I signed up another Shopify customer this afternoon and it’s going to be great to have a new case study. If you haven’t heard my rant about Shopify then pop some popcorn and return.

Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform that takes hardly any time to setup and has a extremely versatile template system. You start out at $24 a month and 2% per transaction for 100 products and 100 mb.

It connects with authorize.net which connects to merchant warehouse(the merchant we use and love and recommend to other customers) and it’s in your bank account.

So basically for a $24 plus whatever your statement fee from your merchant, usually $20ish, you’re completely ecommercing it up.

The templates are really easy to work with and there are dozens to use as guides for making your own awesomeness. If you look through the sample stores you realize you’re not dealing with a yahoo sites or a ebay store type template. The other thing i find incredibly sexy about this platform is they provide the SSL connection during the transaction which saves you from a yearly cost of getting a SSL certificate and paying someone like me to tie it to the server.

What i just can’t get over is the $24 monthly fee and 2% transaction fee for 100 items. Or if you are doing high priced items, go with the $60 a month for 1%…you combine this with some really aggressive pay per click advertising and you have what a colleague once referred to as a paper mill. Something that is running 24/7 and making money 24/7 without any assistance.

What this symbolizes to me is a new era. Before my ecommerce web sites were the most costly with reoccurring feeds and initial development, unless you were selling something you knew was going to sell, it was a 50/50 game. Now if you have a retail front with all the publicity you get from having a retail front…and you’re not selling to customers after they leave the store through your site…then you are doing it wrong.

Oh yeah and the first 30 days are free, no contract, no cancellation fee. So you know, there is that too.