Our analysts compared Shopify vs Optimizely based on data from our 400+ point analysis of eCommerce Platforms, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.
Analyst Rating
User Sentiment
Shopify is a one-stop shop for all your eCommerce needs, helping you build, launch and grow an online business from scratch. At its core is a user-friendly interface that allows you to design stunning storefronts without any coding expertise. You can use drag-and-drop tools, unique templates and customizable layouts to curate your store’s overall appearance.
You can market your products across marketplaces, social media and personal blogs. Connect the platform to a POS system for in-store shopping and manage all your sales from a single backend. A native AI helps manage the store’s analytics and offers insights into enhancing sales strategies and marketing campaigns.
The platform is highly scalable and supports multiple business models, including B2B, D2C and dropshipping. It offers an extensive partner network to provide access to thousands of third-party apps to enhance the store's functionality. Global businesses can also manage multiple storefronts for different geographies using its headless architecture.
Optimizely is a comprehensive digital experience platform (DXP) that helps create, deliver, optimize and personalize customer journeys and shopping experiences. It offers a robust suite of experimentation tools, including A/B and multivariate testing, enabling you to compare multiple variations of a webpage or feature simultaneously.
This granular experimentation provides deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences. Additionally, the platform’s personalization tools enable you to deliver tailored experiences to individual customers based on their actions, preferences and demographics.
The platform integrates content management, distribution and marketing functionalities, allowing you to manage your brand’s entire digital presence from a single platform. This unified approach streamlines workflows and improves efficiency.
Additionally, analytics and reporting tools provide actionable insights into customer interactions and marketing campaigns. This helps businesses identify opportunities for improvement and measure the impact of their experiments.
among all eCommerce Platforms
Shopify has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 11539 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.
Optimizely has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 1102 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.
SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Shopify and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall eCommerce Platforms available today and earns best-in-class honors for Catalog and Product Management, Inventory Management, Order Management, Sales Channel and Integrations.
SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Optimizely and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Payments.
Shopify is a robust platform for every type of eCommerce business. During testing, I loved its “Markets” feature that consolidates wholesale, retail, B2B and D2C operations into a single view. You can tailor experiences for each market without creating multiple stores and get a bird's eye view of it all from a unified screen.Its analytics module is a strong suit. Unlike other platforms that typically involve a 24-hour waiting period to access current data, Shopify lets you stream your business’s data in real time. The drag-and-drop interface is intuitive, and pre-built reports provide a solid foundation. However, the platform truly shines in its ability to access and customize ShopifyQL code for advanced analytics.Shopify's scalability is also impressive. The platform grows with your business. Starting with a basic store and transitioning to a complex, multi-channel operation is seamless. The headless architecture offers flexibility for customization, allowing you to create unique shopping experiences using its native Hydrogen visual editor or other third-party solutions.The mobile app has offline image editing, AI image generation and website editing capabilities. Also, Shopify's native AI, Magic, automates routine tasks and provides data-driven recommendations.Shopify’s AI-powered virtual assistant, Sidekick, trains itself on your store’s data, customers and transactions. You can ask anything, from using a feature to understanding your business data, and it always provides helpful, contextual answers. It lets you generate customer segments, design marketing campaigns and optimize your sales funnel. Sidekick also identifies customer segments and offers tips to boost conversion rates, like targeted emails, discount coupons and cart recovery strategies.However, Shopify's cost structure can be prohibitive for some. As the business grows, so do the expenses. And reliance on third-party apps for essential functionalities can lead to increased costs and potential performance issues down the line.While the platform offers a high degree of customization, mastering Shopify's Liquid coding language is necessary for complex changes, creating a barrier for non-technical users. Lastly, the short duration of the free trial might hinder the evaluation process for potential customers.Overall, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce solutions that can adapt to evolving business needs. However, you should carefully consider the platform's limitations in terms of cost, technical complexity and app dependency before jumping into a contract.
Optimizely is a powerful tool for managing and optimizing digital shopper experiences. Its content management capabilities are particularly impressive. The platform offers a centralized hub for storing, editing and approving multimedia content, making it easy to maintain consistency across channels.Customers can quickly reach their desired location and find products with built-in search and navigation tools combined with AI-powered recommendations. The integrated customer data platform (CDP) is also a valuable addition, helping organize customer data for efficient support services and personalized suggestions.The platform’s real strength lies in its experimentation capabilities. It offers a robust set of tools for A/B testing, multivariate testing and feature flagging. These tools help you fine-tune your online store to better match your audience’s taste and test variations of designs, features or products to see how effectively they boost customer conversions.However, the platform is far from an all-in-one eCommerce solution. It offers basic backend tools to manage inventory, orders and shipping. For example, you can’t manage multiple inventory locations and set up packaging and kitting workflows.Also, it doesn’t support product bundling, contract-based pricing, purchase orders and complex promotional structures. This makes the platform less suitable for B2B businesses with complex needs.Overall, Optimizely is ideal for large enterprises and D2C businesses with an existing backend setup, looking to manage, personalize and deliver branded shopping experiences across multiple sales channels. However, SMEs and growing companies must consider other options in the market, as Optimizely can be a costly investment and may not cover the full spectrum of eCommerce store management needs.
WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...