Shopify: Limitations & Lies. The truth that no one tells you.

[borja250]

Good morning.

I am here to tell you my real experience with Shopify after months of tickets with problems that have been omitted without providing a solution by Shopify support.

With this I intend that new merchants know the truth of Shopify well before starting their project in it.

1. Shopify sells itself as an unlimited products store. FAKE.

This is half true: it may be unlimited in number of products but it is not unlimited in time.

Shopify limits you to only being able to upload or create 1,000 new products or product variants every 24 hours after you exceed 50,000 products or variants in the store.

This limitation is only reflected in Shopify's API limits documents, at no time is it referenced in the product feature tables, nor is an asterisk * added citing this important information. In addition, Shopify uses it as a differentiating feature when compared to other ecommerce platforms.

Shopify said in this same official forum after the complaint of several merchants with the limitation, that it was possible to request an extension for this limitation if you were not a dropshipping store.

I requested it on numerous occasions and they ended up telling me that I had to sell at least 5% of my entire catalog first, in a store closed to the public, in development and with only 10% of the total catalog uploaded.

It is a condition that they know is impossible to achieve in the current state of my store, they also told me that they could request new requirements in case I meet that one, in this way they reserve the right to always put a condition on me that they know I cannot achieve.

I don't understand how Shopify launches a program to support small entrepreneurs to grow if they don't help them with the simplest things, I think that they only help their interests and that entrepreneurs don't care about us at all, only when they are successful so they can advertise their business. platform as if it were responsible for such success and not the entrepreneur.

2. Shopify sells itself as a store with unlimited space. FAKE.

Shopify dares to compare itself with all platforms like this for example: https://www.shopify.com/es-es/compare/shopify-vs-elementor

And point out that your storage space is limited and that of the competition is not.

In addition to being consciously lying to their customers, they are unfairly discrediting the competition, which I consider to be unfair competition.

I got to fill the storage space of Shopify, when I asked the technical support about it they told me:

The limits are the following:

50 GB of documents that do not contain videos
500 GB of documents with videos
1000 total files.

I told him which page these published limits were on, they told me that they were nowhere, only in internal documents. I asked them to rectify the false information displayed to the public on their website and they closed my ticket. They are not going to rectify, they prefer to continue deceiving their clients.

3. Shopify sells itself as a platform with multiple employee accounts available so multiple team members can work simultaneously on the web. FAKE.

The server resources that Shopify dedicates to each store are insufficient for the simultaneous use of the backoffice, the server throws continuous errors when a certain number of requests is exceeded in X period of time. The exact limit and performance data Shopify did not want to reveal to me in order for me to adapt.

I have spent months reporting more than a dozen loading and server errors that I have found in my back office, sending screenshots, videos, doing each of the tests that I have been asked for and telling and explaining my case each of the innumerable times that I They have changed the operator in the open ticket and the new operator, instead of reading the entire case, repeats the same things to me as his colleagues in order to exhaust my patience and that he wants to solve a problem that has no solution.

Shopify has allocated the minimum resources that they consider necessary for most stores with a normal one to work well. If a store needs more resources, they will not be honest and will tell you that it is not possible for technical reasons, for example, they will always kick you out. the blame on you

They have ended up telling me that for security reasons several employees cannot access my store at the same time to replicate the errors and that I should try things like using a VPN, other devices, other connections, browsers, operating systems... I I did all kinds of possible cross tests and I know perfectly well that the errors are from the Shopify server since they do not appear on any other site or in Shopify if there is no simultaneous use, but they are unable to do the only test they have to do that is to replicate my problem, I even told them that they could try another store that they created themselves from scratch, because I am sure that the problem was going to be the same, and they ignored me.

I have come to the conclusion that they know exactly the same as I do about their server's resource limitation and that they will never admit it to me, they just hope that I get tired of the problem and give up too.

4. Shopify sells itself as a bug-free platform. FAKE.

Here is a list of errors that I have encountered and have refused to fix:

-Errors when importing CSV files:

Line 7394-7407: Server error
Line 14926-14939: [nethttp_cloud.domain.com_443] Semian::OpenCircuitError caused by Net::OpenTimeout
Line 506-519: Product is marked as readonly

Line 18342-18355: rateLimitExceeded: You have exceeded your bucket's allowed rate. See https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hotspotting for details.
Line 7520-7533: Failed to open TCP connection to cloud.domain.com:443 (execution expired)
Line 4552-4565: trilogy_query_recv: TRILOGY_CLOSED_CONNECTION
Line 16424-16437: must be unique within this namespace on this resource
Line 20246-20259: execution expired
Line 7926-7939: 3024: Query execution was interrupted, maximum statement execution time exceeded

Line 14926-14939: [nethttp_cloud.domain.com_443] Semian::OpenCircuitError caused by Net::OpenTimeout

I have asked for an explanation about these errors and they have only told me about the error: RateLimitExceeded: You have exceeded your bucket's allowed rate. See https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hotspotting for details.

Shopify's explanation:

"As it says there, you should review this document Access distribution guidelines and percentage of requests | Cloud Storage | Google Cloud to ensure that you comply with Google's requirements and guidelines. If you have any questions about this, you have to contact Google so that give you more details about this."

To which I replied:

Really? Who do I have contracted service with? With Shopify or with Google? It is you who will have to contact Google if they are where they have their servers, what are they telling me. What do they tell me about Google's requirements and guidelines when I'm just importing a simple csv file. As always blaming others, you are never responsible for anything.

-Errors in the export of languages:

Since my store grew in number of items Shopify is no longer able to process and export language files. I have reported it and they say that they will take it as a suggestion, they do not take it as a bug, that is to say that I am left with the error without being able to translate my store or that I pay for an external application so that they earn more money.

-Errors in the HTML language editor:

The button to toggle between normal and code editing in the translations section disappeared for me overnight. I reported it to Shopify and they gave me the same answer after a lot of insisting (because Shopify never locates your error the first time for many explanations and captures that you go through, they make you exchange messages and messages for days to wear down your patience) that they would take it as suggestion, not as a bug, that is, I am left with the error.

These are just some of the main problems I've had with Shopify, if I remember more I'll post them.

I hope people are aware that Shopify is by no means a perfect platform, but even less honest and professional.

All the best.

[PaulNewton]

Some valid sentiments here but also some fallacies to avoid that undermine complaints.

For example don't bring up "small" merchants while campaigning to be able to blast more than 50k products onto the servers as fast as desired.

Being "small" isn't an entitlement to services,  and makes for bad faith arguments on a platform that has to service MILLIONS of merchants.

Stick to the lack of upfront clarity of the platforms many limitations and avoid rhetoric.

---

@borja250 wrote:

1. Shopify sells itself as an unlimited products store. FAKE.

Products are unlimited in totality not in time of access. It's the same technicality phone companies use to get way with claims of "unlimited" data plans but throttle the speed so there is in effect a daily cap by measure.

Quickest way around the cap is to open multiple stores use buy-buttons api etc to collate to a single location, then close excess stores as imports finish. Or just get shopify Plus.

If you have a massive catalog the imports should be prioritized in the first place so store opening isn't contingent on a massive bulk operation like that.

Also be aware there were tools that supposedly generate 1k products a day to use as placeholders for future updating so you can cap out the 365K once 50k is hit. So for critical needs that's something to investigate/implement.

2. Shopify sells itself as a store with unlimited space. FAKE.

The limits are the following:

50 GB of documents that do not contain videos
500 GB of documents with videos
1000 total files.

I told him which page these published limits were on, they told me that they were nowhere, only in internal documents. I asked them to rectify the false information displayed to the public on their website and they closed my ticket. They are not going to rectify, they prefer to continue deceiving their clients.

---

That's something in my issues list. It's a source of constant annoyance that platform limits are in a broooooad diaspora:  across platform docs, buried in the forums/social-media/slack/discord, is insider knowledge, learned as proprietary expertise,  shopify support may or may not know the specifics of depending on the phase of the moon , or just plain isn't publicly accessible at all until the limit is hit causing knee jerk disruptions in a business to be set off.

It's hilarious though if that list is accurate and it's now 500GB WITH video where you'd think it be 500GB for simple documents due to compression benefits.

I've never seen the 1000 total files limit before , that seems it's being confused with the 1k JSON template limit in per theme. As it's been VERY common for merchants to upload their entire product image catalog to the files-admin to get CDN urls to then use in the CSV import to assign images per product since shopify does not have FTP , or robust bulk upload.

If your hitting the 1000 JSON template limit in a theme that is an Information Architecture problem the merchant has to fix by properly utilizing the available features in the theme api.

3. Shopify sells itself as a platform with multiple employee accounts available so multiple team members can work simultaneously on the web. FAKE.   

The exact limit and performance data Shopify did not want to reveal to me in order for me to adapt.

If you've got a reference for where shopify claims a high amount of simultaneous staff please provide that.

There are areas like bulk editing where not only will performance be a problem if too many staff , but conflict problems as they step on each others work. 

Generally delegation of specific duties & times should be looked at first under the assumption the performance will always be a problem

There's a point at which to recognize a service may not be able to ever meet the standards and expectations a business needs.

Roll your own ecomm stack if a better platform cannot be found.

 repeats the same things to me as his colleagues in order to exhaust my patienc

There is no SLA on shopify, and they had layoffs in support

The actual viability of most tier-0 support solutions is incredibly narrow.

The new person often has no context or handoff from the previous supporter, so they have to run down the script again and again and again.

Zero Tier support on a lot platforms have training to be friendly-helpful but not actual-solution-helpful. It's a corporate system not a respect your time system.

Always try to escalate past them asap, if you've got the time and patience when you can't get anywhere in the first few responses close it and make a new ticket if you feel like your rolling the dice anyway. It's a weird system isn't it they cut costs in support but the ways it take to get support just increases support costs.

4. Shopify sells itself as a bug-free platform. FAKE.

Doubt. Citation wanted.

They literally have a bug bounty program that invalidates such claims:

https://hackerone.com/shopify 

Any platform claiming "bug free" is leaving a wide legal door open for a situation that does not exist in software development.

Bug-free is not the same as low incident rates ( and that stats obfuscation "platform incidents" hide behind).

-Errors when importing CSV files:

Line 7394-7407: Server error
Line 14926-14939: [nethttp_cloud.domain.com_443] Semian::OpenCircuitError caused by Net::OpenTimeout
Line 506-519: Product is marked as readonly

Line 18342-18355: rateLimitExceeded: You have exceeded your bucket's allowed rate. See https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hotspotting for details.

Is that seen in the shopify admin as a notification or the old google channel or google shopping..

That's weird if in the shopify-admin as that's something you'd expect to see when working with the api in your own app not in the admin during a CSV import which shopify should be throttling even for their own product-api.

-Errors in the export of languages:

Limits or not, in almost every area of shopify it's a baseline generalized experience, for optimization pay for specialized software and save your sanity and more importantly TIME.

That they don't make it very clear upfront or BEFORE merchants hit these limits and feature-behaviors is a long standing massive aggravation.

But merchants have to be proactive and submit feature requests for complaints,  and more importantly get other merchants to be just as proactive with requests that may just being going to a black-hole  ; on these forums alone there are tons of features and things merchants want or "must have" but the follow-through and solidarity generally is rarely there. 

-Errors in the HTML language editor:

These are generally fixed by full clearing browser cache.

Always validate those types of issues with the troubleshooting step of checking with another computer/browser and full browser cache clears.

Though it's possible with the description of other issues it could be related to constantly redlining the stores available resources.

Overall though shopify is not a Ferrari-racecar-spaceship,  it's an offbrand luxury-sedan at best with few first party car-options.

In my experience this level of initial dissatisfaction can only be fixed by using another platform or building your own, and being loud about the migration taking money from shopify while keeping in mind your heavy limits use-case may be such an outlier among 1 MILLION merchants that it's ultimately ignored so there is no real satisfaction or change to be had to the initial platform.

Good hUnting.

[borja250]

Good morning.

1. In my text there is no fallacy, only my experience and opinion of the platform.
I know being small doesn't give you any rights, but I was hoping that at least Shopify won't treat you in a discriminatory way like they brag about supporting small business owners. For me they are false, they sell an image that does not correspond to the real philosophy of the company.

Exactly, Shopify uses the same technique as the unethical phone companies with their unlimited data rates. More than one company has been sued for misleading advertising and not correctly stating these limits or using the word unlimited loosely.

I have no idea what it is like to open multiple stores and use the buy API buttons, if you could give me more information about it I would appreciate it.

It is impossible for me to get Shopify Plus for a full year, if I was willing to pay the necessary months to upload my catalog, but it turns out that it has a minimum commitment of 1 year and then it is problematic to downgrade again, it was what I read.

"If you have a massive catalog the imports should be prioritized in the first place so store opening isn't contingent on a massive bulk operation like that.

Also be aware there were tools that supposedly generate 1k products a day to use as placeholders for future updating so you can cap out the 365K once 50k is hit. So for critical needs that's something to investigate/implement."

I don't quite understand what you mean by this, I don't know those applications or how to generate products.

2. Regarding the storage limits, it is more than a nuisance, it is a fraud, it is deceptive advertising and it discredits the rest of the platforms with clearly published limits. If I were one of the other platforms, I would sue them, perhaps they are not aware, so I will proceed to inform each one of them in case they consider that they should take legal action.

Regarding the 1000 total files, I think they refer to 1000 GB in total, not 1000 files.

3. Shopify notes that 3 employee accounts are available at least for the most basic plan, this can be found on any plan features page. They do not say anything about simultaneous, but I think it is understood that the 3 employees should be able to work at the same time, it is as if Spotify tells you that it lets you add 6 users to your family account, it is understood that the 6 of us can listen to music through at a time, not one by one.

My employees don't get into editing conflicts, one can be editing products, another uploading files to storage and another creating collections and they will be getting server errors, 500 errors and all kinds of upload errors during the workday.

Shopify can't do any kind of standard job tasks in an online store for 3 employees, it's not trained and they know it, that's why they refuse to do that test and prefer to say they can't for security reasons but that the I'm sure the problem is mine and I should try a VPN, they only know how to say that, they troll me and laugh at me.

I didn't know about the Shopify layoffs, I don't know if this is the cause or rather I think it's that the cases are never escalated anymore, they always continue to serve you with zero-level representatives, I don't understand why they refer the problems to other agents of the same level and they don't escalate the case when they can't solve it.
I was a Shopify customer years ago and I remember excellent service, never once was there an unresolved bug.

I've seen Shopify's profile on Truspilot and the negative opinions there are about customer service are scary, many people find themselves in the same situation: with a service that only asks you redundant questions and that keeps jumping from one agent to another. agent, so I think it must be a current company policy, too bad.

4. I was referring to the fact that it is a closed platform and the errors are supposed to be negligible compared to platforms like Woocommerce or Prestashop, and that if one is found, Shopify will easily fix it. This was the case in the past, but not anymore, if you find an error they don't investigate or solve it, they just tell you to take it as a suggestion, as if you had recommended an improvement and not a serious operating error. This leaves you fully sold and in the hands of Shopify. With self-managed platforms, at least you will always have the possibility of hiring a technician to solve it, not here, the system is from Shopify, only they can access it and solve it and they don't want to, you're trapped.

All my CSV errors are seen in the email that arrives after importing them, I don't use any type of API.

-Errors in the export of languages:
Yes, my only hope is that this error will be found by more merchants and reported, but since it is due to such a large language files inability to process error and I am a unique case, I doubt it will happen and Shopify does not give me no value as an individual trader with special needs, they don't even take me into account as an exceptional case to know the limits of their platform and try to improve them. At least I expected a bit of sincerity, it would be worth it if they told me that they are not prepared for stores of this volume and that they will try to improve it over time, but they will never admit a weakness, they are perfect and you are always the problem.

-Errors in the HTML language editor:
It is not solved that way, they themselves confirmed the error to me and that they were not going to do anything about it.
If I can't export the languages or edit them live, they must want me to open 20 more stores, one for each language and thus earn much more, they are certainly not stupid.

I already have almost 1,500,000 products uploaded, it's too late to migrate to another platform at the moment.
That is why I am telling my experience, if I had known all this before starting I would have chosen another platform, perhaps it will help other merchants who are doubting which CMS to choose.

I just hope that Shopify doesn't use me as a success story if they do, if I'm an outlier and they ignore me now that they do it forever, even if I give interviews in public media and tell about my disastrous experience.

All the best.

[borja250]

Update with new limitation found:

At first the import time for about 1000 products in csv was around 50 minutes.
Now the time for the same type of csv file of 1000 products reaches 100 minutes.

The performance of the server is getting lower and lower, but Shopify closes my tickets without giving me any response, I have been banned from customer service, but what does it matter? In any case, they would tell me that it is a problem with my connection and that I should use a VPN xD.

[borja250]

Good morning.

It is sad once again to have to pay for basic functionalities that stop working in Shopify and that instead of you investigate and solve, or lower the price of the fee in compensation or pay the price of external applications that I am forced to hire , they prefer to do nothing so that I spend more money on applications and you earn more.

-First it was with the export of languages and the editing of html in them, the Shopify application stopped working, solution: pay for a third-party translation app.

-Then the collection filter stops working and in the search engine, it doesn't work if there are more than 5000 products to display and this problem is not referenced anywhere. Solution: Pay for a third-party filter app.

-Then I get dozens of errors when I import csv and server errors if I want to use Shopify's online batch editor. Solution: pay for an external editing and import application and goodbye errors.

And now the sitemap of my website is impossible to create due to the large number of articles and Shopify does nothing to fix it, it only tells me to hire paid applications and they don't even know if they will be able to create the sitemap.

If you are thinking of using Shopify for your online store, you should know that they will never solve any error, no matter how serious it is that you have on your website, the most they will do is recommend applications so that you spend more money for the same functionalities and thus they earn more. It is the most lucrative business for them. If they gave a platform without errors they would lose a lot of money, they are not interested in it working well.

[netgains_org]

We are also trying to migrate a ecommerce store with over a million products, but post looking at all data and online research, Shopify is not the platform 

Here is the reply from Shopify Support team

Shopify does not support stores with more than 100,000 products. This is due to technical limitations related to the platform's architecture and performance. While it is possible to have a large number of products on a Shopify store, it is recommended to keep the number of products under 100,000 to ensure optimal performance and stability.

There are other e-commerce platforms that are designed to handle large product catalogs, such as Magento and WooCommerce, They recommend using them.

[borja250]

I wish Shopify had told me that when I asked.
They told me that there was a store with several million products and Shopify worked without problems, unfortunately this is not true.
All the best.

[borja250]

Hello everyone.

I want to warn you that Shopify eventually limited my site's storage space.
They don't let me upload any type of file anymore or even make a change to any image on my website. Furthermore, they refuse to tell me how much space I have, how much I have spent, how many files I should delete, they do not give any type of information for reasons of legal security since it is sold as an unlimited product and they cannot say that there is a specific limit. . It is completely unfair how Shopify plays with its merchants to be able to change the conditions of the game at will, without having to make official notices or announcements, only acting in the shadows. This is definitely the most deceptive and dangerous platform of all, your project is always in the hands of Shopify, and Shopify is your enemy, it is not your friend, remember, if they can screw you they will.

[beauxbreaux]

If you aren't drop-shipping, where are your products at?

Sounds like you are a 1 person business or just have a lot of time on your hands as an owner, that somehow has over 50k products with no established business. Curious how this is possible.

[borja250]

I do do direct shipping, I don't know where you get that I don't do it, and I am not a Dropshipping business.

I also don't know what whether the business is established or not has to do with being able to upload my complete catalog.

The answer you have given is absurd, it is clear that you want to defend Shopify even though it is not possible to do so in a company that lies and manipulates its conditions at will, plays with its customers and leaves them in a situation of helplessness and total defenselessness.

[beauxbreaux]

As stated, if you do direct shipping, then you must have a warehouse full of products.  Simply put, if your business is this large why would you personally be handing these things? Is your time really worth this? Not sure how that equates. To each their own. The fact that your business is established is important. If your business is not established well that is quite odd to have that many products starting out and just sitting on inventory. I could care less about Shopify or defending them. I suppose I just don't have this many feelings. Or at least do not express them unless I feel like they are productive. If I have a bad experience somewhere, I may send them constructive feedback. If I feel their intent is bad, fraudulent, deceiving, I change services handle things legally (if needed) and move on. For example, way back in the day Apple released their first smart phone. I was so excited for this phone launch. The best phones at the time were the Razor or maybe a Blackberry. They had all the modern features like video recording, camera,  internet, all that jazz. When I first got the Apple phone I could not believe they left off a video camera. That isn't what really turned me off from Apple, it was the fact that they held off on this feature just to release it a year later. I felt duped. Moral of the story, I stopped buying Apple products. 😎 

[borja250]

I have a large warehouse full of products.
I deliver the products myself for the reason that I am not a Dropshipping store and it is always better to control your shipments than to delegate to the Chinese, I think, is this bad? I don't know what it has to do with Shopify lying and manipulating their conditions.

This is not a bad experience, this is a deception in the conditions of service, without any type of prior notice, without making it official or equal to all clients, only to me, and without telling me how much real space I have to be able to adapt my project , they leave you in total ambiguity.

The truth is I don't know what it has to do with the Apple iPhone, they didn't deceive about its features, they didn't say it had a video camera and then it was a lie, they didn't compare themselves with other brands that didn't have a video camera saying that they did. and then it was a lie, wanting to defend Shopify is impossible.

What can I go to another platform? Yes, but who reimburses me for the time and investment made by Shopify? Nobody. They deserve a lawsuit for what happened, if I were any of the other CMS platforms with which they are compared with false data I would sue them, there are many crimes they are committing and sooner or later they will pay for it.

[cristrod817]

My condolences, I know exactly the frustrations in having to deal with a support staff that is not technical or refuse to get technical and brush off the problem by suggesting using an app to circumvent the issue at hand. My issue which is still ongoing since February 2024 is that images imported from Dropbox have all of a suddenly being flagged as invalid, yet I have been importing for the last 5 years with no issue. The images work on any browser URL and are displayed without issue.

Suggestions from support is to upload the images manually via that File upload in the Admin screen and then use the link and append them manually to products. Double the work when there was no work to be done. Never even contacted their development team because development is too busy assisting Plus subscribers. Anyone who is not a Plus subscriber would have to probably sit on the long queue of issues.

With the 20% cut in their employee staff I can see why support is probably overwhelmed. Most of them are great in assisting and making you feel that the issue is being looked at but after 4 weeks of no progress my expectations of any forth coming solution is low.
I am a seasoned application developer and I pointed to them where the problem exists since it is broken, and they refuse to comment on it. So, I am being ignored for now and I must continue importing my images manually which used to take 5 mins importing now takes two to three days. Ridiculous! But what can I do? I am at their mercy. Still waiting, and waiting, and waiting for their development department to contact me but that is not policy.

Amen! We are not the only ones screwed there are plenty more and with a million merchants to support, Shopify in my opinion does not have the resources to support non-Plus members.  They do try to appease that they are interested in resolving our issues but when counteract their recommendations with a programmatic workaround there is no reply.  Well, back to the dark ages of manual labor.

[borja250]

I'm sorry to hear you're having problems too.

I'm finally moving to Woocommerce, I don't think Shopify is worth it to anyone except users with little technical knowledge or budget.

Now my site gives scores of 98 mobile and 100 pc in the Google test, results completely impossible to achieve in Shopify, in addition to having the best SEO platform while Shopify is the worst by far, it is impossible to position a Shopify store if you You are no longer a recognized brand or you have an unlimited advertising budget.

I will never trust Shopify again for any type of project, it is very dangerous to leave your work efforts in the hands of third parties.

All the best.