How to pick the right e-commerce platform without losing your will to live
A helpful guide on which platforms are best for your product offering—maybe
I made the wrong choice.
I decided to start selling physical and digital goods, and I needed to pick an e-commerce platform that could handle all of it. By the end of this, you’ll know the hoops I’ve jumped through and where I finally landed.
The short story is that I landed on a platform called Fourthwall that promised to do a lot of what I needed, and when I decided to use Fourthwall, there were some deal breakers from the list that I skipped over.
This is everything I wanted out of an e-commerce platform:
Ability to sell both digital and physical products
Allows for digital products of 500MB or greater in size
Video and other media types are ok
Must have print-on-demand options or third-party plugins
Allows me to export customer email addresses
Has sophisticated fulfillment and reporting technology
Needs to be cost-effective until I can prove my concept works
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SPOILER ALERT: There is NOT a single platform anywhere in the world that does all these things
Fourthwall does a lot of these things well, but there were two critical areas where they fail terribly.
❌ - Fulfillment
First, they do not offer any shipping solutions within the app, and the only shipping integration they have is with Shipstation, which is an extra $9 a month I wasn’t expecting to pay.
Also, whenever an order is completed, I cannot mark it complete. Instead, I have to download a CSV file of all open orders, manually add information to the CSV file, and then re-upload the CSV file for the system to mark things complete.
I’M NOT DOING THAT SHIT EVERY TIME I GET AN ORDER!
❌ - Email Marketing
There is no way to download my customer’s email list from Fourthwall without a separate account with Klaviyo, Kit, Mailchimp, or others—no Substack option (I have yet to find a single app or platform that natively works with Substack).
I still have a Kit.com account, but I’m using it for a different project, and it’s not a good idea to mix lists within that app; something I wish Kit would fix, but I’m sure it doesn’t make financial sense for them.
So I’m packing my bags and heading to another platform that does what I need, but sacrifices will need to be made.
The semi-definitive guide to finding the right e-commerce platform for you-ish
As I said above, there is not a single platform that does all of these things. You’d think someone would have made one by now, but nobody wants to be the absolute all-in-one solution. My instincts tell me that it would be too much technology to manage all of these things well, which is why many of the platforms have third-party apps do some of the heavy lifting.
However, below is a somewhat helpful guide to help you pick a platform that works best for you. I’m keeping it simple by giving the names of apps that work in the categories and which ones to avoid.
Physical Products
Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Big Cartel, Etsy, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad
AVOID: Stan Store, Kit.com
You can create product listings on Stan and Kit, but there’s no inherent fulfillment option and collecting mailing addresses takes an excessive amount of data management.
Digital Products (small files)
Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Etsy, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad, Stan Store, Kit.com
AVOID: Big Cartel
The only way to offer digital products with Big Cartel is with a third-party app called Pulley.
Digital Products (large files)
Shopify, Wix, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad, Stan Store
AVOID: Etsy, Squarespace, Big Cartel, Kit.com
Kit can handle large files up to 500 mb, but it’s not the most elegant solution, especially if you’re offering video.
Fulfillment Focused
Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Big Cartel, Etsy,
AVOID: Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad, Stan Store, Kit.com
Email List Focused
Squarespace, Stan Store, Kit.com
AVOID: Etsy, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Shopify, Wix*, Big Cartel*, Gumroad*
* I don’t know enough about these apps to say one way or another
Did you miss this?
Last week, I launched the Pieced Together Asset Library, where I have all stories and digital goods sectioned off for easy perusal.
And the winner is…
If all things were equal for all platforms as far as physical and digital goods, then the deal breaker would be customer service, which includes communication, customer segmentation, and fulfillment. If I cannot do those things well, I’m not providing the best experience for my customers.
With those things in mind, and given the uneven playing field between physical and digital goods, the answer is clear to me.
After over six months since I closed my Shopify account, I am going back.
Shopify allows me to offer everything I want to my customers, with the exception of an elegant way to deliver video tutorials. However, I’m cooking up a different plan for those.
The only x-factor in this decision is email. Shopify is great at sending simple confirmation and recommendation emails to customers when they are related to specific products, but the platform is absolute trash when it comes to email marketing. Most people on Shopify use Klaviyo for email marketing, which is another tidy expense I’m not willing to take on, primarily when Substack works great for me.
Instead, I will manually migrate email addresses over to Substack from Shopify on a regular basis. It’s tedious, but not enough to make me go a more expensive route, at least not right now. Besides, most of the people who buy from me probably got to my shop from my Substack account anyway.
Looking for the perfect all-in-one solution is a fool’s errand, and yes, I have been that fool many times in recent years, but I hope my calamitous tumble through these platforms saves you time and energy and keeps you focused on more important things.
The best part about going back to Shopify, though, is it’s like they knew I’d be back. I logged back into my old account, and everything was still intact, just as I had left it. It needs new furniture, and there’s still a big hole in the wall where I punched it before I left, but it’s still standing and ready for the next round.
Link Parade
(I need a better name for this section.)
The pre-order for Substrate, my new digital collage art zine, just went live, and the first twenty get signed copies (this link may be broken soon when I switch back to Shopify. Someone please remind me).
This post by Adi Dick (specifically the second image in the carousel) is so inspiring to me.
Rob Cannon is an illustrator with a dynamic style, and though I dig his art very much, I’m even more turned on by his lettering.
I met ➽ Daniel, Letterpress Designer a couple of years ago on Threads. He’s a genuine dude and a talented printmaker. Again, the fastest way to my heart is to use letterforms in unique ways.
Solid advice from Lou Blaser for any online project, especially newsletters.
Did you look into Gelato? It's on my radar but I've heard mixed things and can't remember why.
Have you looked at Payhip (https://payhip.com)? Several creators I buy goods & services from in both the music and art creation spaces use it. As a customer it's kinda handy because my purchases from various creators are all together on my account page.