Compare
Scroll Theory Forms vs Shopify
Different tools for different problems. Shopify is a store platform: your shop lives on their system, built with their themes. This is checkout for the website you already have. If you built a site you like, you should not have to abandon it to take orders on it.
The short version
- Shopify gives you a complete store: hosting, themes, apps, a massive ecosystem. You move in.
- We give your existing site a shop: a link, a popup button, or a section in the page. You stay put.
- As of this writing, Shopify Basic is $39 a month billed monthly. Ours is $39 flat.
- Card money goes straight to your own Stripe account. We take 1% of the order. On a $20 order, that is 20 cents.
- Contact forms ride along free. Shopify does not try to be your form backend.
Side by side
| Feature | Them | Scroll Theory Forms |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $39 (Basic, billed monthly; $29 annual) | $39, flat |
| Where your shop lives | On Shopify, built with their themes | On your own website, or a hosted page we serve |
| Keep your existing site | Your store is a separate Shopify site | One pasted snippet, a popup button, or a plain link |
| Card processing | 2.9% + 30¢ online (their processing) | Stripe’s own rate, plus our 1% of the order |
| Using another processor | 2% extra fee on Basic | Card checkout is Stripe; Venmo, Cash App, cash and check cost nothing |
| Offline payments | Configurable | Venmo, Cash App, cash, check, built in, no fee |
| Abandoned checkout reminders | Included | Included |
| Discount codes, stock tracking | Included | Included |
| Contact forms | Not the product | Included, free plan and up |
| App store, POS, multichannel | Yes, the whole ecosystem | No. We do checkout on your site, deliberately |
Competitor numbers are from their public pricing as of this writing and can change. Check their site for current figures. Our numbers come from the same config the product enforces.
The card fee, plainly
Value first: what you are not paying for is a second website. With Shopify, the monthly fee buys the store your shop must live in. With us, your shop lives on the site you already own.
On processing: Shopify’s 2.9% + 30¢ includes their margin. With us you pay Stripe’s standard rate directly, which as of this writing is also 2.9% + 30¢, and we add 1% of the order. So per card transaction we cost about 1% more, and per month we cost the same as Basic while your website stays yours. At small-shop volume, say $1,000 a month in card orders, our 1% is $10.
Who should pick Shopify
- You want a big catalog with hundreds of products and variants.
- You need point of sale, multichannel selling, or their app ecosystem.
- You do not have a website you care about keeping.
Who should pick us
- You make things and sell them from a site that already looks like you.
- Your catalog is dozens of items, not thousands: bakes, prints, slates, small-batch anything.
- You take pre-orders, local pickup, or delivery, and you want the order in your inbox and on a dashboard.
- You want to start taking card payments this week without replatforming.
See it working
The paid plan is $39 a month and covers the whole shop: catalog, checkout, delivery and tax, discounts, stock, and the order dashboard. Card payments run through Stripe and cost 1% of the order on top of Stripe's own rate.
No website yet? That's the other thing we do.
Everything on this page assumes you have a site worth keeping. If you don't, Scroll Theory builds custom websites for small businesses and makers, with this shop wired in from day one, an editor you run yourself, and a person who maintains it. Not a template with your logo on it.