If you are planning to open an online store and start selling to the rest of the world, should you be using Shopify? You may be thinking "Well, it is just $19/mth. It is worth a try, right? ".  Here are something for you to ponder about:

1. The $19/mth package comes with nothing. If you are planning a competitive business, let's look at $102/mth or $231/mth then.
   
2. Opps sorry, the commitment is $102x12 since you need to signup for a YEAR!? So if you plan to run the business for 5 years, we are looking at $6120...and did i mention GST?
   
3. You might still need to settle email hosting on your own
   
4. Ok, you can choose free templates from shopify but why do you want your shop to look like your competitors' shop? You can engage a 3rd party designer to customize your template. So more $$$.
   
5. Finally settled in..WHAT?! The only useful credit card processing provider is Paypal? What if i want to do ENETS internet banking? Alipay? Unionpay? You might be thinking that you can get a 3rd party programmer to integrate with ENETS. NO! This is a functional modification, and it cannot be done on Shopify. You cannot modify Shopify's core functionality and workflow, period.
   
6. Ok, you can live with all these basic features and "try" out the business but these questions keep popping up...
   1. Opps, the template seems to be broken? I just can't seem to fix it? I am not not an IT person, why am i doing this?
   2. How do i use this built-in function? What is that tutorial talking about?
   3. How do i get more traffic and more sales?
   4. How do i even run the business?
   5. How do i link my online sales with my accounts?
   6. I have a physical shop, why am i managing the stock in such a messy way?
   7. How do i scale this website for growth?
   8. I still have ZERO sales after opening for 3 months!
   9. i need help on SEO and SEM, my shop cannot be found in Google. Oh great, my website is classified as a US site since it is sitting on a US IP address.
   10. Argh, who can i talk to? That technical support guy doesn't know anything about running a business.
       
7. Fast forward a year and now you've decided to build your own web store...
   1. Shopify is not yours, you cannot move it to your own server and get your "IT friends" to take over.
   2. You cannot extract the records from Shopify, there is no way to get into the database system.
   3. Well, you start all over again.