TL;DR. Shopify is the better choice if you sell mostly outside Turkey, need a deep app ecosystem, and have engineering capacity to wire Turkish payment, KVKK, and marketplace plugins. FaStart is the better choice if your buyers and operations are inside Turkey: native TRY billing, Trendyol/Hepsiburada/Amazon Turkey/N11 integrations, iyzico/PayTR/Stripe payments, and KVKK templates ship out of the box. Real annual cost difference for a 2,000 TRY/month merchant: about 1,800 TRY in Shopify's favor, before you add the apps you'll need.

This is a comparison written by the FaStart team. We've tried to be honest about where Shopify is the better tool — there are real categories where it is. The tradeoffs below assume a merchant whose primary market is Turkey.

TL;DR — when to choose each

You want	Pick
Best global app ecosystem	Shopify
Lowest annual cost in TRY	FaStart
Native Trendyol/Hepsiburada integration	FaStart
Recurring/subscription billing	Shopify (or FaStart with Stripe)
KVKK templates, no extra apps	FaStart
Selling outside Turkey as primary	Shopify
Selling inside Turkey as primary	FaStart
Custom theme without devs	Tied (both have visual editors)
Built-in AI for product copy	FaStart

Pricing in TRY — real cost over a year

Shopify's plans are priced in USD. At a TRY/USD rate around 38 (April 2026), a "Basic Shopify" plan is roughly 1,520 TRY/month plus payment processing fees. Add the Turkish-marketplace apps you will need (Trendyol Sync, Hepsiburada Sync, KVKK consent banner) and you are realistically at 2,200–2,800 TRY/month before transaction fees.

FaStart's Pro plan is a flat 2,999 TRY/month with all marketplace integrations, KVKK templates, and AI features included. The Free plan is 0 TRY/month with a higher per-transaction commission — useful if you are pre-product-market-fit and haven't yet predicted volume.

	Shopify Basic + needed apps	FaStart Pro
Platform fee	~1,520 TRY/mo	2,999 TRY/mo
Trendyol sync app	~400 TRY/mo	included
Hepsiburada sync app	~400 TRY/mo	included
KVKK / cookie banner app	~150 TRY/mo	included
Subtotal	~2,470 TRY/mo	2,999 TRY/mo
Per-transaction	~1.5–2.5%	2.9%
Total at 100k TRY revenue	~4,470 TRY/mo	~5,899 TRY/mo
Total at 1M TRY revenue	~21,470 TRY/mo	~31,899 TRY/mo

Shopify is cheaper at scale. FaStart is cheaper for the first 6–12 months when you need every feature but don't yet have the volume.

Marketplace integrations

Shopify supports Turkish marketplaces only through third-party apps, none of them officially supported by Trendyol or Hepsiburada. Real-time inventory sync is best-effort. When the marketplace API breaks (it does, every couple of months), you wait for the app vendor.

FaStart connects directly to Trendyol's and Hepsiburada's seller APIs, plus Amazon Turkey and N11. Catalog sync, order ingestion, inventory levels, and shipping label generation happen in our infrastructure. When the marketplace API breaks, our team is paged.

If your business depends on multi-channel selling in Turkey, the integration tier you get from FaStart is not optional — it is the difference between predictable operations and weekly fire-fighting.

Payment processors

Both platforms support iyzico and PayTR. Shopify also supports Shopify Payments, but Shopify Payments is not available in Turkey — you must use a third-party gateway. The setup is straightforward, but you cannot use Shopify's bundled checkout features (Shop Pay, fast checkout) without Shopify Payments.

FaStart ships with iyzico, PayTR, and Stripe pre-wired. Switching processors is a UI toggle. Stripe support means you can also sell internationally without re-architecting checkout.

KVKK compliance

Shopify provides generic GDPR templates. KVKK has overlapping but distinct requirements (VERBİS registration, Turkish-language consent flows, Turkish data-residency expectations under certain interpretations). To make a Shopify store actually KVKK-compliant you typically install a third-party app (~150 TRY/mo) and manually adapt the privacy policy.

FaStart includes Turkish-language KVKK templates, VERBİS-friendly data export, and consent flows wired into the checkout. This is one of the genuine differentiators — not because the work is hard, but because not having to think about it lets you focus on revenue.

Performance and locale

Shopify's global CDN is excellent, but its Turkish-language storefront experience depends on translation apps (~200 TRY/mo) and product copy you write yourself. Shopify's checkout pages are translated; some admin pages remain English-only.

FaStart is Turkish-first. The merchant dashboard, product editor, customer emails, and invoice templates are all native Turkish (with English available). AI-generated product descriptions optimize for Turkish search intent and tone, not translated-from-English copy.

Verdict

Choose Shopify if:

More than 50% of your buyers are outside Turkey.
You already have a developer or use Shopify's app ecosystem heavily.
You need recurring billing or subscriptions as the primary use case.
You plan to scale past 5M TRY/month and the per-transaction percentage matters more than the platform fee.

Choose FaStart if:

Your buyers are mostly in Turkey and pay in TRY.
You want marketplace integrations (Trendyol, Hepsiburada, Amazon TR, N11) that just work.
You don't want to source, install, configure, and pay for KVKK and Turkish-marketplace apps.
You value Turkish-language support, dashboards, and AI copy.

There are real merchants for whom each platform is the right answer. If you are not sure which group you are in, the cheapest test is to launch on FaStart's Free plan (0 TRY/month, 4.9% commission). If 90% of your traffic comes from outside Turkey within three months, migrate to Shopify. If it doesn't, you've already paid less than a single month of Shopify.

FAQ

Can I migrate from one to the other? Yes — both platforms support CSV product export/import. Customer and order history is more painful; plan a migration window.

What about Shopify Plus? At Plus pricing (~75,000–150,000 TRY/month), the comparison shifts. Plus is appropriate for mid-market merchants with $5M+ annual GMV. Outside that bracket it is overpaid.

Does FaStart offer a hosted POS? Not yet (April 2026). Shopify wins for omni-channel retail.

Which is faster? On controlled benchmarks, FaStart hero pages render slightly faster in Turkey (Istanbul edge). Shopify is faster in markets where its CDN is closer. Difference is sub-200ms — buyer behavior is unlikely to differ.

Try FaStart's free plan — no setup fee, no monthly cost. If you still prefer Shopify after 30 days, your data is exportable and you've lost nothing. Most merchants who try both do not migrate back.