Shopify vs custom e-commerce: when to stay, when to build, and the middle path.

For most stores, Shopify is the right start: checkout and payments work from day one, for a monthly fee. Custom development pays off when your products, pricing or operations do not fit a standard store. In between sits headless Shopify, where Shopify runs the back end and a custom storefront runs the front.

When is Shopify the right answer?

Shopify is right when your catalogue is fairly standard, your team is small and you want to start selling quickly. You get a hosted checkout and an app store for most extras. Nobody on your team has to manage servers or security patches.

• Your products have a few options each, such as size and colour.
• Your margins can carry a monthly plan plus payment processing fees.
• Your team would rather spend on stock and marketing than on engineering.
• Your checkout follows normal rules: a cart, shipping, payment, done.

Variant limits used to push larger catalogues off the platform. Shopify now allows up to 2,048 variants per product, up from 100. Most of the online stores we have built run on Shopify, and you can browse them on our work page.

What does Shopify really cost?

The real cost is the plan plus payment processing, apps and any theme or development work, not the headline monthly price alone. Plans differ in monthly fee and card rates, and prices vary by country, so check Shopify's pricing page for your market rather than trusting a figure in an article.

One rule is worth knowing before you choose how to take payments. Unless you use Shopify Payments, Shopify charges its own third-party transaction fee on orders it does not process, on top of whatever your payment provider charges. The rate depends on your plan. Read that part twice. Shopify Payments is not available in every country, so check what applies to you before you compare.

Apps add up quietly. Many charge monthly, so keep a list with their prices and prune it every quarter.

When does custom e-commerce development pay off?

Custom development pays off when the store is the product, or when Shopify forces daily workarounds. The signs are usually operational rather than visual: staff doing by hand what the platform cannot do, apps stacked on apps to fake a feature, or a checkout that cannot follow your rules.

• Products configured from many linked choices, such as made-to-measure furniture or equipment built to order, with the price calculated from those choices.
• B2B ordering with customer-specific prices, quotes, approvals or account terms beyond what your Shopify plan supports.
• Stock shared across your shop, wholesale and marketplaces, driven by an existing ERP or warehouse system.
• Business rules that sit outside a normal store, which is where custom software makes more sense than another app.

The same test applies beyond online shops. We built billing software for a restaurant whose bar runs late at night, and which needed bar bills kept separate from restaurant bills. Staff now filter bills by time directly, instead of downloading invoices and tracing them by hand. A rule that specific is worth building for.

What is headless Shopify, and when does it make sense?

Headless Shopify keeps Shopify as the back end, including checkout, while a separate custom storefront shows the shop to customers. The storefront reads data through Shopify's Storefront API, which is GraphQL only, and sends buyers to Shopify's own checkout through a checkout URL created from the cart.

Shopify offers its own framework for this, Hydrogen, built on React Router, and a hosting platform for it, Oxygen. Shopify's docs say Oxygen comes at no extra charge on paid plans, though not on the Starter plan. You can also build the storefront in another framework, such as Next.js, on the same API.

Headless suits brands that need a storefront a theme cannot deliver: heavy editorial content, unusual product discovery, or data pulled in from other systems. It does not suit a small team without developers. That is a real trade. You give up the simple theme editor and the apps that rely on a standard theme, and you take on a second codebase to host and maintain.

How much does a custom store cost compared with Shopify?

A custom store costs more to build and less in platform fees, and the upkeep moves to you. On Shopify you rent a platform someone else keeps secure and running. With a custom build you pay for development up front. After launch you pay for hosting and payment processing, plus a developer to keep the store secure and updated for as long as it runs.

We would not suggest a full custom build to save on fees alone. Payment processing costs money on any platform. The case for custom is capability: something the business needs that Shopify cannot do well. If you are choosing a platform for a content site rather than a shop, read Next.js vs WordPress.

How do I decide between Shopify, headless and custom?

Start on Shopify unless you can name a specific requirement it cannot meet. Write down what the store must do over the next 12 to 24 months, test each item against Shopify and its apps, and only consider headless or custom for the items that fail that test.

If the failures are about the look and feel of the storefront, headless is usually enough. If they are about how the business runs, such as pricing, stock or ordering rules, custom work starts to pay. Our web projects cover Shopify stores, headless storefronts and custom builds, and we start by testing your requirements rather than picking a platform. Tell us what you sell and what is getting in the way.