Builderfly vs Shopify is the cut-throat competition among the e-commerce giants. When Shopify is a prominent name in the e-commerce industry, Builderfly is a novel yet robust addition that can take your business across the horizon with its innovative and distinctive services.
Further, you will read about the similarities, differences and notable features that both the platforms share. In this comparison, we will cover the pricing plans, e-commerce functionalities, and business additives that you must consider before opting for either of them.
What do Builderfly and Shopify do?
Builderfly and Shopify are the e-commerce platforms that enable you to showcase, market and sell your products (physical as well as digital) via your store. Both of the products can be used on web browsers with internet connectivity, hence, doesn’t require any sort of on-device download.
Builderfly is a comprehensive e-commerce package that offers a full-fledged digital growth to your business. It arms you with competent tools using which you can build your AI-inbuilt native m-commerce app, in addition to the personalized e-commerce store. Builderfly has the one-time activation plan to start your business for free, as well as subscription-based plans for limitless growth of the business.
Shopify is an online store builder that offers all the e-commerce services you need from the ideation of your business to its conversion into a brand. It eases your efforts of creating SEO friendly e-commerce store. With the subscription-based plan, you can initiate your journey of business, and buy additional apps from the marketplace.
Builderfly vs Shopify: Head to Head comparison
Though basic features for ecommerce platforms will be the same. You must compare features and pricing plans together to make a fair choice.
| Features | Builderfly | Shopify |
| Themes | Unlimited Free themes | Limited free themes |
| Product Listings | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Blog | Yes | Yes |
| Transaction fee | ZERO | Yes; Varies as per plans |
| Credit card payment fee | 2.0 % | 2.2% – 2.9% |
| Multi-channel Selling | Yes | Yes |
| Staff Accounts | Unlimited | Limited |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | Yes | Yes |
| Native M-commerce app | Inbuilt AI-driven native mobile app for all paid plan users | Not available |
| Gift Cards | Yes | Available for higher plans |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes |
| Custom SSL | For the advanced plan | For Shopify Gold Users |
| Third-party calculated shipping rates | Yes | For advance customers only |
| Third-party app integration | Yes | Yes; for the ones purchased from the marketplace |
| Professional reports | Yes | Yes; Not for lite plan users |
| Customer Management | Yes | Yes |
| 24/7 Live Support | Yes | Yes |
Now, let’s discuss more on these e-commerce store builders:
1. Pricing Plan: Builderfly Pricing vs Shopify Pricing
Before any details, the first thing that strikes any business mind is “How much do I need to invest?”
Builderfly has its business plans designed to fit all of your business needs. You can realize your dream business on signing up with the Builderfly Startup Plan which is Lifetime FREE. Leveraging this plan you can create your own store just after completing your registration and paying single-time activation fees. Once you make it, you will get lifetime free access to your ecommerce store.
If you are an existing business that wants to grow with the digitization, the standard Builderfly plan @$35/month can suffice your requirements. You can further add functionalities to your e-commerce business with a standard and advanced plan at the rate of $75 and $195 on a monthly basis. If you opt for any of the plans for yearly tenure, you will get the discounted rates. You can upgrade/degrade your business plan anytime. There are no hidden fees or additional charges that you have to pay Builderfly, to keep your business running.
To start your business with Shopify there is no complimentary routing, rather you need to register your business with $29/month. The basic plan will give you accessibility to the must-have e-commerce business features. If they aren’t sufficient, to flourish your business you can opt for $79, and $299 plans billed monthly. For discounted rates, you need to subscribe for annual or biennial tenure in a single go.
Besides these plans, you have to pay transaction fees on each of your sales across the platform. The percentage of these commission charges varies from plan to plan. If you have additional requirements for your enterprise-grade business, you can look for Shopify Gold to take your business internationally.
Both ecommerce platforms enable businesses to get free access to the resource to build your business under the trial period of 14-days. Due to the global pandemic, Shopify is giving 90-day free access to test and experiment with the tools to grow your business. But, you have to bear monthly expenses of $29 to make your store live.
In contrast with Shopify, Builderfly is giving an opportunity to learn all tools for free in a trial period of 14-days and launch your store for free with a Startup plan. You will get lifetime free access to your store. Also, all of the Builderfly paid plans privileges you with access to native mobile app builders along with the online store builder. You will not be charged any transaction fee for your sales. So, even when Builderfly’s Standard subscription plan is $6 more than that of Shopify, you can surely drive better results by launching your m-commerce app for free.
2. Free Themes & templates:
Builderfly has numerous professionally designed fully functional themes available for free. Other than the default store theme, you can select the best themes as per your business niche from the theme store. There you can filter the themes as per verticals like popularity index, target industry, and online reviews.
In addition to the existing theme templates, you will find distinct templates for various pages internally to structure your website content in a more organized fashion.
Shopify has a very selective count of free themes with all the necessary options that suit your business needs. All of the themes are modish and mobile responsive. However, if you are looking for contemporary style themes, you have to look for the paid alternatives in the Shopify theme store that starts from $145. Though you won’t be getting any internal templates for any of the themes, you can customize them with Shopify’s easy editor. If you want to add some new features you need to learn Liquid (Language in which Shopify themes are designed) or hire Shopify professionals.
3. Functionalities:
We have shared major differences in the functionalities between Builderfly and Shopify. But, some of these features need extra attention, as they are the life of an ecommerce store.
a. Product Detail pages:
Your detailed product description pages improve your SEO ranking as well as give clarity to customers about your product.
With Builderfly you can create a detailed and focused product listing pages with all the necessary details and product attributes. You are free to add as many product variations for individual listings as you want. This enhances the chances of engaging customers with exactly the same product they are looking for.
Shopify also provides detailed product description pages, but it restricts the count of product variations to three. This implies you can add variations based on three attributes only in a listing like size, color, dimension, etc. This may end up in multiple listings of a similar product if you are dealing with too many variations of the same product. However, if your product categories are unique, you can list your products with ease on Shopify.
b. Modes of Payment:
In business, it’s common to find a variety of customers that use distinct payment modes. And, that’s why you must accept different payment offering modes to stay ahead of competitors.
Builderfly allows all of the payment modes: online as well as offline. So, your customer is free to make payment for your orders via any of the modes. For online payments via debit/credit card, you can rely on our major trusted payment gateway namely Razorpay, Paypal, Paytm and many more. With the offline modes, you can receive payments via NEFT/RTGS/money orders/COD, etc.
Shopify permits online payment and COD only. This can narrow down your sales to some extent. To accept and collect payment for sales via social media platforms, you can opt for Lite plan. For streamlining flow of offline business, you can connect with the POS app.
4. Ease of Customization:
Creating an online store is one thing and making it unique is another. Adding a personal touch to your store reflects the brand value and keeps you ahead of the curve.
With Builderfly you can mark and edge over the competitors by customizing your store with the easy-to-use and compelling design editor. It lets you add media files of your choice, add/eliminate the content and content placements as per your preferences. Irrespective of the theme you choose, the customization will be trouble-free.
One of the key features that Builderfly gives you with every theme is MEGA-Menu. You can better showcase your product categories with a whole huge display, just like your business brochure. Also, you can add/edit HTML/CSS of new sections you want to add to your individual theme pages. This makes customization a lot easier for newbies as well as techno brains.
With Shopify, the backend editing and store customization are easy-going with HTML/CSS editor and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. It is as simple as making the changes as perceiving them on your live website. You can drag and drop to move your website content, alter color schemes and manage the rich media files as per your requirement. But, if you want to edit the backend, you need to look for professional assistance.
5. Mobile apps & plugins:
With over 4.68 billion active mobile users in 2019 as per Statista, you will be losing the huge customer base by avoiding mobile apps.
With the aim of improving your customer base, Builderfly lets you create the mobile presence of your brand with your native m-commerce app. The best thing is, it’s FREE with your e-commerce store and you don’t have to pay anything extra.
Another interesting and beneficial factor is that you need not hire anyone to design your mobile app. With the easy-to-use mobile app editor, you can build and design your native mobile app on your own. Once done designing, you can test the build on your mobile device and can publish it on the app store and play store. Integrated AI technology to your mobile lets you understand your customer behavior by live user tracking. By understanding the customer requirements, you can give real-time offers and improve conversion rate.
Shopify doesn’t offer a mobile app to market your products online. However, you are allowed to purchase applications and plugins that can be integrated into your store to improve the overall functionality of your store. If you are looking for an m-commerce app, you can hire Shopify experts at an additional price.
Shopify lets you add more features to your store distinctly, but Builderfly doesn’t allow you to shop any plugins by now. The idea of launching a mobile app without any additional expenses surely improves the score of Builderfly.
6. Customer Support:
Builderfly and Shopify both offer numerous ways to get in touch. You can opt for telephonic support, live chat 24/7, FAQs, forum, social media as well as email support. You can also tune to their weekly webinars to upgrade your business to the next level. All of their webinars are followed by the live Q&A round to help businesses effectively.
There is no doubt that the Shopify community is huge and trusted by many because of the existing successful businesses on the platform. At the same pace, Builderfly is supporting startups and existing businesses to glorify their journey with all due support.
Builderfly and Shopify both are stellar in their services for all sizes of businesses. However, Builderfly focuses more on small and medium scale businesses and helps in growing as a brand. Shopify is more apt for huge and fast-growing businesses.
Overall, Builderfly is the finest e-commerce solution to take the first step with your business, which has been in your plans by now. The cart features are more than enough for you to get started and take your first step in the world of e-commerce.
If you are still thinking, we recommend you to go ahead and sign up for free at both the platforms. Understand their features and functionalities within the trial period and opt for the one that seems more suitable for your business.
