Every month a client asks "Shopify, WooCommerce, or custom?" The answer depends on three variables: your monthly revenue, your business model complexity, and your technical team. Here is the honest decision tree.
Shopify: pick this if...
- Your revenue is $0–$5M/year.
- Your products are physical, simple SKUs.
- You want to launch in 2 weeks, not 2 months.
- You do not want to think about hosting, security, or updates.
Real cost: $39–$2,000/month platform fees + 0.5–2% transaction fees + theme ($300) + apps ($100–$500/month). Total: $5,000–$30,000/year.
Limits: Custom logic (subscriptions, complex pricing, B2B) hits walls fast. Apps add up. Migration off Shopify is painful.
WooCommerce: pick this if...
- You already have a WordPress site or content team.
- You sell digital products, services, or have unusual requirements.
- You need full ownership of code and data.
- You have a developer to maintain it.
Real cost: $50–$500/month hosting + theme ($60) + plugins ($300–$1,000/year). Total: $2,000–$10,000/year.
Limits: Maintenance overhead. Plugin conflicts. Performance tuning required. Security patches are your job.
Custom Laravel/Node.js: pick this if...
- Your revenue is $5M+/year and you are paying significant Shopify fees.
- Your business model is complex (B2B, multi-vendor marketplace, subscription with custom rules).
- You need integrations no platform supports out of the box.
- You have or can hire a development team.
Real cost: $15,000–$80,000 to build + $200–$1,000/month hosting + maintenance. Total year-1: $25,000–$100,000.
Upside: Total control. No platform fees. Scales to 100M+ revenue. Your IP is your asset.
The middle path: Headless
Use Shopify or Medusa as the commerce engine, build the storefront in Next.js or Nuxt. Best UX, best SEO, slightly higher complexity. Common in 2026 for $5M–$50M brands.
What I build for clients
Most of my e-commerce work in 2026 is custom Laravel + Inertia + React, or headless Shopify with Next.js. Both deliver fast, branded experiences that platforms cannot match.
Tell me about your e-commerce project and I will recommend the right path — even if it is not "hire me."
About Khaled Ahmed
Senior Full Stack Web Developer based in Egypt with 5+ years of experience and 25+ shipped projects across 7 countries. Founder of Barmagly. Specialized in Laravel, React, Node.js, and modern web technologies.
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