Storenvy Review 2022

An easy to use platform for independent retailers

Value
Functionality
Features
Customization
Support
  • Storenvy is easy to use and you can get your store up and running in a few minutes.
  • It’s free to set up a store with Storenvy and you can list up to 100 products without paying.
  • You can add your products to the Storenvy marketplace to reach more shoppers..
  • Design customization options are very limited, with only a few templates to choose from.
  • You can’t add blog pages to your Storenvy site.
  • It doesn’t offer many integrations to add extra functionality to your store.
  • Some users find that it crashes fairly frequently.

Storenvy Overview

Storenvy is an ecommerce platform that offers a custom online store and a social marketplace. Its aim is to connect shoppers with small, independent retailers all around the world and make the buying and selling process as simple as possible for both sides. 


Storenvy was founded in 2010 and launched as an online store builder. Then in 2012, it expanded to add Storenvy Marketplace, its online social marketplace. It was designed as a platform for independent and creative sellers and is often compared to other ecommerce platforms like Etsy, which focus on handmade products. 


Sellers using Storenvy will be able to add products to their own store, and they'll also appear in the Storenvy Marketplace. This can help you to reach a much wider audience for your products. It’s easy to get your Storenvy shop up and running, but bigger retailers or those that are looking to grow a successful ecommerce business may find that it’s a bit limited when it comes to customisation options and seller tools. 


If you’re looking for a straightforward platform that doesn’t take much time or effort to get started on, then Storenvy could be a good choice for you. 


Is Storenvy a good place to sell?

  • It’s quick and easy to set up a store and start selling 
  • There are two ways to reach your customers: through your store and the marketplace
  • A free plan and low-cost monthly packages for advanced features 

Storenvy wants to make it simple to build and grow an online business with one easy platform. They offer a community that focuses on supporting independent brands and businesses. And alongside your own custom store, your products will appear in Storenvy Marketplace, which is designed to be like a social network for shopping that increases your exposure. 

Who is Storenvy for?


Storenvy is designed for small ecommerce businesses and independent sellers. It’s an easy-to-use platform that provides a straightforward if a little basic, way to grow a store. You have the option to create your own store, but having your products listed on the Storenvy marketplace allows you to reach an existing audience. 


You need very little experience to start a store on the platform, and the free plan offers all the basics to get you started. While it’s marketed towards small creators selling handmade products, it’s suitable for any small or medium ecommerce business with less than 5,000 products.  


It's important to note that although you can be based anywhere and open up a Storenvy shop, they don't support any currencies apart from US dollars.

Oberlo Pricing

When you sign up to Storenvy you will have a free Hobbyist account, which you can upgrade to access additional features. 

For any sales you make through Salenvy’s marketplace you’ll have to pay 15% commission of the total amount including shipping.


When you make a sale through your Custom Store you won’t pay any commission to Storenvy but you will pay a credit card processing fee to either Stripe or PayPal, will charge 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction. 

Plan

Hobbyist

Plus

Pro

Cost

Free

$14.99 per month

$29.99 per month

Features

Access to marketplaceList up to 1000 productsCard abandonments

Access to marketplace 

List up to 2000 products

Cart abandonments

Social Media Blasts 

Super Discounts

Custom domain

Access to marketplace 

List up to 5000 products

Cart abandonments

Social Media Blasts 

Super Discounts

Custom domain 

Automated discounts

The free Storenvy plan provides everything a small retailer needs to get started, however, if you want to grow your store's brand then you'll probably want to pay for a custom domain.


What can you sell on Storenvy? 

While Storenvy is aimed at independent retailers selling handmade products, you can sell pretty much anything on the platform, as long as it's a physical product. There are a few things that you can't sell including replica items, alcohol, and tobacco or tobacco related products.


How does Storenvy work? 

Storenvy is a browser-based platform without an app, so you run your store completely online. It has an easy to use dashboard that provides one place where you can manage all aspects of your store.


Your store's dashboard will be found at [yourstoresubdomain].storenvy.com/admin. It's where you can find your Merchant Admin Panel to review and manage orders, promote your products, update your products and marketplace listings, and make any changes to your storefront design. 


The Dashboard tab is the main homepage for your account and gives you an overview of your sales, recent orders, number of visitors on each day, and top referring URLs over the last 30 days.


It's simple to find everything you might need to run your store, but you can't set up multiple accounts for the same store. So if you have different team members using Storenvy they'll be using the same account and have access to all your product and sales data.


Themes

Storenvy has a simple website builder function where you can make changes to your store including the colours, text, background images, banners, and some elements of the layout design. Store's are set up with the Cooper theme as default, which is a responsive design and you can change elements of it to customise the appearance.


If you want to select a different theme then you can find them from your dashboard under Storefront and then Theme. However, while Storenvy suggests the themes available there, they are created by individual designers so Storenvy doesn't offer any help with installing them or ongoing support with the themes. You can find more store themes for sale on Storenvy as well.


There is an HTML and CSS editor, so if you have coding experience then you can pretty much change anything you want to in your store's design.


Content management 

You can add a blog section to your Storenvy shop by adding a Custom Page. This is also how you can add an About Us page, or other information pages like sizing guides. 

To add a Custom Page you go to your account's dashboard, select Storefront, and then HTML Pages. Here you will see a list of the pages that you already have for your site and at the bottom, you can click Add A Custom Page.


Although you can create a blog page, you can't create and publish blog posts to your Storenvy site. The Blog page will just allow you to add a blog feed from elsewhere — so you will need to set up and publish your posts on another site and then use a plugin code that you copy into the HTML view of the page editor. You also can't add images to your custom pages, these also need to be hosted elsewhere.


When you first upload your products you can add a name, price, and choose a category, then add in the product description and multiple images. You can then edit and update your product descriptions from your account's dashboard under the Product section.


Plugins & extensions

Storenvy offers a number of third-party plugins, which can be found in the Storefront section and then Plug-Ins section, within your account dashboard.


Checkout

You can take payment for products via Stripe ( for debit card and credit card) and/or PayPal. Whether you chose to use Stripe or PayPal they will both charge a fee for each transaction that's processed.


Storenvy doesn't charge any listing fees for adding products to your store. You can start selling with the free plan, but for additional features, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. For sales made through Storenvy Marketplace, you'll be charged 15% of the total order (including shipping costs).


Shipping

You can set up and edit shipping rates within the store admin under Settings and then Shipping Rates. They're organised into shipping classes, which covers where the order is going and how fast, and shipping groups, which are based on product types.


Your store is automatically set up with two shipping classes — 'Standard' (which is set up to the US) and 'Everywhere Else'. To add faster delivery options such as next day you need to add another shipping class, and if there's more than one shipping class for the country that a customer's checking out from they'll get to choose. The 'Everywhere Else' shipping class always applies to countries that you haven't set up specific rates for.


You can then set up shipping groups to charge different amounts for orders based on the size of the products.


Storenvy offers integrations with Shipping Easy and ShipStation so that you can easily manage orders and create shipping labels.

Ecommerce Comparison Features

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Overall Rating

Price

From $9

Free to Install

Free to Install

From $29.95

From $2.99

From $5.00

Themes

100+

1000+

1000+

120

15

500+

SEO Tools

Ease Of Use

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Customization

Security

Support

Our Review

Inventory management 

You can sell most physical products through Storenvy, with a few standard exceptions. To add products you go to your store's admin panel and click Products and then you can either Manage Products or Manage Collections.


Image: Storenvy


Manage Products is where you can add new products. You can either add them manually one by one or import a list of products in a CSV file.


When you manually add a product you just enter the product name, price and select a category. Then you're taken to another page where you can add a price markup for the Marketplace listing, a description, product images. 


On the left-hand side, you select the collection (product categories within your store) you want it in and the shipping group. Further down you can add variants such as different sizes with SKUs and stock levels.


It's also possible to bulk edit your marketplace prices from this page. Because Storenvy charges an additional fee then many sellers will increase the price of their products for the Marketplace listings.


Customer management

Within the Admin Panel, there's a Marketing tab where you can set up discount codes and join Marketplace sales events (for a cost). You can also find Markets to join, which are a group of shops that sell similar items -- your store can be listed in three different Markets.


Storenvy also offers a Managed Marketing feature, which advertises your store on external sites such as Google and Facebook. Any sales that you make as a result of someone finding your products via Managed Marketing will be charged a 25% commission.


If you're signed up to a paid plan you can also request that Storenvy does a social media blast for one or more of your products. This will promote your products on social media, but it's not guaranteed that your products will be chosen for the blasts.


Overall, Storenvy offers some fairly basic marketing features. They provide some fairly simple ways to promote your store and reach potential customers, but as a store owner you don't have much control over the process.


Support

Storenvy offers technical support through email and a contact form, and it can take up to 24 hours to get a response. This means there's no quick way to get an answer if you have any big issues with your store. However, there are a lot of resources and help guides available for store owners.


How to set up a Storenvy store

1. Click 'Join' in the top right-hand corner of the Storenvy site and then create a username and password and enter your email address. Then create a username (doesn't have to be your store name) and password.


Image: Storenvy 


You also need to check the 'I want a free store too' checkbox when you sign up. When you click the box, extra fields will appear where you enter your store name, store subdomain, business location, business name, type (corporation, non-profitt etc), and business phone number



Image: Storenvy


If you already have a Storenvy account you can click the 'Open a Store' link at the top right of any page.


2. With your account set up, you can head to your store's dashboard — the Admin Panel. You can find it by going to [yourstoresubdomain].storenvy.com/admin. But if you're signing up you'll be directed there anyway.

Image: Storenvy


3. If you haven't set up payment processing when you signed up then you need to do that next. Find it under Settings and then Payment Info. You can take payments through Stripe or PayPal.

Image: Storenvy


Image: Storenvy

Storenvy is a good ecommerce platform for small independent retailers. Its free plan offers all the basics to get a store up and running, although if you want to set up your own domain name and reduce the Storenvy branding you will need to move to a paid plan. Retailers that are looking to grow quickly, or larger stores, will find that Storenvy only provides the basic features and other platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce will be better suited to them.


Being able to set up a store and list products in the Storenvy Marketplace provides a lot of opportunities for sellers to reach customers. And the marketing features, although basic, are suitable for smaller retailers that have little advertising experience and don't want to spend a lot of time on it.


If you're looking for a straightforward and quick way to start selling your products and will benefit from access to a marketplace with an existing customer base then Storenvy is the ideal platform. Sign up to Storenvy today.