to be a computer programmer to be able to build an online store. All you have to do is to choose a theme and then replace the photos in that theme with yours.
Building a store is just like creating a social media page. You also have the opportunity to add pages that you want to be there, like your Shopping Policy, Terms and Conditions, Refund Policy, and even add a blog section.
The online store is already equipped with a checkout system and a shipping system. You can choose the kind of payment gateway you want, like PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, or others that are available in your country.
Unlimited Products
Many online ecommerce platforms will limit your product count to about 50. With Shopify Basic, you can upload hundreds of products if you want.
The trouble with a limited product count is that you can only display a few items. If you are limited to 10 products, then you can only sell ten kinds of items. If you are selling cameras or gadgets that have different models, then you must only pick a few to display on your store.
If you want to show more, you need to upgrade and pay more.
With Shopify, you do not have to pay more. You can even create collections or categories, so all products that belong to the same category will be on the same page.
Staff Accounts
With this plan, you will have two staff accounts, which does not include you because you are the owner.
The staff account is useful so you can do more tasks in the admin panel at the same time. For example, one can work on uploading new products, or making the product descriptions better, while one is busy processing orders.
Having a staff with different goals on a daily basis allows you to work faster, smarter, and more efficiently so you can focus your efforts on your customers’ needs and your marketing strategies.
24/7 Support
There are three ways that you can contact Shopify support.. phone, email, and live chat. These support systems are available 24/7.
You can also use the Shopify University if you want. It is a page full of articles that will help you set up your store, or solve problems that you meet along the way.
User feedback indicates that the Shopify agents are helpful, and they know what they are doing. It does not take hours to get an answer from them.
Also, you can take advantage of the knowledge of Shopify subscribers in the community forums. You can post a question in there, and someone will provide you with an answer or a recommendation.
Sales Channels
With the Basic plan, you are not limited to selling to customers to your online store. You can also sell on your Facebook page.
You can integrate your store with Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest, and Facebook Messenger. You can also create a Buy Now button or widget that you can use on other sites, or sell on Instagram.
What happens when you integrate the Shopify store with these channels is that they will also show every product that is available in your store.
You do not need to upload the products twice. If you add a product in Shopify, it will show on Amazon. If you remove it, it will also be taken off.
Discount Codes
You can create discount codes from your Shopify admin panel. For example, you want to provide a 10% discount in December.
In the admin panel, you can create a code, like DEC10, and then send this code to your customers. In the admin panel, you can program the billing section in a way that when a customer enters DEC10 in a box, his total bill will be discounted by 10%.
You can also set the dates that the code is effective, so it will automatically shut off or will no longer be applied after your chosen cut-off date.
You also have the choice to apply a percentage or fixed amounts on the discount codes.
Free SSL Certificate
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It is a technical thing that ensures that a website is safe. Computers talk, and if your customer’s computer or anti-virus system sees a site that has no SSL certificate, his computer will block him from accessing the site.
That means a lost sale for you. With Shopify, it will not happen because your site is automatically registered as safe. Anti-virus and firewall systems will recognize this certification and allow people to access your online store.
To know if a site is safe and secure, the URL must have “HTTPS” instead of s simple “HTTP”. This SSL is the same encryption technology that banks and other financial institutions use to prevent security breaches.
Transaction Fee
The transaction fee for the Basic plan is 2%. What this means is that for every sale, Shopify will take 2% of the gross amount. If you sold $100 on one checkout, you would only receive $98. The $2 will go to Shopify’s revenue.
This is on top of the fees that you pay for your chosen payment gateway. PayPal, for example, charges an average of 3%.
If a customer bought a $100 item, you would be paying 5% to both Shopify and PayPal, which is $5.
You need to make sure that you price your products with these two transaction fees in mind, so you still make a profit after your sale.
Manual Order Creation
The manual order creation refers to an order that is not made by the customer online. For example, you may have seen a friend and convinced him to buy, but he does not want to go online, or he has no credit card.
You can create the order yourself from the admin panel. Also called a draft order, you need to input the customer’s name, shipping address, tax, shipping rates, the products to buy, and discounts if they apply.
This is great for orders that were placed over the phone, through chat or text, or in person. You can create an invoice, print it, or send it via email. You can also use this to sell products at a huge discount rate that are not programmed in your store.
In some cases, you can also use this to manually re-enter an order where a mistake was made.
Summary
The Shopify Basic plan is the best choice for you among the others if you are just starting out in your online business. It gives you all the necessary tools to create a store, market them, charge money, and sell to other social media channels.