Panierdachat VS Shopify

Shopify, the big player

Shopify is a major player in e-commerce solutions. A big player listed on the American stock exchange (NASDAQ) where many can find what they’re looking for as a provider. However, Panierdachat stands out on several points and adapts much better to online sales for merchants in Quebec and the French-speaking world in general (France, Belgium, the Caribbean, etc.).

Since Panierdachat was originally designed in French and for local merchants in Quebec, we are well placed to know that our solution is generally better suited to Quebec merchants. Although Shopify and Panierdachat are both SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions and both solutions evolve rapidly, here are the most important differences (to date!).

Subscription Costs

The subscription with Shopify and Panierdachat is quite different. Shopify charges everything in US dollars, while Panierdachat charges in Canadian dollars. With the current exchange rate, a comparison of the same amount can save you between 25% and 35% on the monthly or annual cost.

Shopify Fees VS Panierdachat

In order to avoid fees on transactions with Shopify, you absolutely must choose Shopify Payments as your internet payment provider. Otherwise, you will pay up to an additional 2% in transaction fees on your online sales. This means that if you make an online sale with Paypal, you will pay Paypal’s commission plus Shopify’s 2% commission. Do the math…

Note that behind Shopify Payments is the payment provider Stripe. The fees are 2.9% + $0.30 per basic transaction up to 3.5% for transactions from international sources…

Panierdachat offers the choice of payment provider between Global Payments, Square, Stripe, Paypal, Paysafe, and Moneris. And this, without any additional transaction fees other than those already charged by your provider. Moreover, Global Payments offers the lowest market fees with 2.6% and $0.35 for all Panierdachat plans.

Sales Commissions?

I mentioned it earlier, but indeed, Shopify takes a commission on sales from your online store if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments.

The commission goes up to an additional 2%.

With Panierdachat, there are no commissions on your online sales. Furthermore, Panierdachat is a partner of Global Payments, Stripe, and Square.

User-Friendliness

There’s no doubt that Panierdachat has a big advantage in this area. The Panierdachat online store solution is easy to use, quick to set up, and you’ll never need a programmer to figure it out. Everything is done with just one click of the mouse or nearly so.

However, Shopify and its “Shopify App Store” will bring you many very specific features to adapt to your needs. However, this comes with a cost (and the time to find what you need among all the options) because you will have to pay extra for all the additional plugins you want to use.

SEO Optimization and Bilingualism

Optimizing your online store is a lengthy subject. The primary advantage of Panierdachat over Shopify is that URLs and language management are much better optimized with Panierdachat than Shopify. For example, a product URL in French and the same product in English will have two different and optimally keyworded URLs automatically. And this, with a single account!

With Shopify, you will get the same URL for one language as for the other (not great for optimizing your online store!). The major problem with this configuration is that Google will only index one of the two languages, and not necessarily the one you want! Now try to optimize your online store to index all your content while Google doesn’t understand if you’re speaking in English or French on your online store… 😉

Finally, to get a bilingual online store with Shopify, you will have to spend an additional $23 per month for an additional plugin (which remains limited in functionality nonetheless…).

Template Fees

Although Shopify offers free e-commerce templates, they lack many features, and to achieve something good, you will have to spend at least $180 USD (or $235 Canadian) to use a sensible template…

With Panierdachat, online store templates are free, and you can configure or modify them whenever you want, without any additional fees.

Like our new template? No problem, you can use it right now in just 1 click! No need to rebuild your inventory!

Advanced Reports

Finally, to access advanced reports, you will have to spend nearly $400 to get this valuable information. With Panierdachat, advanced reports are available in the Gold plan, which is about $330 less per month than Shopify…

Customer Service

At Panierdachat, we have made our name on customer service. We are based in Montreal in HOMA, and we obviously speak French. 😉

• Panierdachat answers the phone (yes, we have one!)
• Shopify does not have phone support

Not to mention that we listen to our customers when they bring us new ideas for improving the solution.

Try to beat that with Shopify… 😉