Questions
Straight answers, including the unflattering ones.
Prices, access, contracts, and who we are wrong for. If something is not here, ask us directly and a person will answer within a business day.
Start here
The basics
What does E-Store Manager do?
We look after Shopify stores for small businesses that have nobody looking after them. That means keeping product information accurate, fixing what breaks, keeping the store visible on Google, and keeping customer emails running. You can have us monthly, or pay a one-off fixed fee to get the store sorted once.
How much does it cost?
Store Care is $249 a month and is the cheapest useful thing we do: a monthly check plus two hours of fixes. Store Rescue is a one-time $499 with no subscription. Lite is $499 a month, Operate is $1,499 a month for a full operational team, and a dedicated technical team starts at $1,500 a month. Extra work is $75 to $100 an hour depending on your plan. Prices are in USD and CAD invoicing is available.
Do you work with very small stores?
Yes, and they are most of who we are for. There is no revenue minimum and no minimum order count. If you are pre-launch or doing a few hundred dollars a month, Store Rescue or Store Care is the right size. We would rather tell you plainly that you do not need us yet than sell you a plan you cannot use.
Do you work with Canadian businesses?
Canada is our main market. We work Eastern Time hours, which covers the whole Canadian business day, and we know the parts of running a Canadian store that most advice skips: what shipping genuinely costs across a country this size, CAD pricing, and what a properly bilingual catalogue requires in Quebec. We can invoice in CAD.
How does working with you actually work?
Everything happens inside your own Shopify admin, through collaborator access that you grant and can revoke yourself. You see the work as it lands, Shopify logs every action independently of us, and you get a short plain-English note each month. We work Eastern Time hours, which covers the whole Canadian and US business day, and a real person replies within one business day.
How is this different from hiring an agency?
Agencies sell projects and campaigns, with a scope, a kick-off and an end date. We sell the ongoing running of the store on a documented cadence. There is no long contract, no project queue and no rebriefing every month. For a small store, the practical difference is that an agency's minimum retainer is usually several thousand a month, and ours starts at $249.
What do I get in the free store check?
A written list of what is costing you orders on your store right now, worst first, in plain English, with a rough sense of what each fix takes. No call is required to get it, and the list is yours to keep, take it in-house, give it to your own developer, or ask us to do it. We usually send it within two business days.
How long is onboarding?
About two weeks from first conversation to fully running operations for the monthly plans, with nothing to pay upfront. A one-off Store Rescue is usually done inside a week of getting store access.
Practicalities
Working with us
Is there a contract?
No. Every plan is month to month, there is nothing to pay upfront, and you can pause, change plan or stop whenever you want. We ask for about two weeks to set a plan up properly, because the first pass through a neglected store is the slow one, but that is a request rather than a commitment you sign.
What access do you need to my store?
We request access through Shopify's own collaborator system, which creates a separate account with only the permissions you grant. You never give us your own login, every action is logged, and you can revoke access yourself at any time without asking us. For the free store check we need no access at all, because everything in it is visible from the public storefront.
Who actually does the work?
The people you talk to. There is no account manager layer between you and whoever is in your store, which is deliberate: for work this operational, a translation step in the middle mostly produces misunderstandings.
How do I know what you did?
A short plain-English note each month saying what changed, plus Shopify's own activity log, which records every action taken through the collaborator system independently of anything we tell you. If a month goes by and you cannot see what you paid for, cancel: there is no notice period to work around.
What if I want to stop?
Tell us and it stops. There is no notice period and no exit fee. You keep the store, the access and whatever documentation exists. We will hand over cleanly rather than making it awkward, partly because it is decent and partly because people come back.
What are your hours, and how fast do you reply?
Eastern Time, which covers the whole Canadian and US business day. A real person replies within one business day, usually sooner. Nothing is monitored overnight, if your store is down at 2am, Shopify's own status page and support are the right first call, not us.
Including when we are not
Whether we are a fit
Who are you the wrong choice for?
Three groups, and it is cheaper for everyone if we say so early. If you need strategy, brand or creative direction, hire an agency. If you need someone physically present with your stock or in your shop, hire locally. And if your problem is that not enough people want what you sell, maintaining the store will not fix it, no amount of tidy product pages create demand.
Is my store too small for you?
There is no revenue minimum. Plenty of the stores we look after do under $5,000 a month, and that is who the cheaper plans exist for. The one case where we will turn work away is a store with almost no traffic at all, because paying anyone to maintain it is money better spent finding customers.
Do I have to be on Shopify?
For the ongoing work, effectively yes, Shopify is the platform we work in and the one we are good at. The free store check works on any platform, and we will tell you plainly which parts of it we could not act on. If you are on another platform and considering a move, we will give you an honest view on whether it is worth it for a store your size, including when it is not.
Can you help if I am not launched yet?
Sometimes, but usually you should not pay us yet. A pre-launch store needs decisions made rather than maintenance performed, and the maintenance work we sell has nothing to act on until there are real products and real orders. Send the store anyway and we will tell you what to fix before you launch, for free.
Do you work with Canadian businesses specifically?
Canada is our main market. We work Eastern Time, can invoice in CAD, and know the parts of running a Canadian store that most advice skips because it was written for American ones: what shipping genuinely costs and takes across a country this size, and what a properly bilingual catalogue requires in Quebec.
Asked and answered
The awkward questions
Do you take commission on apps you recommend?
No. No affiliate fees, no referral cuts, no revenue share. If we recommend a tool it is because it is the right tool, and we earn the same either way. That matters because the most common bad advice in this industry is an app recommendation with a kickback attached.
Will you tell me if I do not need something?
Yes, and it happens regularly. A lot of Shopify requests are better solved by a setting nobody found, an app that already exists, or by deciding the feature is not worth it. Saying so costs us billable hours and is the entire basis on which anyone should trust a supplier they cannot supervise.
Can you fix a job someone else left half finished?
Usually. The first step is a paid look at what actually exists, because quoting a fixed price for undocumented work sight-unseen would be dishonest. Occasionally the finding is that restarting is cheaper than finishing, and we will say so even though it is the less appealing answer.
Do you do paid advertising?
No. We do not run Google Ads, Meta ads or any paid media, and we would rather point you to someone who does than take it on badly. What we do is make sure the store the ads point at is not wasting the money you spend getting people there.
Is my data safe?
We access stores through scoped collaborator accounts rather than shared logins, we do not export customer data unless a specific job requires it, and we do not pass anything to third parties. If you need a formal data agreement in place before starting, ask and we will sort it.
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with your store. Free.
Send us your store URL. You get a written check of the things costing you orders right now, in plain English, with the fixes ranked by what they are worth. No call required, no obligation, and you can take the list to anyone.
Access you can revoke · No contract · A real person replies within one business day