Shopify is comfortable. But comfort has a cost.
Shopify is the solution you reach for first when you want an online store. Create an account, pick a theme, add products, connect a payment gateway, and sell. For many entrepreneurs, that's all they need. And it's perfect.
The trouble starts when your business no longer looks like a standard store. When you need a pricing rule that depends on quantity, customer segment, and time of year. When your order system has to talk directly to your ERP. When the standard checkout doesn't work for your business model.
Shopify wasn't built for that. It was built to be simple. And simple, past a certain point, becomes a constraint.
Where Shopify is hard to beat
Let's be honest about what Shopify does well, because it does a lot of things well:
- Time-to-market: zero to functioning store in 1-2 days
- Hosting, security, SSL, PCI compliance, everything included without thinking about it
- Massive app ecosystem: email marketing, reviews, upsells, loyalty, analytics
- Shopify's checkout is obsessively optimized, tested across millions of transactions
- Shopify Payments removes payment processor integration complexity
- 24/7 support and solid documentation
If you sell simple physical products, don't need complex business rules or enterprise integrations, and don't need total control over the user experience, Shopify is probably the best choice. Seriously. Not every store needs a custom solution.
7 situations where Shopify becomes a problem
1. Complex pricing
Different prices per customer segment (retail vs wholesale vs distributor). Discounts that depend on quantity + category + order history. Negotiated per-client B2B pricing. Shopify can handle simple discounts, but any pricing logic beyond a fixed coupon ends up in an expensive third-party app or a Shopify Functions hack that breaks on every update.
2. Custom checkout
Shopify guards the checkout. You can't fundamentally change the flow: steps, order, fields, validation logic. Checkout Extensibility has added flexibility, but you're still in their sandbox. If your model requires split payments, a multi-step checkout with a product configurator, or a completely different flow, you hit a wall.
3. Enterprise integrations
Your ERP (SAP, Odoo, Navision) needs to receive orders in real time. The WMS needs stock updates. Invoicing needs to flow automatically to your accounting system. Each integration on Shopify means an app or middleware (Zapier, Make) that adds a layer of fragility. With Laravel, the integration is direct: you write the code, control the logic, test end-to-end.
