Shopify or a custom store — which should I choose?+
Shopify, honestly, if you're starting out, have a straightforward catalog and want to be selling next week. It's a good product and the monthly fee buys real infrastructure. Custom becomes the better economics when platform fees and app subscriptions start exceeding what a build would have cost, when you need logic the platform won't do, or when you want to own the thing outright. At $1,249 that crossover arrives much sooner than it does at US agency prices.
What does a Shopify store really cost over three years?+
Take the plan at $29–$399 a month, add apps at $200–$800 a month, add transaction and processing fees against your actual volume, and add the initial setup. For a store doing $30,000 a month, three years frequently lands north of $30,000 in platform costs alone — before anyone has designed anything. That's the comparison to run, not month one against build cost.
How many products can a custom store handle?+
Thousands without difficulty. Product count is rarely the cost driver people expect — the work is in variants, pricing rules, inventory sync and search. A 5,000-SKU catalog of simple products is often less work than 50 products with complex configuration.
Can you migrate my existing store?+
Yes — products, customers, order history and, critically, URL structure with redirects so you don't lose the search rankings you already have. Migrations that skip the redirect mapping are how stores lose a third of their organic traffic overnight. It's part of the build, not an add-on.
Do I need an app as well as a store?+
Usually not at first, and it's worth saying so given we sell apps. A fast mobile site does almost everything a shopping app does. An app earns its $1,049 when you have genuine repeat purchasing and want push notifications and saved payment to drive reorders — that's a retention play, not an acquisition one.
How long does an e-commerce build take?+
Four to eight weeks depending on catalog and integrations. The engineering is rarely what sets the pace — product data, photography and decisions about shipping and tax rules are. Getting your catalog clean before we start is the single biggest thing you can do to compress the timeline.
What about payments — which processor?+
Stripe for most, PayPal alongside it because a meaningful share of US shoppers prefer it, Square if you already run it in a physical store. All three are around 2.9% + 30¢. We wire in whichever you choose; we don't take a cut of your processing, which some platform vendors do.
Will a custom store rank better than Shopify?+
It can, and the honest reason is speed and control rather than magic. Shopify sites are frequently slowed by app scripts, and you're limited in what you can change about rendering and URL structure. A well-built custom store is faster and lets you control every technical SEO decision. But a fast Shopify store with good content beats a slow custom one — the platform isn't the whole answer.
