That said, Tictail is currently a free service. From what I can tell, no-one's paid them a penny. The real test will be how many of their merchants stick around once the add-on pricing is (a) announced and (b) goes into effect in May.
EDIT: From their help section (http://help.tictail.com/customer/portal/articles/531368-how-...):
> Our ambition is to offer these add-ons at between 1€ - 5€ / month.
(full disclosure: I'm a Shopify employee.)
I helped some friends start a store that has been growing nicely since 2009 I think and I can think of one major hiccup that affected us/them. The API part mostly gold as well.
What you miss out on seems to be that SEO optimization for shop-owners is hard with all kinds of weird liquid constructions going into the template for (just plain white hat) SEO in addition to the ones that are needed for user friendlyness.
I'm curious though, how high a transaction fee would you pay if you were on a free plan? Most merchants HATE percentage fees and want them gone completely. With that in mind we do our best to minimize them.
Maybe TicTail will be a huge success. My point is that even though they have 10,000 customers we should hold our judgement until they get their business model up and running properly. When the dust settles, we'll have a better idea of how they're doing.
Later we expanded our plans and focused only on paying customers.
There is a bit difference between people who are willing to pay 0USD and those willing to pay 1USD.
I just wonder if there is a market for my products ;)
(That said, I'm sure their tap water is just as good as any bottled water. For some reader (e.g. people in the US who buy bottled water) this may sound alien, but 100% of the Swedish and Norwegian populations drink their water from the tap.)
I'll try to set up a shop selling virtual goods instead (http://askme.tictail.com)
To experiment with that, I set up a new store at http://askme.tictail.com/
