Shopify vs. commercetools

Shopify actually offers more front-end flexibility than other platforms, including commercetools.

With Shopify you can:

• Build custom storefronts with the Storefront API using any framework you want and host it anywhere you want. See a few of our favorite examples here.
• Build headless storefronts with Hydrogen + Oxygen, Shopify's official headless commerce development stack. See some great examples here.
• Build using the Online Store and host on Shopify.

For some examples of other headless sites built on Shopify check out this page.

Shopify has processed over $1 trillion in global commerce since inception and now handles ~10% of US-based ecommerce volume, second only to Amazon. During Black Friday Cyber Monday 2023, Shopify processed over $9B USD, with a peak merchandise value of over $4MM USD per minute.

Shopify has access to internet infrastructure that no single retailer can match. We maintain 99.9% uptime and 40,000 checkout starts per minute, per merchant, concurrently. Our infrastructure is established in 30 countries and we’ve brokered partnerships with infrastructure players, like Google and Cloudflare, giving us access to a framework that very few technology companies can equal.

This is a common misconception. While Shopify comes with a curated set of encoded primitives, workflows, and best practices, these are all well-defined opinions that allow brands to benefit from the best practices we’ve identified through working with millions of businesses conducting billions of transactions. Those opinions allow brands to save time by not being forced to configure every detail of their commerce stack.

When needed, those opinions can be overridden or modified, allowing for all of the customization that the vast majority of brands need. Shopify also adds flexibility by giving brands access to the world’s largest ecosystem of pre-built commerce integrations and extensions, allowing brands to stretch beyond Shopify’s native capabilities in infinite ways. This includes many of the same partners that commercetools lists on their site as MACH partners.

No. Even commercetools executives admit that the MACH approach is not for everyone. At Shopify, we see many enterprise brands choose a headless, or composable approach for some use-cases, while relying on Shopify’s native front and back-end capabilities for other projects. Shopify offers the flexibility to take either path depending on the complexity, uniqueness, and time constraints of the project.

In most cases, enterprise brands opt for a hybrid approach that leverages a mix of Shopify’s native capabilities augmented with 3rd party integrations and custom-built components. This hybrid approach is what Shopify is best for.

Shopify empowers your developers to be more productive because it doesn’t require them to build and maintain low-level systems. With their attention focused on more critical products, our research shows that your maintenance and headcount costs significantly drop. We commissioned a study with a leading independent firm that found Shopify’s TCO is up to 36% better than the competition.* This is particularly striking when you consider that even a minimally viable commercetools storefront requires expansive engineering resources that are difficult and expensive to build.

Shopify also offers more proprietary tools that are specifically designed to help brands improve their KPIs like conversion rate, ROAS, LTV, and AOV.

*according to research commissioned by Shopify and conducted November 2023 to February 2024 by a leading independent consulting firm to study TCO across major platforms in North America.

Shopify offers the world’s best converting checkout. It is fast, secure, trusted by millions of buyers around the world, and designed to help brands be compliant with ever-evolving standards and regulations. commercetools offers integrations to popular payment gateways, but most checkout functionality still needs to be built by the brand itself. This is a dangerous proposition and leaves brands on the hook for performance, security, scale, and many features that lead to a high-performing checkout.

Shopify also give brands access to Shop Pay, the #1 converting accelerated checkout on the internet which provides:

• 5% conversion lift when enabled (regardless of whether it’s used)
• Converts as much as 50% better than a typical/guest checkout
• 150+ million global Shop Pay users

*Based on a study completed with a Big Three global management consulting firm in April 2023

No. Shopify is not structurally a monolith. The Shopify platform is a cloud based SaaS product, and the Online Store, Oxygen, and backend are all scaled independently which is not possible with a monolithic application.

The platform can be extended in many different forms such as Shopify Functions/Scripts, Custom Apps, Checkout Extensions, and more with a variety of technologies.