A very good question came up on the Shopify support site this morning asking about the difference between Shopify Support and the Shopify Forums. The poster answered his own question, but I disageree with his answer saying that support is new and the forum is now obsolete.

Here is my take.

Shopify Support
The Support site is provided as part of your monthly fee and is intended for issues with the Shopify product. Examples include:

Shopify Forums
The forums are for the Shopify community – i.e. store owners and the web designers/developers that build web sites on the Shopify platform. They are a great resource for ideas on how to set up your product catalogs and tags, change the look and feel, or implement custom functionality. The forums are very high quality and a lot of people provide exceptional advice for free. The Jaded Pixel staff monitor the forums as well, and will often chime in with helpful tidbits for getting the most out of Shopify.

Personally I tend to go to the forums first, as there are more eyes on it than just the support site. However, if the issue is a problem with the Shopify product, or is billing related, then support is the first point of call.