Shopify vs. commercetools

Increased agility

Capitalise on market opportunities faster

Getting to market quickly is critical, which is what makes building a solution from scratch so risky. Brands on Shopify don’t need to choose between flexibility and agility thanks to our feature-rich platform and the ability to build from scratch when needed. Our massive ecosystem of prebuilt extensions and integrations allow you to move quickly, experiment broadly, and stay on the cutting edge of commerce—all without the increased risks of building a custom solution on commercetools.

Faster implementation

Shopify simplifies implementation

Shopify allows brands to launch new stores and implement features fast thanks to our powerful infrastructure components and the largest ecosystem of apps, integrations, and SIs in commerce. Shopify also makes the migration process easier with our intuitive UI, library of easy-to-use data migration tools, and world-class launch and professional services teams. Composable implementations on commercetools are notoriously more difficult, with some builds taking years—and many others failing to launch at all.

Empower your developers

Ship code that makes a greater impact

You’ve built a world-class engineering team that wants to spend their time on projects that impact growth. Shopify’s technical infrastructure, software updates, and robust security posture ensures consistently high performance—and frees them up to write code that has a tangible influence on the bottom line. Fully composable solutions on commercetools may promise unlimited flexibility, but the burden of building and maintaining your backend falls solely on your technical teams.

Unlock business users

Everyone gets more done on Shopify

Business users often rely too heavily on tech teams for simple tasks like creating new products or testing new promotions on a composable platform. Shopify gives more autonomy to all users through our intuitive back-office UI, allowing teams to experiment without adding to IT’s development backlog or inundating them with ad hoc requests.

Scalability and reliability

Shopify gives you a stronger foundation for innovation

Shopify is an engineering-led company that’s passionate about constantly innovating our infrastructure to ensure the best possible checkout experience for the millions of sites we power. Over the last three years, we’ve shipped 800 significant features and improvements, all with performance in mind. Most recently, we expanded our fleet of Google Cloud servers to locations across Europe and added functionality that made Shopify’s already-fast Storefronts, 35% faster. On commercetools, your tech teams are solely responsible for scaling your infrastructure, either by building a large DevOps team or purchasing a new hosting solution.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Strong commerce functionality by default

Shopify’s out-of-the-box functionality includes a unique combination of APIs, infrastructure components, and native features such as checkout, subscriptions, and discounts. These tools are powerful, easy to use, and extensible by nature. While commercetools is known for being an empty toolbox with endless possibilities, it also forces brands to accept the burden of managing relationships with a long list of third-party vendors—then piece together the infrastructure required to make those applications and functions work together.

Better TCO

Reduce ongoing costs with Shopify

Developers are more productive on Shopify because they don’t need to build and maintain low-level systems. As they turn their attention to more critical projects, your overall maintenance costs and headcount overhead can drop significantly. According to research commissioned by Shopify and conducted by a leading independent consulting firm, our TCO is up to 36% better than the competition.* By comparison, a typical commercetools storefront requires large investments in engineering just to maintain critical commerce functionality—which can have a dramatic impact on TCO.

Increased conversion

Make the world’s best-converting checkout your own

As abandoned cart rates continue to climb, it’s never been more important to get the checkout experience right. Shopify Checkout is the best-converting checkout experience in commerce out of the box.* It’s also customisable—and extensible.

Platform flexibility

Build the way you want

Shopify combines the benefits of purchasing a feature-rich platform with the flexibility to build custom experiences and solutions that meet your unique business requirements. Shopify is also not a rigid monolithic platform like Oracle and SAP, giving brands a unique combination of optionality, composability, and extensibility.

Front-end optionality

Create the online experiences your customers crave

Your customers have unique needs and shopping habits. Shopify gives you the flexibility to build the front-end experiences they want, however you want to build them. You can use our full platform or explore a headless or modular solution with Storefront API or Hydrogen + Oxygen, our official development stack for headless commerce.

Backend extensibility

A more streamlined and efficient back end

Shopify gives brands a streamlined platform for managing commerce operations more efficiently. Use our rich native functionality or connect to the third-party systems you already use. You can also customise and extend the platform with powerful libraries of REST and GraphQL APIs, custom apps, Shopify Functions, Metafields, and Flow.

Less maintenance, more value

Focus more on your business than your tech stack

Shopify gives brands the technical infrastructure and security posture they can rely on so they can focus on projects that support growth and customer retention. All too often, retailers on commercetools have reported having to reinvent the wheel with large technical teams that are focused too heavily on building a version of the infrastructure that Shopify has already built.

Improve security

Managing your security posture is all risk, no reward

Shopify is committed to making proactive changes to our infrastructure to reduce the burden on brands and keep them at the forefront of security. Our teams also cover the tedious work that your teams don’t want to do to help enable your compliance with constantly-evolving frameworks like PCI for secure payments, SSL encryption, and SOC for retailers. Brands on commercetools are entirely responsible for building a secure platform and ensuring compliance with complex international security and data standards.

Improve business continuity

Shopify future-proofs your tech stack

Building on commercetools can require a team of developers that has a deep knowledge of the intricacies of your tech stack. When just one developer leaves your company, they take valuable knowledge with them, which could make it more difficult to keep the lights on, much less innovate. But because Shopify relies on popular development frameworks—and is always backed by our best-in-class strategic support teams—it's easier for businesses to share knowledge, collaborate more effectively, and build faster.

Frequently asked questions

Analyst validation

The experts choose Shopify

Migration partners

Migrate with support from the world’s largest commerce partner ecosystem

Ready to make the leap from commercetools to Shopify? Our global ecosystem of Shopify Partners has the expertise you need to navigate even the most complex migration challenges.