Flower Store In a Box Vs. Shopify?

Thinking about Shopify for your Florist Website - Think Again!

Are you thinking about Shopfiy for your florist website, here is the low down on the reasons why you shoudl choose Flower Store In a Box and save yourself heartache and money!

Florist Websites Require Special Features:

Florist websites require special features that are unique to florists such as:

  • Delivery Dates for Ordering
  • You can block dates you don’t deliver too
  • Same Day ordering cut off times
  • Additional Card Message for the recipient
  • Recipient’s Phone number

Shopify doesn’t offer these out of the box and certainly not in their lower cost options but Flower Store in a Box does offer all of these features and a lot more!

  • Delivery Runsheet (printable as well)
  • In Store Pickup Runsheet (printable as well)
  • Easily mark a colour of a product out of stock without making the whole product out of stock
  • Stock Inventory and automatic Out of Stock notifications
  • Holiday mode blocking dates between two dates
  • Manual Order System
  • Weekend Delivery Surcharges
  • Date Surcharges and Charge a special flat fee for a specific date IE Mothers Day
  • Timed Delivery Costs and rules
  • In Store Pickup times and rules with different In store Pickup cut off times
  • Delivery Suburbs
    • Make a suburb invisible / visible
    • Make a suburb not available for Same Day ordering
    • Different same day cut for suburbs such as distant suburbs
    • Different Suburbs Delivery Costs
  • Choose In store or Delivery on Shopping Cart Summary Page
  • Alcohol checkbox to confirm the customer / recipient are over 18 years of age
  • Restrict sales that are only alcohol
  • Show the Suite / Hospital Room optional
  • Address type changes the labels that are required
  • Restrict orders to only specific categories IE Valentine's Day
  • Make some products only availabe not same day

If a customer can order on your site they expect it to be delivered

By and far the biggest issue with Shopify is that it’s not meant to used for timed deliveries like sending flowers to someone allowing orders to be made even when you can't fulfill them!

Sure you can “hack” the shopify so it allows the customer to enter the delivery date.  But there is no error checking to ensure that the order hasn’t been made after the same day cut off, or for a day that don’t deliver etc.

Almost every single Shopify florist website I have seen has allowed me to order outside the same day cut off times and some have even allowed me to orders for dates past!

It’s a cardinal sin to accept an order that doesn’t meet your Terms and Conditions.

Flower Store In a Box customisation of the checkout experience

Delivery Dates with Same Day Cut off and Custom Blocked dates

Flower Store In a Box allows significant customization for your website including:

  • Same day Cut Offs
  • Blocked Delivery dates
  • Limit delivery dates for certain products only (Valentine’s Day)
  • Delivery times and extra premium delivery costs
  • In Store Pickup and Pickup times

And there is so much more!

Limiting the delivery locations and charging per suburb

Most florists want to limit the areas that they accept orders for, this way they can maximize their profitability and ensure the quality of the finished floral order.  Shopify requires additional “apps” or plugins to achieve this at additional costs of up to $30 USD a month!

With Flower Store In a Box you can enter the suburbs for each delivery and a price, then you can set this is as the only delivery areas for your website.  This feature is in the Premium & above versions!

Complex Multi Step Checkout that can only be edited in Shopify Plus

If you want to edit the checkout in Shopify you need to be on their enterprise version and that starts at around $2000 USD ($2900 AUD) a month.

With Flower Store In Box you have a simple two step checkout just for selling flowers online.  Its been designed so billing info is limited to name, email and phone.

Customisble checkout experience in Flower Store In a Box

And the checkout is extensively & easily customize in your dashboard such as:

  • Join in the checkout flow with a single click
  • Show Addresses for local churches, retirement villages etc
  • Authority to leave option
  • Building Type
  • Terms & Conditions checkbox
  • Select a timed delivery option (for extra cost)
  • Show single or multiple pickup locations
  • Suggested Card messages

We can also hide and un-hide standard elements for you in the checkout too!  If say you wanted the business name to always be present it can be!

Read more about our unique florist checkout here.

Want to send photos of the order to your customers?

One of the most requested options when people send flowers today is to see a picture of the product before it’s delivered.

Send a photo of the order with Flower Store In a Box

You can do this with Flower Store In a Box easily along with SMS or email notifications.

Shopify is DIY, Flower Store In a Box is a full service

Shopify is a Do It Yourself Platform for everything so you need to be pretty tech savvy, and in fact you will require someone to help you to even get the delivery date working.

Flower Store In a Box is a full serviced solution, with heaps of email & Telephone support. 

You can still manage your website content yourself but we are always here to help.

Shopify might be a lower upfront cost but longer term it’s far more expensive

As a minimum you would need be on the Advanced Shopify which is $249 USD ($369 AUD) a month to get the limited delivery areas and then there are still extra hidden costs with Shopify.

  Year One Year Two Year Three
Shopify $2988 USD
($4447 AUD)
$2988 USD
($4447 AUD)
$2988 USD
($4447 AUD)
Flower Store In a Box* $6500 $1349 $1349
Difference $-2053 $3098 (saving so far $1045) $3098 (saving $4143)

*premium version 12 x $500 a month then $99.95 a month once live.

Basically by 18 months the costs are the same but then you save over $3000 a year every year, and have a website that includes all the features a florist requires!  

Read more about our pricing here.

Flower Store In a Box is designed for florists

Bottom line, Flower Store in a Box is an ecommerce platform that has been built specifically for florists to sell flowers online.  It’s feature packed with everything that a small or large florist needs to professionally sell flowers online.

Because we’ve been working with florists for over 16 years we know exactly what you need!

Why not contact us now to discuss how Flower Store In a Box can assist you?

Get Started Now
Flower Store In A Box ™ - Copyright © 2024. All Rights Reserved