Sellers of Shopify are more like sellers on Amazon than they know. Shopify controls what you can sell, what apps you can use, so is it really software for your business or you’re just a cog in its machine to become the next Amazon. I’ve seen so many DTC brands switch to Medusa and Woocommerce with a custom storefront.
In what ways? I'm sure there are businesses they refuse to support (like any company) but I have a family member running a Shopify store (selling things that you couldn't over Amazon due to logistics) and Shopify
- Doesn't have any pre approval process for products. We can add and edit products instantaneously with no process involving anyone else.
- Has never appeared to care, even when "products" are things like "we agreed on a delivery method over the phone".
I'd also point out that the store owns the brand with Shopify. We could switch out the backend for a different ones and the users wouldn't really notice. You couldn't do the same with Amazon.
I don't like how Shopify deletes events from https://www.shopifystatus.com/ shortly after they are resolved. Outages have to be inferred by waking up to a bunch of alerts and hoping someone else posted about it on the internet.
X has always been a better source of outages than any official status site. It's either early, before there's anything official posted, or it's something the vendor doesn't consider worthy of an outage because it only affects a particular subset of customers.
It's been a fun day for me today - my bank here in the UK suffered downtime which not only affected the app and online banking, but also online and possibly offline payments too.
I was glad when it finally came back on, after four hours off, so that I could order some material for a job... only to find that my supplier's site wasn't working. It's on shopify.
So too the two the other suppliers I use who offer the same thing I need, so I'm kinda stuffed as ordering from anytime now means I likely won't get my stuff in before the weekend, which is when I was planning on working with it.
"Employees must explain why AI can’t be used before asking for additional resources, like more staff or time. [...] Shopify is now factoring AI usage into performance reviews and peer evaluations."
You will never know. Lots of pretty important people publicly laid down the law that AI must be used; any indication that it produces crap will be hidden.
And even if it _was_ related to AI, they would not admit it. First course of action is to blame user/programmer error and then QA process error. You shall not blame the golden calf. I am half serious and half not. But I do recommend reading the book "The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'" in conjunction with my hyperbole.
In what ways? I'm sure there are businesses they refuse to support (like any company) but I have a family member running a Shopify store (selling things that you couldn't over Amazon due to logistics) and Shopify
- Doesn't have any pre approval process for products. We can add and edit products instantaneously with no process involving anyone else.
- Has never appeared to care, even when "products" are things like "we agreed on a delivery method over the phone".
I'd also point out that the store owns the brand with Shopify. We could switch out the backend for a different ones and the users wouldn't really notice. You couldn't do the same with Amazon.
I ask because with the major AI push at Shopify lately, I would like to know if it is affecting stability.
I was glad when it finally came back on, after four hours off, so that I could order some material for a job... only to find that my supplier's site wasn't working. It's on shopify.
So too the two the other suppliers I use who offer the same thing I need, so I'm kinda stuffed as ordering from anytime now means I likely won't get my stuff in before the weekend, which is when I was planning on working with it.
Wonderful.
This has to be one of the hardest parts of working there. A bug takes down other peoples businesses.
https://x.com/tobi/status/2053121182044451016
Apparently not
All my sites are affected, I guess this is general.
have found Shopify's AI implementation to be sane and really useful ( building flows and surfacing documentation correctly ).
"Employees must explain why AI can’t be used before asking for additional resources, like more staff or time. [...] Shopify is now factoring AI usage into performance reviews and peer evaluations."
And even then we won't be able to tell if it's because of the AI or because they fired everybody that knows what they are doing.
You will never know. Lots of pretty important people publicly laid down the law that AI must be used; any indication that it produces crap will be hidden.