Trady vs. Shopify

Whether you use Trady or Shopify, you’ll get an attractive, hosted business website. The key difference between the platforms lies in getting a website that will actually work for a trades business, which is what Trady websites are designed to serve. Trady is also free forever, no credit card required, and includes a free CRM, jobs management, and other tools that home services businesses need.

While Shopify is an e-commerce platform that hosts websites, it was built for tracking physical inventory and shipping physical goods. It was never built for services businesses. Trady is purpose-built from the ground up for the trades and home services industry: electricians, lawn care, plumbers, house cleaning, etc. As such, Trady includes a complete range of all the tools a trades business needs, built right into the website: online bookings, jobs management and calendaring, CRM, online and mobile payments to accept credit cards from homeowners, and much more. It’s almost impossible to hack Shopify to do the same thing, because it just wasn’t built for the trades or services businesses. 

Does your service business make most of its money selling and shipping physical products to its customers? If so, a Shopify website might be a good call for your company. 

However, most home services companies need to take online bookings and deliver a service at their clients’ homes. That’s something you can’t do with Shopify, which is focused more on e-commerce transactions and shipments than it is on home services businesses. A Trady website is built for service businesses from the ground up, including online bookings and calendars, invoicing, payments, and job management.

Building on the previous point, Trady gives you a ton of trade-specific tools that you don’t get out of the box with Shopify. With Trady, you can take online bookings, accept or re-schedule house calls, send and manage invoices, and take payments in-person: all under one roof. Shopify lets you process payments online, as long as you’re selling and shipping a physical product. But if you have a Shopify website that sells services, your customers have to call your business for every last thing – they can’t even book a house call online, or pay you on your mobile phone right when you complete the work. Trady helps you get more clients, more jobs, run your whole business, and get paid faster. 

A huge say that having a CRM allows them to improve the customer experience. Happier customers lead to more business, both from the customers and through word of mouth. Trady has a built-in CRM you can use to track your customers, analyze data, and ensure you’re providing the right services to the right people at the right times. You can only get that with Shopify if you pay extra for third-party tools, that you then have to integrate into your Shopify website yourself. 

Trady keeps things simple when it comes to pricing: Trady is free forever, no credit card required. With Trady, you get an industry-specific website that’s ready to start generating leads for your business, and includes all of the trades-specific tools we’ve mentioned: job management, online bookings, invoicing, and payments. Shopify has three pricing tiers, with its Basic package starting at $29 per month. If you want the Advanced package, be prepared to pay $299 per month or more.

Trady is free forever. Shopify only gives you three days of a free trial, though you then get three months of use for $1 per month on selected packages. Unfortunately, when that low cost for three months ends, you pay at least $29 for month four and beyond. Spin up a free website on Trady today, and in two minutes you’ll have everything you need to run a trades business – purpose-built for exactly what you need, and nothing you don’t.