[HN Gopher] Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopif...
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Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan
Author : hapiben
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-05-17 08:45 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tinystore.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (tinystore.app)
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| Agree with some of the other commenters here - this seems really
| really smart, but only because I live and work deep in Shopify
| land. It was immediately obvious to me what this means, but
| there's plenty of Shopify merchants and partners who aren't even
| aware of the Lite plan, and if they know it's there, are unclear
| of the limitations.
|
| I can definitely think of people who this would be great for -
| it's almost like headless commerce for the extreme low end. I'll
| be interested to see if you build this out further and what you
| decide to add. I'm surprised more haven't attempted to build
| full, wholesale replacement of Shopify's frontend outside of
| enterprise alternatives like Shogun Frontend.
|
| A simple theming system and more customization would be a natural
| next step.
| victor106 wrote:
| What's a good way to learn the shopify platform?
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| Its a good idea but there are other companies in the tinystore
| market worth having a look at too before opting for shopify
| hapiben wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. There's a lot of good feedback here
| that will make my weekend busy.
|
| My wife is a good example where she doesn't need a fancy
| storefront. She gets her customers from Instagram/Facebook. She
| only needs a super basic/low-end storefront for her customers
| to do their purchase.
|
| _there 's plenty of Shopify merchants and partners who aren't
| even aware of the Lite plan, and if they know it's there, are
| unclear of the limitations._ - 100% agree.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Why would someone use this + Shopify Lite instead of just
| upgrading to "Basic Shopify" for $29 per month? You'd save $15
| (29 - 5 - 9) a month, but is there another reason?
| ako wrote:
| Haven't read the full terms of service for shopify, but i could
| imagine that this doesn't align well with the strategy of
| shopify?
| mr_ploppy wrote:
| Indeed. Nice work, but it feels like you're circumventing the
| exact restriction of the Lite plan. I imagine they'd shut you
| down if you got too much business.
| wraptile wrote:
| Seems like that's the whole point of Shopify Lite[1]. It sells
| you the DB and payment backend without front-end; or am I
| misreading this?
|
| > Whether you're on WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, or anywhere
| else, with just a few clicks you can turn your website into an
| online store.
|
| 1 - https://www.shopify.co.nz/lite
| neither_color wrote:
| It's been a few years since I built a Shopify store but iirc
| they give you an HTML/JS/iFrame "snippet" of your products
| you can copy paste anywhere you like.
| andreasha wrote:
| Looks good!
|
| Could add a favicon.
| chmaynard wrote:
| A landing page for a closed-source commercial web app doesn't
| seem like an appropriate use of Show HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Not the OP but this submission looks ok to me
| jonplackett wrote:
| So long as he made it, I'm fine with it.
|
| What do you think it contravenes in those rules?
| HazalKaya wrote:
| Great
| quotha wrote:
| If you have this, what exactly does Shopify provide for the 9$ ?
| wraptile wrote:
| Seems like Shopify Lite provides product, invoice CMS and
| payment gateway: https://www.shopify.co.nz/lite basically just
| no front-end and some other advance features by the looks of
| it.
| hapiben wrote:
| With Lite plan, you get the whole experience except that you
| don't have a storefront to sell your items.
|
| https://www.shopify.com/lite
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm not that particularly impressed when I click on a category
| and it flashes "No products to display" on my screen for a second
| before it loads in the data.
| hapiben wrote:
| Thanks. The site is still new, I'll fix that bug. :-)
| bdcravens wrote:
| Sadly so many sites these days do the same thing, flashing a
| default state while the true state loads. While it's prettier
| and faster, so much of the web functions more poorly than it
| did 20 years ago.
| vira28 wrote:
| Since its relevant going to ask for recommendation here.
|
| I am setting up an online store for my parents. I can host and
| manage it at least for the initial days where they can validate
| the idea.
|
| These two looks promising.
|
| 1. https://woocommerce.com/ 2. https://magento.com/
|
| Found more alternatives https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-
| woocommerce-alterna...
|
| Wondering anyone has experience/feedback on any of these
| projects. Thanks.
| hapiben wrote:
| I've used WooCommerce before for my wife's online store. I
| hosted it in DO. It's okay, but not as good as Shopify in terms
| of payments, inventory management etc. I also ended up having
| to install a lot of plugins which most of it are in trial.
| teknolog wrote:
| Safely hosting anything on the internet today is a HUGE
| operational headache.
|
| Woocommerce is built on Wordpress, which is one of least secure
| platforms out there. You'll have to apply patches at least
| weekly.
|
| Use a hosted service, like Shopify or Squarespace or anything
| really.
| gman83 wrote:
| I recommend something like Cloudways for Wordpress. It's like a
| layer on top of Digital Ocean/Vultr/Linode.
|
| Try the Blocksy theme with Woocommerce.
| astura wrote:
| I would not shop at this store - it's completely broken.
|
| I went to "live demo" to check it out. Scrolled to bottom and
| clicked on LED Hightops. Read the description. Hit "back."
| Suddenly I'm not at the "store" demo anymore, now I'm back at the
| landing page, which would be the previous site if this was a real
| store. Fuck, that's annoying. Clicked live demo again, remembered
| the site it broken so I have to open new products in a new tab,
| long pressed another product, no context menu comes up so no way
| to open in new tab (because, according to another poster products
| links are not links).
|
| I give up, I'll buy something else somewhere else.
| hellweaver666 wrote:
| I think you need to work on your landing page. There's almost
| nothing on there that makes it obvious to me what this actually
| does.
| hapiben wrote:
| Agree. Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking to add a "How it
| works" section to explain what it really does.
| block_dagger wrote:
| Strikethrough pricing shows higher prices?
| narayannarad wrote:
| good and best <a
| href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/">updates</a> you are
| providing us.
| throwarayes wrote:
| I'm going to be the contrarian here :)
|
| I would just pay $29/month for Shopify basic plan. Is the $20
| difference worth self hosting and tweaking a custom thing? You'll
| quickly lose that $20 in time better spent running your business.
| I'd rather have reliable hosting...
|
| Not to bash a cool side project. Just want to say it's not a
| panacea.
| hapiben wrote:
| Some small businesses don't require a full online store. I'm
| putting my wife as an example. I agree that $15/month savings
| is not a big deal, but overtime, it will be. I also noticed
| that most customers don't care about how the site looks, as
| long as it's functional and they can do their purchase.
|
| $15/month savings can be spent in FB/Instagram ads or something
| that can drive more customers. In 3 months, you save $45 or
| $180/year.
|
| I'm also planning allow users to add multiple stores. The site
| is hosted in DO and can scale up easily.
| twalling wrote:
| I was wondering this too. The price difference is actually $16
| not $20. Shopify Lite ($9) + TinyStore ($5). It seems like a
| pretty narrow niche and easily killed should Shopify address
| the narrow gap there. I would also wonder if Shopify already
| has the data to be able to make the judgement call that this
| narrow price range doesn't have the demand.
| giarc wrote:
| >I would also wonder if Shopify already has the data to be
| able to make the judgement call that this narrow price range
| doesn't have the demand.
|
| They have obviously made the decision that it doesn't make
| sense for a $134b company to solve this problem. But it
| probably makes sense for a guy solving his wife's problem to
| create this solution.
| berkes wrote:
| I've ran and helped with _very_ low volume shopify websites[0].
| With such, reliability is less of an issue, yet the yearly $240
| is the difference making the profitability.
|
| I do see a niche for tinystore, but, like you, I also see that
| anyone making some real money off their store will gladly pay
| some extra's for more reliability and less fuss.
|
| -- [0] the ones now often reaching to woocommerce or
| equivalents. A hobby-, bootstrapping, "try this idea, see if it
| sticks".
| vira28 wrote:
| actually savings is only $15.
| AugurCognito wrote:
| There is a bug in the demo where discounted price is strike-
| though instead of the original.
| hapiben wrote:
| Good spotting. Thanks. I just fixed it.
| fuadnafiz98 wrote:
| Would you tell me what tech stack is used?
| hapiben wrote:
| - Ruby on Rails - VueJS for the store. Just the part where I
| render the products - PostgreSQL - Bulma CSS - PostgreSQL -
| DigitalOcean - Cloudflare
|
| Two important JS libraries from Shopify: - Shopify BuyButton.js
| for the product modal, cart and checkout - Shopify JavaScript
| Buy SDK for product pagination
| dstick wrote:
| Will this work with the other plans as well? I was looking into
| Shopify the other day, would like to accept non-credit card
| payments as well (so need a higher plan) but I love the minimal
| design of your theme.
| hapiben wrote:
| Thanks. Yes, it will still work with the basic plan and above.
|
| If you need the POS, I think it's included in all plans
| (including the Lite plan).
|
| https://www.shopify.com/pos/features#Payments
| bilater wrote:
| Nice work. I went down this rabbit hole a few weeks ago and built
| an open source Next.js Shopify Store that hooks up with the
| Shopify Storefront API. Feel free to check it out:
| https://github.com/btahir/next-shopify-starter
| asaddhamani wrote:
| There should be an option to see images full-screen
| wraptile wrote:
| yes, clicking on an item weirdly makes the image even smaller
| on my screen.
| hapiben wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I agree. I'll put it in my backlog.
| hapiben wrote:
| I made a simple web app for merchants/small businesses who use
| Shopify Lite Plan and want to have a simple/minimal storefront.
|
| I built this initially for my wife. She owns two online stores in
| Shopify. With her Lite plan, she only pays $9/month/store versus
| the Basic plan for $29/month/store. Since the Lite plan doesn't
| include an online store, TinyStore allows merchants to have one.
|
| The app is still new. I appreciate any feedback.
|
| Thanks!
| bbx wrote:
| Great use of Bulma ;-)
| hapiben wrote:
| Thanks. It's 99% Bulma defaults.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Clicking a product scrolls to the top of the page, it's quite
| annoying.
| hapiben wrote:
| I noticed that as well. Should be an easy fix. :-) Thanks.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| If there's one thing I'd suggest, it would be putting a blurb
| something like the above on your website as well - as someone
| with 0 contextual information about Shopify, there was no
| obvious problem the application was solving, even after reading
| the FAQ.
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| Agreed - saying something like "Having a storefront on
| Shopify would normally cost you an extra $20/month. TinyStore
| does this for $5/month." would sell pretty well I'd assume.
| pantulis wrote:
| Exactly this, didn't know that Shopify had a headless mode
| that does not include the storefront, so the question was:
| why not using the default Shopify storefront?
| perk wrote:
| Same here. Shopify's landing page for Lite says "Shopify
| gives you everything you need for just $9 USD per month"
| - so I couldn't figure out what this was for.
|
| Lite not having a storefront should be front and center
| on OP's page.
| netfortius wrote:
| If this is meant to be used with Shopify, why would someone
| w/zero contextual information on such would even be
| interested?
| rapnie wrote:
| Because they thought Shopify would not be interesting for
| them, or maybe just because they bumped into TinyStore
| first?
| 0x62 wrote:
| Surprised I haven't seen a comment about this yet - there
| doesn't seem to be a way to link to or share individual
| products?
|
| I've tried clicking on products from a few places and it always
| seems to show in a modal (with no pushState, FF 89).
| alanz1223 wrote:
| I am looking to experiment with ecommerce a bit and Ive signed up
| for shopify trials but since I want to extensively customize my
| store, learning liquid has been something i keep procrastinating
| on and this seems like a more approachable and affordable way to
| launch experimental stores but I want to understand what exactly
| you offer.
|
| You're charging $5/month for the front end and hosting of the
| tiny store/website and on top of that I need to have the
| additional $9/month shopify lite plan correct?
| hapiben wrote:
| That's right. You will end up having a bill of $14/month in
| total instead of $29 for the basic plan. TinyStore doesn't
| offer much customization atm. You can add pages, announcement
| banner, logo and social handles. With more feedback from users,
| I can improve the store with more features in the future.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Love how minimal the landing page is but maybe an FAQ or
| something below the fold? I see you have an FAQ hidden in footer
| but I'd drop something more on the apex landing page. Some
| context like...
|
| Shopify Lite is Shopify's Cheapest Plan. It does not include a
| hosted storefront but they do give you a "Buy Now" snippet which
| takes you straight to a checkout page.
|
| TinyStore gives you a hosted storefront to display and customize
| all those "Buy Now" snippets like a full-blown ecommerce website.
|
| The combined price ($9 for Lite and $5 for TinyStore) is cheaper
| than Shopify's Basic Plan ($29).
| hapiben wrote:
| True. There are a few comments here about improving the landing
| page. I need to put more context into it and explain what it
| does and the value for the users. Thanks for your feedback. I
| appreciate it. :-)
| whylo wrote:
| I'd really encourage you to download a screen reader such as NVDA
| (or use VoiceOver if you're on a Mac), make use of the Lighthouse
| accessibility audit in Chrome dev tools, and try using your site
| with just a keyboard to test for accessibility. At the moment the
| biggest problem is you've used divs with click handlers rather
| than <a> tags for your product links, which can't be focussed
| with the keyboard, so anybody using a keyboard to navigate (such
| as someone with reduced mobility or using a screen reader) won't
| be able to use the site.
| kevincox wrote:
| Additionally you loose out on basic browser features such as
| opening in a new tab and copying the link.
| berkes wrote:
| And for people reading this and going "In my app, I don't care
| about that demography, b/c that niche is too small/effort too
| big etc": Search engine bots are almost exclusively "disabled"
| users of your site.
|
| So, if you need to convince your managers or yourself to spend
| effort/money/time on accessability, SEO and traffic from search
| may be convincing if other reasons are not.
| wdb wrote:
| I think for some common patterns e.g. (clickable or partial
| clickable) cards, and similar we could use some good guidance
| documentation. Maybe my Google skills aren't up to scratch but
| I can't really find out how to handle these correctly. There
| always seems to conflicting issue e.g. selecting text and using
| an anchor element for the whole card etc.
| kpwagner wrote:
| I'm not usually a nut for accessibility, but you make a good
| point. Using semantic HTML tags and a few other basic best
| practices (e.g. alt/title attributes, sufficient color
| contrast) goes a long way.
| whylo wrote:
| I'm more of a nut ;) but I think anyone selling a service
| like this, or building any kind of front-end framework, has
| even more of a responsibility than individual site owners to
| make their stuff accessible, because any issues are
| multiplied out across all of your customers, and ultimately
| affect any of _their_ customers with accessibility needs.
|
| Depending on the juristiction your customers operate in, any
| accessibility issues could also expose them to legal
| liability for non-compliance with various laws (eg ADA in the
| US, the Web Accessibility Directive in the EU for public
| sector bodies)
| hapiben wrote:
| Agree. Thanks for this feedback. I'll put it on top of my
| backlog. :-)
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(page generated 2021-05-17 23:01 UTC)