Shopify vs a custom online store for a small shop.

The short answer

If you want to be selling this week, have a big or fast-changing catalogue, or need features like multi-channel selling, point of sale or a large ecosystem of apps, choose Shopify. It is very good at what it does.

If you sell a small range of products, care a lot about how the store looks and feels, and want to keep monthly costs and moving parts down, a custom store can fit better.

Side by side

What Shopify does well (honestly)

• Checkout, taxes, discounts and order management that work out of the box.
• Thousands of themes and apps, so most features are a few clicks away.
• Built-in tools for selling in person and on other channels.
• No developer needed to get started, and plenty of people know how to use it.

For many shops that is enough to end the discussion, and that is fine.

Where the costs hide

Shopify charges a monthly plan fee and card processing fees through Shopify Payments [2]. If you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of that provider's fees, and the rate depends on your plan [1]. Check the current numbers on Shopify's pricing page for your country, they change.

Then come the apps. Reviews, subscriptions, product filters, upsells, translations: each is often a separate monthly charge. None of it is a scam, it just adds up, and every script an app loads can slow the store down a little.

When a custom store pays off

• You sell a small catalogue, say up to a few dozen products, and it does not change daily.
• Your brand is the product, and a template look would undersell it.
• You want a very fast store without paying monthly for features you do not use.
• You already have a website and want the shop to feel like part of it, not a separate platform.

When to stay on Shopify

• Hundreds of products, frequent stock changes or complex variants.
• Staff accounts, wholesale pricing, point of sale or selling on marketplaces.
• You want to install features yourself without calling a developer.
• You expect fast growth and want a platform that scales without rebuilds.

A middle path

It does not have to be all or nothing. A small shop can start custom and move to Shopify later if the catalogue grows, or keep a custom marketing site and use Shopify only for the store. What matters is that the decision fits the next two or three years, not forever.

Where I stand

I build custom stores, so take my view with that in mind. For a small shop with a strong brand and a short product list, I think custom is often the better fit. For everyone else, Shopify is a sensible default and I will say so.

If you are unsure, tell me roughly how many products you sell and how you sell them, and I will give you a straight answer.