Shopify against the alternatives, without the sales pitch
Platform comparisons are usually written by someone selling one of the options. The useful version starts from a different question: how strange are your requirements?
Ordinary requirements are cheapest on a hosted platform. Unusual ones get expensive there very quickly, and that is the whole comparison.
What each option is good at#
| Shopify | Open source (e.g. WooCommerce) | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | Weeks | Weeks to months | Months |
| Who runs the servers | Shopify | You or your host | You |
| Checkout control | Limited by design | Yours | Yours |
| Ongoing cost | Plan plus apps plus fees | Hosting plus plugins plus maintenance | Engineering team |
| Unusual pricing rules | Hard or impossible | Possible | Whatever you write |
| Best when | Standard retail, speed matters | You need control and have skills | Your rules are the product |
The questions that actually decide it#
- Can your pricing and entitlement rules be expressed in the platform's checkout?
- Does your catalogue fit a product-and-variant model, or is it configurable?
- Do you have someone who will keep servers patched? If not, hosted wins by default.
- At your order volume, do per-order fees become a material line?
- Is the store a brand asset in its own right, or a way to take money?
Where Shopify is clearly the right answer#
Standard retail, a catalogue that fits products and variants, a small team, and a need to be selling this quarter. The platform absorbs an enormous amount of undifferentiated work — PCI scope, uptime, checkout conversion, payment integrations — that you would otherwise buy.
Undifferentiated work is the correct thing to outsource. Your competitors are not losing to you because of who patches their servers.
Where it is clearly the wrong one#
Customer-specific pricing logic the checkout cannot express, a regulatory need to own the payment experience end to end, or a catalogue whose data model genuinely does not fit products and variants — configurable industrial goods being the classic case.
Frequently asked questions
Is open source cheaper?
The licence is. Hosting, security patching, plugin maintenance and the developer time to keep it running are not.
When is a custom build justified?
When your commerce rules are the product, not the wrapper around it. That is rarer than it feels during planning.
Can I migrate later if I choose wrong?
Yes, and it costs real money — mostly in data, redirects and rebuilt integrations. Choosing on evidence is cheaper.
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