Alternative to Shopify A system written around your process
E-commerce
What Shopify is
Shopify is a hosted commerce platform on which somebody with no technical background can put up a store. It has an ecosystem of thousands of apps, its own Shopify Payments, and dropshipping tooling. It is reached for most often by D2C brands and by stores selling across borders.
Five limits of Shopify
Not faults, boundaries - these are the places where clients most often run into the edge of the product.
Local compliance arrives through paid apps
UK VAT filing under Making Tax Digital, Royal Mail and Evri labels, Bacs Direct Debit and the customs data every EU parcel now needs are not native. Each of them is another paid app, and each app is another thing to keep working.
100 variants per product
A product can carry at most 100 variants across 3 options - size, colour, material. For configurable products that ceiling arrives early and there is no way past it.
A transaction fee on outside gateways
Shopify charges an additional 0.5-2% on every transaction if you do not use Shopify Payments, on top of whatever the gateway itself takes.
App costs compound
Basic Shopify is cheap, but the functions a real store needs - invoicing, SEO, reviews, upselling - are paid apps whose combined cost commonly reaches €120-470 a month.
Limited access to backend logic
Liquid lets you change the storefront, but backend logic - non-standard discounts, tax rules - has to go through Shopify Functions, whose API is deliberately narrow.
Shopify against a system written from scratch
| Feature | Shopify | Custom |
|---|---|---|
| Local invoicing and compliance | Through paid third-party apps | Native to the market you sell in |
| Product variants | Up to 100 variants, 3 options | No limit, any number of options |
| Transaction fee | 0.5-2% without Shopify Payments | No platform fee |
| Invoicing and tax reporting | A third-party app | Built in, reports generated automatically |
| Discount logic | Discount codes plus Shopify Functions | Any logic: tiered discounts, bundling, dynamic pricing |
| Multi-currency | Shopify Markets, with limits | Full control over rates and per-region pricing |
| Monthly app cost | €120-470 for the plugins you need | Every function included in maintenance |
Total cost of ownership over three years
A subscription looks cheap by the month. After three years the bill often reads differently, so we add it all up.
| Item | Shopify | Custom |
|---|---|---|
| Licence / hosting (year) | €1,300 | €560 |
| Build | €1,900 | €9,300 |
| Customisation and development (year) | €2,300 | €1,200 |
| Maintenance and support (year) | €840 | €1,400 |
| Total (3 years) | €6,300 | €12,500 |
Figures are quoted in euro, converted from Polish złoty at a fixed rate of 4.30 PLN to 1 EUR and rounded. Contracts are settled in either currency.
When moving pays off
Stores that have run into the edge of Shopify's localisation: full compliance with the tax, carrier and payment ecosystem of the market they actually sell in. On top of that sits the transaction fee, which stops fitting the budget once turnover is real.
You need native handling of local e-invoicing, local payment methods and local carriers
The Shopify transaction fee has become a real line in the accounts
Paid apps cost more than €230 a month
Your pricing and discount logic goes past what Shopify Functions can express
You are building serious B2B selling on top of the store
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth moving a store off Shopify?
It is worth it once the combined cost of the Shopify subscription, the apps and the transaction fees goes past about €700 a month. A custom system removes the transaction fee and the plugin subscriptions, so over two to three years it comes out cheaper.
How does a migration off Shopify work?
Shopify exposes an API for exporting products, orders and customers. The migration covers moving that data, rebuilding the integrations - payments, carriers - and putting 301 redirects in place. It takes three to six weeks.
Will a custom store be as fast as Shopify?
Faster, usually. A system written on Next.js with static generation reaches a TTFB under 100 ms and a Lighthouse score of 95-100, while a Shopify store carrying a dozen apps often slows to three to five seconds.
Need an alternative to Shopify?
A few sentences about what it should do and who for is plenty. You get scope, a date and a price back within 24 hours.
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