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Comment by codyzazulak1 | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever tried Shopify? It's nearly full control and cheap as shit. I've started stores and sold products in the same day many times, they have 1000s of apps, and even 2 week trial that enables you to test any product before even paying a cent. Unless you can't live with credit card fees, or you're selling drugs, you should almost 100% always use Shopify. Not to mention they can be scaled to the moon cheaply too. Call shopify when you hit a decent milestone and just tell them to waive you're monthly fee. Not that it'll even matter at that point.

I know I'm being a hater, but coding the store is really terrible advice. Learning to use a tool over reinventing the tool is a step backwards.

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Coding the store is NOT terrible advice when you're talking to a developer who wants "full control and independent".

It's very disappointing to see all the comments here saying "use shopify". That's what your mum would do. Are you a developer or not?

It's like saying "just use facebook, you don't need a website", or "Just eat at MacDonalds, it's much cheaper and easier".

There's no way I would recommend being tied to a monthly Shopify fee when there's much better options out there for devs to gain control, and build a faster more creative and original store.

Shopify.. Really? How unsatisfying and boring.

> Are you a developer or not?

Part of being a good developer is knowing the value of your time. The opportunity cost of coding your own online store will be much, much higher than using an off the shelf platform like Shopify.

If it's a passion project where OP wants to learn more about programming, then go for it. Commerce is a wide domain where one can learn a lot. But if this is a business, then value thy time.

Full disclosure: I work at Shopify. These views are my own, not my employer's.

And there it is. I knew Shopify employees were in this thread, it just had that vibe about it. Make no mistake, your views are indeed your employer's views when the point you're pushing is "use our product, it's your only hope".

Is there a team at Shopify tasked with "social persuasion" who monitor online discussion about e-commerce?

"Value thy time"... oh please, we can say the same about eating too. Don't bother cooking when you can buy a microwave frozen dinner.

Absolutely developers should write their own shopping cart vs use Shopify. While they’re at it, they should probably design a custom OS and a custom webserver too.

After all, these aren’t all three cases of discrete functional software with well defined patterns of use where minor customization is easy and writing from scratch takes thousands or millions of man hours.

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