Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan (opens in new tab)

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

There is a bug in the demo where discounted price is strike-though instead of the original.

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?

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.

There should be an option to see images full-screen

If you have this, what exactly does Shopify provide for the 9$ ?

Would you tell me what tech stack is used?

Strikethrough pricing shows higher prices?

Looks good!

Could add a favicon.

Great

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