Editorial Policy

What every page is for

The goal of every page on this site is simple: give a Shopify merchant a fact-checked answer to one concrete question, quickly and conveniently. Anything that doesn't serve that goal — filler paragraphs, unsourced claims, links added for "sauce", marketing fluff — gets cut. Brevity and accuracy beat completeness.

How content is created

Every article and FAQ answer on this site is written by AI. The human editor, Alexander Matynian, a Shopify developer since 2017, does not write the text and does not check its facts or wording. Before a page goes live, the editor checks its integrity: that it is complete, nothing is missing or broken, and it displays correctly. The editor also decides what the site covers and writes the rules every page has to pass: who the page is for, which sources count, which claims need a source, how figures are checked, and what makes a page worth publishing at all. No content team, no ghost writers — one person directing an AI writing and checking process.

Why AI

Shopify changes prices, plans and features all the time, and a merchant usually needs a current answer to a narrow question. AI lets one editor cover hundreds of those questions and check them again against the official source when Shopify changes something — work a one-person site could not do by hand. The cost of that choice is that AI makes mistakes, which is why every page is checked by agents that did not write it, and why the rules below exist.

How a topic is chosen

Topics come from questions merchants actually ask — mostly search data: what people type into Google and the related questions it shows — plus topics the editor assigns. Every topic first has to pass one test: does a merchant act on the answer — change a setting, pick a tool, rewrite a policy? Questions that only shoppers ask are not covered.

A topic is not ruled out just because Shopify's Help Center already covers it. But the page has to add something the official page doesn't: a decision the documentation leaves to the reader, a limit or condition it leaves unstated, or facts from several official pages brought together in one answer. A page that would only retell one help article is not written.

Each article is built around a concrete decision the reader is trying to make: pick a plan, choose a payment processor, migrate from another platform, decide whether a feature fits their business, and so on.

Who does what

The editor is not the author. The editor is the director. Concretely:

• AI writes every word: outlines, drafts, rewrites, titles and descriptions.
• The editor sets the editorial direction and the topics, and writes the rules — style guide, source policy, automated checks — that every page must pass.
• Separate AI agents, which did not write the page, check it: one verifies its figures and claims against live official sources, another recalculates its calculators and walks every quiz path, another checks its links. Automated scripts stop a page whose figures disagree with our reference values or whose structured data disagrees with the visible page.
• The editor checks that the page is complete and displays correctly, but does not check its facts or edit its text — that is the agents' job. Errors found later — by these checks run again or by readers — are fixed on the page.
• AI writing is disclosed on every page: the AI-written label at the top links to the Research Methodology & Sources block, which says how the page was made and lists its sources.

If you ever spot a sentence that looks AI-generated but factually wrong, please email us — that's the failure mode we care about most.

Sources we trust

The hierarchy of sources used for fact-checking, in order of priority:

1. Official Shopify properties — shopify.com pricing pages, Shopify Help Center, Shopify Engineering blog, and Shopify's developer documentation. These are the source of truth for anything about how the platform works, what plans cost, and what fees apply.
2. Official statements from third-party platforms and regulators named in the article (e.g., a payment processor's own pricing page when comparing fees, or a government page for a tax rule).
3. Our own tests — on the few pages that report one, labeled as a test, never presented as a general fact.

We deliberately avoid citing other affiliate-driven blogs, AI-generated roundups, or undated forum posts as evidence for factual claims. Each article's methodology block lists at most three primary sources to keep things auditable.

Fact-checking process

Pages are checked by separate AI agents and scripts — not by the AI that wrote them:

• Every price, fee, and percentage is checked against the current Shopify pricing page or the relevant official documentation.
• Every named feature is checked to still exist on the plan it's attributed to.
• The page title, description, structured data and image descriptions are checked like the body text — they are what search results show.
• Every external link is checked to resolve to a live, relevant page.
• Quotes are used only when we have a primary source to link to, and they are checked to be verbatim.
• Interactive elements (calculators, quizzes) are recalculated independently and tested on edge cases.
• A separate AI critic reads each new article as a merchant would and flags what is unclear, padded, or not useful before it is finished.

This is AI checking AI against official sources. It catches a lot, but not everything — which is why reader reports matter.

Updates and corrections

Shopify changes pricing, plan structure, and features on its own schedule. When something material changes, the affected articles are updated and the date in the article metadata is revised. Minor copy edits don't change the date.

If you find an error — outdated pricing, a broken link, a feature misattributed to the wrong plan — email shopify@ecom-store.pro with the URL and the issue. Confirmed errors are corrected on the page.

Affiliate links and commercial relationships

Some links in articles — most notably to Shopify trial sign-up pages — are affiliate links. If you start a Shopify trial through one of those links, this site may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This is disclosed on every article that contains affiliate links.

Commercial relationships do not change what an article says. We point out Shopify's limitations the same way regardless of whether a link is affiliated. We also recommend against Shopify in articles where it's genuinely the wrong fit (e.g., certain niche use cases) — that's the only way the rest of the advice on this site is worth anything.

We are an official Shopify Partner. We are not employed by Shopify and do not coordinate articles with them. The full breakdown of how monetization works on this site — what is and isn't an affiliate link, how it's disclosed, and what it doesn't change — lives in our Advertising Policy.

What you won't find here

• Made-up statistics. Every figure must come from a cited source; one that turns out to have none is removed.
• Fabricated case studies. Examples are clearly framed as hypothetical scenarios or come from a cited public source.
• Paid placements disguised as recommendations. Sponsored content, if it ever exists, will be labeled as such.
• Pages written only to fill a sitemap. Every page — including the many short FAQ answers — starts from one specific question a merchant asks and goes through the checks above.

Reader feedback

If you disagree with a recommendation, think we're missing context, or have a better source for a claim, we want to hear it. Use the contact page or email shopify@ecom-store.pro.