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8 Shopify Statistics that will blow your mind

Do you use Shopify? 

If not, you’ve heard of it, right? Fair chance you have.

It’s one of the biggest e-commerce platforms around, and if you’ve looked into running or starting a business online, you’ve likely heard of it.

I’ve experimented with Shopify many times, and done several reviews that include or compare Shopify to other platforms.

But sometimes it’s good to get back to the basics: what is the scope of Shopify?

How big, how popular is it?

In this article I’ll present to you nine cool statistics about Shopify.

Let’s start off with this one:

Item 1: Shopify powers over 1 MILLION businesses worldwide.

This figure comes directly from Shopify’s “about” page:

Shopify About Us

A million businesses is a lot.

But that doesn’t mean Shopify only has a million users:

Yep, Shopify has well over 2 million active users, spread between those 1 million-plus businesses.

That’s a lot of businesses and a lot of store owners/workers. But that begs the question: how much money do those businesses bring in?

Let’s check out the next stat to find out:

Item 2: Shopify has contributed over $183 BILLION in economic activity, globally.

This number also comes straight from Shopify itself.

Shopify Global Economic Activity

If you use the modern internet regularly, you’re used to encountering a lot of big numbers.

So what does $183 billion in economic activity mean? What’s the scale of that?

I could talk about rankings of the world’s richest people, or the world’s richest companies.

But the best thing to put this in scale is a ranking of the world’s economies.

By three reputable metrics, Qatar is the 52nd or 53rd largest economy at about $190 billion.

Which means that the global economic activity Shopify has contributed is larger than the GDPs of the VAST majority of the world’s nations. Larger than about 132 countries.

This stat doesn’t mean Shopify earned that much, necessarily—it’s a calculation based in part on Shopify’s earnings, but also what Shopify’s customers have gone on to earn.

Either way, that’s a big deal.

And if you’re curious, the direct number of how much Shopify businesses have earned in sales is also enormous:

Shopify businesses have earned over $135 billion in sales—still larger than the GDPs of most countries.

These gargantuan numbers make even more sense when you look at the next fact:

Item 3: In 2019, Shopify took 31% of the e-commerce platform market.

Yep: of e-commerce and shopping cart platforms, Shopify is easily the most popular.

It takes up nearly a third of the market, and when you compare that figure to Shopify’s competitors, it looks even more impressive:

Ecommerce Software Platforms 2019

Shopify’s biggest competitors?

WooCommerce, a free plugin for WordPress sites, Squarespace, and “other” (miscellaneous or custom-built ecommerce solutions).

Curious if Shopify’s biggest competitors present a good challenge?

You can check out my comparison of Shopify and WooCommerce, or Shopify and Squarespace to learn more.

Our source for this statistic is Oberlo—a popular software integration for Shopify and one of the biggest names in dropshipping—and BuiltWith, an analytics website that you’ll hear more about soon.

Now before anyone jumps on me—this doesn’t mean Shopify is the biggest platform for e-commerce in general.

It specifically means Shopify is the biggest e-commerce software that enables users to set up shops online. Otherwise giants like Amazon would take up most of the space.

That’s still super impressive though.

And it might make you wonder…where are all those businesses that chose Shopify and made it so popular?

Take a look:

Item 4: Most of the businesses Shopify powers are in the United States, at over 841,000.

This info comes from BuiltWith, a popular and reputable website/business profiler.

Let’s take a look at the number itself:

Websites Using Shopify In USA

According to BuiltWith, about 841,000 websites use Shopify in the United States.

According to our earlier figure of over 1,000,000 businesses globally being powered by Shopify, this would mean that BY FAR the United States is the majority of Shopify’s customers.

Not so fast:

A closer look at BuiltWith’s data shows us that they know of 1.5 million live sites that use Shopify.

Granted, Shopify does say it powers “over” 1 million active sites, so it could be they’re waiting for the number to reach 2 million before they put it on their site.

Whether it’s half or 80%, it’s quite obvious from these numbers that American businesses are the largest base of Shopify customers.

On that note…

Item 5: Of Shopify’s American customers, Californians are the largest group.

This data is also from BuiltWith.

However, the number of Shopify-powered businesses from California is NOT a huge chunk of the total number of the Shopify-powered businesses in the United States.

Take a look:

Websites Using Shopify In California

BuiltWith records just under 28,000 California Shopify customers. That’s a lot, but remember:

Our U.S. total is over 841,000.

The next biggest states: New York is home to just under 13,000, and Florida has about 9.5k.

So no single state has an overwhelming share of Shopify businesses within the United States—at least, so far.

Now, it could be possible that BuiltWith is able to identify some shops as being American, but unable to pinpoint their state.

That’s because proportionately, the 3-4 biggest states for Shopify stores here still make up only a fraction of the total U.S. count.

It could be the case that numbers are divided almost evenly between all 50 states, but I think it’s more likely that some information is missing.

So why did I give you this statistic in the first place?

Quite simply because it certainly speaks to an element of truth.

The number itself may not be exact, but it’s a VERY good indication that California is indeed home to more Shopify stores than other states.

But enough on that. Let’s get back to how well these businesses perform:

Item 6: Shopify stores have seen almost 3x as much growth as the overall e-commerce market lately.

This comparison comes from Statista.

First, take a look at the difference, because it’s pretty impressive:

Shopify Growth

So what does it mean?

It means that OVERALL the ecommerce market worldwide grew 21% in 2018.

That’s a lot of growth, by the way—it means ecommerce is thriving, and if you find that interesting, you can read some more cool stats about ecommerce here.

But in any case, global e-commerce includes a massive amount of businesses. Shopify is a RELATIVELY smaller sample size (although there are many Shopify businesses).

Even so, Shopify’s growth rate in 2018 was an astonishing 59%, far outpacing the general trend of e-commerce growth.

Does it mean that you’re guaranteed to do really well if you have a Shopify store?

Of course not.

But it DOES mean that statistically, Shopify businesses have been growing faster than the norm.

The next crazy figure will make some more sense with this context:

Item 7: During 2019’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, Shopify businesses made $2.9 billion in sales.

This news comes from a Shopify press release:

Shopify By The Numbers

This nearly $3 billion in sales were made worldwide, from Shopify businesses everywhere.

Also interestingly, over 25.5 million consumers made purchases from Shopify businesses, showing a wide reach.

But you know what makes this even more impressive?

This:

This is Shopify’s news from 2018’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. At that time, Shopify’s businesses made about $1.5 billion.

Which means that 2019’s Black Friday weekend is even more impressive, because Shopify’s businesses DOUBLED what they made last year.

Oh, I’m sure a lot of that is new merchants that joined Shopify—but that doesn’t take away from how astonishing the increase is.

And next, even more optimism:

Item 8: Brand loyalty has been increasing for Shopify merchants: over half of shops have repeat customers!

Tired of all the statistics coming from Shopify?

Don’t blame me! They have the most reliable, recent statistics. For obvious reasons.

Anyway, this interesting tidbit is actually based on several pieces of information, found in Shopify’s “State of Commerce” report for 2019:

Shopify Brand Loyalty

Perhaps the most encouraging number is the first statistic:

That over half of Shopify shops have repeat buyers. It may not seem perfect, and in fact varies by country, but on the whole it’s a promising trend.

Plus, the second stat points out that repeat buyers comprised about 14% of all buyers, so it’s not too bad!

The ultimate direction this takes, as described on the left, is that brand loyalty is becoming more prevalent than individual purchases on Shopify’s stores.

Which is great.

One last happy figure:

Conclusion

The best way of encapsulating all these statistics is probably to say something like this:

Shopify is growing.

Simple, yes, but as the numbers show, it’s true in a variety of different ways:

Shopify has a lot of customers, and has seen that number increase a lot. Those businesses have been making more and more money. Shopify’s stocks are going up and up.

Does that mean Shopify is the perfect platform for you?

No. You still need to investigate deeply and make a careful choice about the platform you think is best for you.

Here’s more detail about how I actually found Shopify as a user, and here’s an overview of what the best alternatives to Shopify are.

But wherever you go from here, at least now you know how and why Shopify is such an enormous figure in the e-commerce SaaS market.

And if you want to fact-check me…go ahead! My references are below:

Statistics infographics

References

Shopify on the number of businesses, active users, and how much those businesses have made in sales:
https://www.shopify.com/online

Shopify on the global economic activity contributed by Shopify businesses:
https://www.shopify.com/about/economic-impact

Oberlo on Shopify’s market share:
https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/ecommerce-platform-market-share-in-usa

Portion of Shopify’s businesses that are American:
https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Shopify/United-States

The amount of Shopify stores that are Californian:
https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Shopify/United-States/California

Statista on sales growth rate comparisons between Shopify and global e-commerce:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1077595/worldwide-shopify-e-commerce-market-growth/

Shopify on the amount it made in Black Friday sales, 2019 and 2018:

https://news.shopify.com/shopify-merchants-break-records-with-29-billion-in-worldwide-sales-over-black-fridaycyber-monday-weekend

Shopify’s 2019 “State of Commerce” report (customer loyalty info):

https://news.shopify.com/shopify-unveils-first-state-of-commerce-report-242590

Gov Capital on Shopify’s stock prices historically and projected increases:
https://gov.capital/stock/shop-stock/