Why is it so hard to use PayPal?

Can someone explain why I should use shopify instead of just using paypal for my online store?

• I'm starting an online clothing biz and why would I use shopify and then also have payment through paypal? It seems like I'd be giving 2% per transaction for shopify and 2 % for paypal. Do I have to design my own store if I used just paypal? Thanks

• Answer:

  The short answer is that 2% of your sales is a lot less than the amount of time and money you'll spend creating your own store. Thing is that you actually have to worry about things like hosting and design, etc. with a self-hosted option. Shoptify or yahoo stores or whatever you use is all hosted so it makes a lot more sense to use that than to try and host it by yourself, unless you actually have a big team and move so much product in a month that 2% actually outweighs the cost of keeping a full-time staff member just to run the e-commerce operation. Think of it this way: Self-hosted: 50$/month.. (some options like prostores start at far less than that, I think) Self-hosted: $2500 - Design work $20/month - hosting $20/month - average cost of maintaining the store. i.e. security, backups Not to mention learning and setting the thing up.