Ecommerce
Shopify vs WooCommerce vs custom ecommerce
Most retailers are well served by a platform. Here is how to tell which one, and the narrow set of cases where a custom build is genuinely justified.
Choose Shopify when you want hosted infrastructure, a fast start and a reasonably standard catalogue. Choose WooCommerce when you are already on WordPress, need content and commerce in one system, or want full control of hosting and data. Choose custom only when pricing rules, product configuration or fulfilment genuinely do not fit either — which is rarer than most agencies suggest.
Comparison
| Shopify | WooCommerce | Custom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Hosted SaaS | WordPress plugin | Built for you |
| Hosting | Included | Yours | Yours |
| Cost shape | Monthly fee plus apps | Hosting plus plugins | Build cost, then maintenance |
| Time to launch | Fastest | Fast | Slowest |
| Maintenance burden | Minimal | Ongoing | Yours entirely |
| Content and blogging | Adequate | Excellent | As built |
| Catalogue flexibility | Good, with limits | Good | Unlimited |
| Unusual business logic | Constrained | Workable | No constraint |
| Data ownership | On the platform | Yours | Yours |
| Scaling concerns | Handled | Your responsibility | Your responsibility |
Shopify
Shopify handles hosting, security, PCI scope and scaling. For a retailer whose competitive advantage is products and marketing rather than software, that is a substantial amount of work you never have to think about.
Where it becomes limiting
- Checkout customisation is constrained, deliberately
- App subscriptions accumulate — ten apps at a modest monthly fee each is a real line item
- Unusual pricing or configuration logic can be awkward or impossible
- You are operating within someone else's platform decisions
The app cost is the one businesses underestimate. Each individually looks cheap; the aggregate frequently exceeds the platform fee.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce makes sense when content and commerce belong together, when you already run WordPress, or when data ownership and hosting control matter to you.
What it costs you
- Hosting, security, updates and backups are your responsibility
- Plugin conflicts are a genuine and recurring category of problem
- Performance needs deliberate attention as the catalogue grows
- You need someone competent maintaining it
It is more flexible and cheaper in licence terms, and it transfers work to you. Neglected WooCommerce stores are one of the most common things we are asked to rescue.
Custom ecommerce
A custom build removes every platform constraint and gives you every platform responsibility. It is the right answer considerably less often than agencies propose it, because agencies are paid to build it.
When it is genuinely justified
- Pricing logic a platform cannot express — complex B2B tiers, negotiated contracts, dynamic rules
- Product configuration where the product is assembled or specified rather than picked
- Fulfilment or inventory workflows that are themselves the competitive advantage
- Volume where platform transaction fees exceed the cost of building
- Deep integration with systems that must be the source of truth
The question that actually decides it
Not which is best, but: what is your business actually good at, and where should its effort go?
If your advantage is product, brand and marketing, choose the option that demands least of your attention. If your advantage is an operational model competitors cannot copy, software that expresses it may be worth building.
Switching later
Migration is normal and manageable. Products, variants, customers and order history all move. The part that determines whether it goes well is the URL map: without redirects from every old URL to its new equivalent, you lose the search visibility the old store had, and that is usually the most expensive thing about a migration.
Start on a platform. Move if you outgrow it. Starting custom to avoid a hypothetical future migration is a common and expensive mistake.