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Is Shopify a SaaS Company?

Last updated on October 2, 2022 @ 12:59 am

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It is also the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services “including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement” to simplify the process of running an online store for small merchants.

Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Shopify was initially written in Ruby on Rails by Lütke. The company reports that it now has “1.7 million merchants using the platform” as of March 2020, with gross merchandise volume exceeding $41 billion.

Shopify has been profitable since 2015. It generated $505 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2020, up 47% from the first quarter of 2019.

In June 2015, Shopify acquired Boltmade, a web design company based in Kitchener, Ontario. In May 2016, Shopify announced it had agreed to acquire Jet Cooper, a Toronto-based design studio specializing in user experience and interface design. On August 1, 2016 Shopify acquired Orderbot, an order management system for wholesalers and distributors.

Shopify is a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:SHOP)(NYSE:SHOP), and is a component of both the S&P/TSX 60 and S&P 500 Indexes.

In March 2006, Shopify raised $7 million in Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP). In December 2010 it raised an additional $15 million from Felicis Ventures and Georgian Partners.

In January 2012 it raised $27 million from Tiger Global Management LLC at a valuation of more than $200 million USD. In February 2016 it raised $131 million USD at a valuation of $1.064 billion USD from investors including Insight Venture Partners, American Express Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and OMERS Ventures.

PRO TIP: Shopify is not a SaaS company. If you are looking for a SaaS company, we recommend that you look elsewhere.

Is Shopify a SaaS Company?

Yes! Shopify is definitely a SaaS company.

Madison Geldart

Madison Geldart

Cloud infrastructure engineer and tech mess solver.