Shopify

The Skeptic

The pricing pages meter the checkout by tier — customisation is shown as limited on every plan except the top one, and B2B stops at three catalogues until you buy up — while localized selling via Markets, multi-channel sales and POS are evidenced. We found no public information on variants, bundles, tiered or customer-group pricing, or payment methods such as invoice and direct debit, so the conversion story rests on vendor-quoted uplift numbers rather than evidenced checkout capability. 1 2 2

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The Skeptic

Across the captured pricing pages and privacy policies we found no public information on VAT determination, OSS, reverse charge, VAT-ID validation, e-invoicing, or the checkout texts German law requires — not a rate, not a threshold, not a footnote. The only German-law touchpoint evidenced anywhere is the credit-intermediary arrangement behind merchant financing. 3 3 2

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The Skeptic

The developer surface is real and it is priced: more than 21,000 apps, a named headless toolkit in Hydrogen, and API rate limits published as a plan differentiator — standard, up to 2x, up to 10x — with headless storefronts metered at one per shop until twenty-five on the top tier. We found no public information on custom themes and version control, staging environments, or a local development story, so the surface is rented rather than owned. 1 2

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The Skeptic

Multi-channel intake is evidenced — fifty synced marketplace orders a month free, Collective for sourcing, POS that syncs online and offline — and inventory runs to ten locations (two hundred on the top plan) with over 200 real-time reports. But we found no public information on partial shipments, named carrier integrations with label printing, a returns process in the system, or interfaces to ERP and accounting systems, which is the half of operations that turns orders into a business. 1 2 2

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The Skeptic

The leaving terms are stated plainly — cancel anytime — and store information is retained for two years after closure before deletion begins, with a portability right and a data-subject portal on paper. But we found no public information on export: no evidenced way to take catalogue, customer records or order history out intact and no documented migration path, and hosting comes bundled with the subscription with no self-run alternative evidenced. 3 2 3 2

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The Skeptic

The vendor is a Canadian company; for EEA users the data recipient is the Irish subsidiary, but the captured pages show data then moving to Canada and the USA, and subprocessors appear only as categories — cloud hosting, content delivery, data analysis, logging, fulfillment, email — with no names. Data residency is not confirmed on the vendor's own pages, so a European buyer is leaning on standard contractual clauses and approved binding corporate rules rather than an evidenced European chain. 3 3

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The Skeptic

This is the most computable invoice in the field: tiers at 27 €, 79 € and 289 € per month on annual billing, card fees per plan from 2,1 % + 0,30 € down to 1,3 % + 0,30 €, Amex rates published, a 2 % fee falling to 0,2 % when an external payment provider is used, POS Pro at 79 € per location per month, marketplace sync at 1 % capped at 99 $ USD a month after fifty orders, and a stated 1- or 3-year commitment on the top tier. What keeps the annual cost from being fully derivable: monthly-billing prices are not shown, we found no public information on the top tier's own price, on VAT treatment of the listed prices, or on any order or GMV limits. 2 2

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