The Question Behind the Question
Most clients who ask "Shopify or custom?" are really asking a different question: how much control do I need versus how fast do I need to launch? Getting that trade-off right up front saves a costly rebuild later.
When Shopify Wins
For a catalogue of a few dozen to a few hundred products, standard checkout needs, and a small team without in-house developers, Shopify gets a professional store live in weeks, with payments, shipping, and inventory already solved.
When a Custom Build Wins
Once the business needs non-standard logic — configurable products, complex B2B pricing tiers, tight ERP integration, or a genuinely unique checkout flow — platform limitations start costing more in workarounds than a custom Next.js storefront would have cost to build.
Our Rule of Thumb
We default clients to Shopify unless there is a concrete, named business requirement it cannot meet. Custom builds are for genuine constraints, not a preference for "having something unique."