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Comment by fourspace | Hacker News Reader

Great news. Shopify is the one piece of ecommerce software we use that isn't completely maddening. (Having a fantastic API is a large reason why.)

I was struck by this comment, though:

   "Using Shopify and Shopify POS together reveals our true 
   ambition: To be the first company in the world that fuses  
   all the distinct parts that are needed to run a complete 
   modern commerce business - all in one amazing product."

If anyone thinks they can run a complete business using only Shopify, they're sorely mistaken. It's only a shopping cart. If you want to actually ship items, you need to use one of their third-party apps or roll your own. Those apps are the reason that ecommerce with Shopify is still frustratingly difficult -- unnecessarily so.

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I built a private app for fulfillment using their API and EasyPost. That was just a day project thanks to two very simple-to-use APIs.

Shopify's missing a lot more than that for retail. I wouldn't use their current POS app for running more than a flea market table or street vendor. It's just too basic even for the smallest store.

You can't handle hundreds of SKUs by paging through product thumbnails at checkout; you need barcode scanning, and from experience, iPads and bluetooth scanners are a real pain to work with. Shopify also has no real inventory management (figuring out what to reorder, entering in the new orders as they get delivered, tracking cost of goods sold and spoilage, printing price tags and barcodes, etc). The couple of reports they've built are inadequate for proper accounting.

I hope they get there eventually, but the number and complexity of features they need for a small shop to run their POS on Shopify means they're at least a few years out.

Agreed 100%. I was just touching the surface, and by "shipping" I really meant inventory management, purchase orders, and everything else involved in stocking physical goods.

It's clear the POS app is a test product for them, and I'm happy to see them experiment. I just wish they'd put a little more love into the core functionality. Even for ecommerce, Shopify is lacking some really basic things:

- Editing orders (e.g. marking an item canceled)

- Editing tracking numbers (fixing typos -- not allowed today)

- Allowing coupons to offer both a discounted price and free shipping (today they're mutually exclusive)

I think the key term there is "vision" vs "what we believe we are right now"

Just FYI cinemaguy23 & stevebenjamins you guys are both hellbanned.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745880 for more info. IIRC, some people have had success emailing info@ycombinator.com to get unbanned.

Edit: state, if you don't have showdead=yes set in your preferences then you won't see the hellbanned posts. I don't know about the posts that got them hellbanned in the first place, but the dead ones here are completely unobjectionable .

I'm guessing you're referring to other replies that we can't see. Is that the case? Just curious what you're talking about.

Thanks for the heads up- I have no idea why I was hellbanned ...

It's so true. I spend the majority of my time working for a company that sells physical products, and we roll everything ourselves. Managing fulfillment, integrating with accounting, and basic CRM among a medium-sized team is an enormous task that's completely underserved by Shopify (or anyone else for that matter).

Knowing a good handful of other small to medium-sized business owners I know we're not alone in this (as your comment points out), and it makes me all the more eager to open source everything we do. But first, there are bugs to fix.

+1 I've found that the major bottleneck in all this for SMB's is Intuit's Quickbooks- whose terribly unstable sync/integration capability requires 5 different 3rd party systems just to receive an online order via your e-commerce cart, fill a phone order, input a purchase order received by email/fax..

And that's before you even get to pick/pack/ship an item and sync to your company file in QB, drawn down inventory on hand, send tracking info to your customer and update your CRM...

There seem to be a handful of startup software co's in this space but none can handle the entire picture:

methodintegration.com lettuceapps.com

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