Shopify is a commerce platform that helps merchants sell across all their sales channels: online, physical retail, social media, and marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. In 2004, Shopify was founded as an e-commerce platform for new entrepreneurs and small businesses. While that is still a meaningful part of their business, they have moved upmarket via Shopify Plus, which is a higher-end platform that starts at $2,000 per month and manages commerce for brands doing up to around $1 billion in revenue per year.

Tobi Lütke, founder and CEO, has made the comparison that Shopify is like an operating system for retailers. I think this is a good analogy. The platform that runs a merchant’s sales is arguably the most mission-critical system that company has. Like the Windows operating system, once a merchant runs their business on Shopify, they are unlikely to switch to a competitor.

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