Choosing an e-commerce platform is one of the few technology decisions that is expensive to reverse. It shapes what your store can do, how fast you can change it and what you pay every month for years. There are three broad routes, and each is the right answer for some businesses.
Hosted platforms such as Shopify
A hosted platform gives you the store, checkout, hosting, security patches and payment integrations as a service. Themes and an app ecosystem cover most needs, and you can launch in weeks.
- Best for: brands with standard catalogue and checkout needs that want to focus on products and marketing.
- Watch for: app subscriptions that add up, limits on checkout customisation outside the higher plans, and logic that has to fit the platform’s data model.
Headless commerce
Headless separates the storefront, the part customers see, from the commerce engine that handles products, carts and orders. The engine can be Shopify through its Storefront API, or platforms such as commercetools, BigCommerce or the open-source Medusa. The storefront is a custom application, often built with frameworks such as Next.js or Shopify’s own Hydrogen.
- Best for: brands that need a distinctive experience, very fast pages, content-heavy shopping, or one backend serving web, apps and other channels.
- Watch for: you now own a frontend application. It needs developers, hosting and maintenance, and features that came free with a theme must be built.
Fully custom platforms
A custom build gives complete control over the data model, workflows and integrations. It makes sense when the business model itself is unusual.
- Best for: multi-vendor marketplaces, B2B ordering with account-specific pricing and credit terms, configurable products, rentals and subscriptions with complex rules, or deep integration with an ERP.
- Watch for: higher upfront cost, and responsibility for security, payments compliance and uptime. Use proven components, such as a payment provider’s hosted fields, rather than building everything.
Questions that settle the decision
- Does your model fit a standard store, or does it break the template (marketplace, B2B, bookings)?
- How many systems must stay in sync: ERP, warehouse, accounting, marketplaces?
- Do you have, or want, developers who own the platform long term?
- What is the cost over three to five years, including apps, transaction fees, hosting and staff, not just the launch quote?
- How much will you need to change checkout and the buying flow?
Our usual advice
Start with the simplest option that fits your model today and has a credible path to what you will need. Many brands begin on a hosted platform and move to headless when the storefront becomes the bottleneck. Businesses whose model is the product, such as marketplaces and B2B platforms, usually save money by building for it from the start rather than bending a template until it breaks.
