Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store forsnowboarding equipment. Unsatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, a programmer by trade, decided to build his own.^[3][8][9]

Lütke used the open source web application framework Ruby on Rails to build Snowdevil's online store, and launched it after two months of development.^[10][11] The Snowdevil founders launched the platform as Shopify in June 2006.^[10]

In June 2009, Shopify launched an API platform and App Store. The API allows developers to create applications for Shopify online stores and then sell them on the Shopify App Store.^[5] Several companies have developed apps that integrate with the Shopify platform.^[12][13]

In April 2010 Shopify launched a free mobile app on the Apple App Store in May 2010. The app lets Shopify store owners view and manage their stores from iOS mobile devices.^[14] In 2010, Shopify started its Build-A-Business competition, in which participants create a business using its commerce platform.^[15][16] The winners of the competition receive cash prizes and mentorship from entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, Eric Ries and others.^[16] Shopify was also named Ottawa’s Fastest Growing Company by the Ottawa Business Journal in 2010.^[10] The company received $7 million from an initial Series A funding round in December 2010.^[17][18] Its Series B funding round generated $15 million in October 2011.^[19]

In February 2012 Shopify acquired Select Start Studios Inc ("S3"), a mobile software developer, along with 20 of the company's mobile engineers and designers.^[20][21] In August 2013, Shopify acquired Jet Cooper, a 25-person design studio based in Toronto.^[22]

In August 2013, Shopify announced the launch of Shopify Payments, which allowed merchants to accept credit cards without requiring a third party payment gateway.^[23] The company also announced the launch of an iPad-centric POS system. It uses an iPad to accept payments from credit cards. The company received $100 million in Series C funding in December 2013.^[24]

By 2014, the platform hosted approximately 120,000 online retailers,^[11][14][25] and was listed as #3 in Deloitte’s Fast50 in Canada, as well as #7 in Deloitte’s Fast 500 of North America.^[26] Shopify earned $105 million in revenue in 2014, twice as much as it raised the previous year.^[27]

On April 14, 2015, Shopify filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "SHOP" and "SH" respectively.^[28][29] Shopify went public on May 21, 2015, and in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, Shopify started trading at $28, more than 60% higher than its USD$17 offering price, with its IPO raising more than $131 million.^[30][31]