By Bogdan Rancea
Shopify is my number one ecommerce platform, offering an exceptional solution for omnichannel selling, a user-friendly experience, and an ever-evolving range of advanced features.
Art Storefronts, on the other hand, is a more niche solution, ideal for artists looking for end-to-end support and guidance as they grow their business.
Both of these platforms are fantastic in their own right; however, I believe Shopify is the more versatile, and affordable solution overall.
Shopify vs Art Storefronts: Pros and Cons
After testing both platforms thoroughly, I’d recommend Shopify for businesses looking to scale their operations and increase their sales potential in any niche. I’d recommend Art Storefronts to artists who want specialized marketing support, as well as cutting-edge tools for merchandising, and a built-in print-on-demand service.
Art Storefronts Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Excellent print-on-demand service included
- Fantastic support packages for marketing and design
- Impressive lead capture and merchandising tools
- Included AI and augmented reality features
- Support for offline and online selling
Cons:
- Slightly complex initial setup
- Expensive pricing for many packages
- Focused specifically on artists
Shopify Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Exceptional omnichannel sales tools
- Support for any type of product in any niche
- Extensive inventory and business management tools
- User-friendly interface and design features
- Great extensibility via integrations and APIs
Cons:
- Transaction fees for third-party payment processors
- No built-in print on demand (though integrations are available)
What the Two Platforms Do Best
Although both Shopify and Art Storefronts are ecommerce solutions, they’re very different in terms of their top features, and the types of companies they serve.
Art Storefronts is the best solution I’ve tried so far for artists. It’s packed with features unique for sellers focusing on custom artworks. You get a built-in print on demand service, offering more print sizes and customization options than most POD alternatives, like Printful.
Plus, you’ll have access to augmented reality tools for showcasing your art, powerful lead capture solutions, end-to-end marketing plans created by experts, and even AI tools, like “Art Buyer AI”.
Shopify is best at offering all kinds of sellers a highly flexible and scalable platform. It allows companies to create a beautiful store, and sell across other channels, like social media and marketplaces. Shopify even has its own built-in point of sale solution.
Shopify also makes it easier to manage all aspects of your business, with robust inventory and order management tools, and it integrates with thousands of apps and add-on tools.
Art Storefronts vs Shopify: The Core Features
Although it’s different to perform a full like-for-like comparison of Shopify and Art Storefronts, considering they each focus on different audiences, there are some overlapping areas to review. Let’s look at how they stack up in terms of website design, sales tools, and marketing.
Website Design Features
There’s a lot to love about Shopify’s web design tools. First, you get hundreds of templates (themes) to choose from for your store – although only a handful are free. All of these themes are mobile responsive, and specialized to boost your sales and conversions.
Once you choose a theme, editing it to match your brand is extremely straightforward, thanks to Shopify’s website editor, which guides you through the process. Although there are limitations on changes you can make to certain elements of your site (like your checkout), without code, you won’t have any trouble making your store feel unique.
Art Storefronts also gives companies a range of high-quality, responsive themes to choose from. I love how clean and modern these themes look, as well as the fact that they’re all designed for artists.
Customizing your site is a little more complex – I think Art Storefront’s backend is a little clunky in places. However, you can get plenty of support from the team to make your site stand out. I also love how many features Art Storefront’s themes come with, from pop-up lead capture tools, to augmented reality solutions for merchandising.
Both tools also give you all of the basic built-in features you need for your site, such as SSL security, unlimited pages, blogs, and galleries, hosting, and support for custom domain names.
Ecommerce and Sales Features
Here’s where the differences between Art Storefronts and Shopify really start to stand out for me. Shopify is a platform that allows companies to sell anything anywhere. Although you will need add-ons to sell subscriptions and digital products, some are available for free.
You get a world-class checkout, an integrated payment processor, and there are no limits on how many products you can sell. Plus, you can use Shopify POS to sell online, connect your store to social media sites and marketplaces like Amazon, and boost your sales with a range of upselling, cross-selling, and promotional tools.
Shopify’s integrated payment processor also accepts virtually any kind of payment, in any currency, which is great for global sellers. Plus, the inventory and order management tools are some of the best I’ve used – particularly for companies with large, complex inventories.
Art Storefront focuses its sales features on the needs of artists. First, the thing I love most about this platform, is its integrated print-on-demand service. You can have Art Storefronts create, print, and fulfil orders for you, creating items in a range of sizes and styles.
Shopify integrates with a range of POD platforms, like Printful, but Art Storefronts services are more artist-focused, giving you more options to choose from.
The company supports both online and offline selling, with printable art catalogs, offline order management tools, and QR codes. Plus, Art Storefronts is brimming with a range of features you would usually have to pay extra for on other sites.
There’s a comprehensive augmented reality solution, that allows your customers to preview what your art will look like on their walls, or view an item from every angle. You can also access frequently bought together and recently viewed carousels, to increase conversions.
Plus, you’ll get the “Art Buyer AI” service, which offers valuable insights into your customers, to help you customize the sales journey for them.
MORE: Art Storefronts vs Squarespace
Marketing and Business Growth
Art Storefronts takes a unique approach to helping artists transform their profits and increase sales. As I mentioned above, it comes packed with features to help you connect with customers, from email marketing solutions to integrations with social media.
You can create custom forms and pop-ups to capture leads, and earn customer trust with third-party badges from recommended art associations. You also get a SEO-ready blog for content marketing, as well as “favorites” lists for your customers.
Where Art Storefronts really excels, in my opinion, is in helping artists to optimize their marketing strategies. There are tons of educational resources to help you define your marketing strategy, and you can even pay the team to create your marketing plan for you,
The Art Storefronts team will do everything on your behalf, creating full omnichannel campaigns, marketing calendars, giveaway events and more.
Shopify also does well from a marketing perspective, but it gives you a lot less hands-on support, unless you choose to hire a Shopify Expert.
You’ll get access to email marketing and live chat tools within your store, as well as a built-in blog, and tools for creating voucher codes, discounts, and promotional banners. Shopify even performs well in SEO tests, giving you all of the resources you need to boost your ranking.
I think where Shopify stands out here is with it’s AI tools, which can streamline your marketing journey. Shopify Magic allows you to rapidly create content for SEO-optimized product pages and ads, generate FAQ pages, and write email campaigns. You’ll also be able to alter product photo backgrounds, and show off your products with Shopify’s 3D scanner.
You can also connect with customers through integrated social marketing platforms, create forms to capture leads, and integrate your store with a huge range of marketing apps and systems.
Pricing and Fees
If you’re a budget-conscious entrepreneur, I’d definitely recommend Shopify over Art Storefronts. Although it’s not the cheapest ecommerce platform around, you can start selling through social media and messaging apps for as little as $5 per month.
If you want access to all of Shopify’s comprehensive features, plans start at $39 per month for the Basic plan, $105 per month for Shopify’s mid-tier plan, and $399 per month for Shopify Advanced. Shopify Plus, the enterprise level plan, starts at $2,300 per month. Shopify does charge transaction fees if you use a third-party payment processor, but you can skip these by using Shopify Payments.
Art Storefronts doesn’t list any monthly fees on its website. You’ll need to contact the team, request a demo, and get a custom quote. From what I can tell reading reviews on Reddit and other channels, some companies spend over $3,000 just getting their store set up.
Then the packages offered for things like marketing, or website setup and tune-up can cost thousands of dollars too.
I could argue that Art Storefronts gives you a more “enterprise-level” experience, which accounts for the extra cost. However, the pricing will probably make it less appealing to smaller companies.
Art Storefronts vs Shopify: The Final Verdict
Overall, Art Storefronts has some really compelling selling points. It’s great for artists who want to showcase their products in unique ways, get help with marketing and website design, and boost their offline and online selling capabilities. However, it’s also a little more complicated for beginners, and a lot more expensive than Shopify.
Shopify is a far more flexible option, offering support for all kinds of businesses, no matter which niche they serve. It’s great for omnichannel selling, delivers excellent scalability with apps, inventory management tools, and AI functionality, and it’s relatively affordable.
Ultimately, I’d give Shopify the win in this comparison, based on its versatility alone, but Art Storefronts is still worth considering for growing art companies.
