In today’s commerce landscape, there is no shortage of challenges. Partners face rising costs, changing customer expectations, and competitive threats. Now, more than ever, it is mission critical to choose the right commerce partner.

Monolithic legacy platforms breed stagnation. Clients are frustrated with long timelines, hefty budgets, and a serious lack of innovation, and partners are sick of being penalized for platform limitations that hold their client relationships and their businesses back from reaching full potential.

There is a fundamental market shift underway. Shopify is winning new customers at a faster pace than all of our competitors combined due to the lowest TCO, highest check-out conversion rate, and an unparalleled pace of innovation. Partners are reaping the benefits with growing market demand and profits. There has never been a better time to partner with Shopify.

To quantify the partner opportunity potential, Shopify commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact(™) study.

Shopify’s growing footprint paves the way for partners to thrive

By 2028, Forrester forecasts US online sales to reach $1.6 trillion, total US retail sales to reach $5.8 trillion, and US B2B online sales to reach $3 trillion. The commerce pie is growing, and the market demand for Shopify is unprecedented.

Partners surveyed reported that their customers consistently requested Shopify by name due to key benefits including lower total cost of ownership, innovative products, and speed to market.

Our growing customer base emphasizes the market shift. For every 38 enterprise customers that come to Shopify from a competitor, we lose 1. As Shopify continues to grow its enterprise footprint, partners are benefiting from positive outcomes such as larger deal sizes, increased services revenue, and higher margins.

Surveyed partners also feel that Shopify is providing additional opportunities for their businesses to grow. According to the study, “Interviewees discussed business opportunities uniquely driven by their partnerships with Shopify. This included new business, new markets, and expanded revenue streams.”

All of this is underpinned by Shopify’s rapid innovation. We’ve shipped more than 800 significant features and improvements over the last 3 years and we work closely with our partners and customers to drive the future roadmap.

Our innovation drives faster, better outcomes for clients and higher profits for partners.

Partners see productivity and profit increase with Shopify

Shopify’s total available market and demand is growing, and partners are asking how profitable they can be.

The Forrester analysis showed a considerable 155% ROI over three years with payback in less than 6 months for a composite organization representative of interviewed Shopify partners. Partners who focused 75% or more of their business on Shopify saw even greater gains, reporting:

17% higher total services revenue
Nearly 30% average increase for average revenue per client
10% higher average margin on build and migration projects

The margins on [our prior commerce solution] projects were [in the] single digits or a loss. [We would] get to the end of the project, and it was not finished [and had] ongoing bugs…We saw a business transformation from having more bottom line added back. It freed us up to do a lot more to get expansion and investment back into the team and to the clients.
— Director, APAC Agency Partner

Partners saw first-hand the benefits of working with a product that is nimble, fast, and innovative. 71% of partners surveyed in the Forrester study said they partnered with Shopify to “simplify development processes and time to market compared to competitor solutions.” And not only did they see reduced time to market – more than half of the survey respondents reported that enterprise build and migration projects took less time with Shopify than other commerce platforms – they also felt they were able to deliver ‘cutting-edge solutions to their clients to drive long-term value’.

With Shopify, partners spent their time innovating and adding value to their customers' businesses instead of maintaining the status quo. As a result, partners surveyed saw ‘sticky recurring revenue’ with satisfied merchants. The study found attach rates up to 90% for new business migration and build clients turning into recurring revenue.

Shopify has allowed us to create a profitable and successful business around their platform. [Our business] has been able to grow and scale [by exclusively partnering with] Shopify.
— Co-Founder, LATAM Agency Partner

We are excited by the opportunity for Shopify partners. As one of our partners said "Shopify is the future of commerce".

To learn more and read the full Forrester TEI study, click here.

Bonnie Peterson