Shopify is rent, not ownership.
Intro
You pay rent every month. You don't own the space. The landlord takes a cut of every sale. Everyone in the building has identical fittings. And when you want to move out you take your data with you, but not the storefront itself, the one you built on their platform. We build bespoke storefronts you own from day one: on the front, underneath, a bespoke admin, and a checkout you control from the ground up.
The problems
Subscription fees that scale
Basic is $29, Advanced is $399, Plus is $2,000+ a month. When your store grows you get a message telling you to upgrade, and that's when the price really starts climbing. That's for the licence alone, before any third-party app subscriptions stack on top.
A cut of every sale
You pay your processor's card fee as usual. On top of that, Shopify takes 0.5–2% of every sale if you don't use , and isn't even available in every country. It is rent on the revenue you generated.
App subscriptions for every detail
An app, an email app, a reviews app, an inventory app, a translation app, each with its own subscription, its own author, and its own outage just when you need it most. The app stack often ends up costing more than the licence itself.
Liquid you can't escape
Their themes are written in , a templating language that only runs on Shopify. You can't take the code with you if you leave, and every customisation locks you further into their world. It isn't open technology, it is a closed system you rent access to.
Checkout behind a paywall
The checkout, the page that most affects conversion, is locked unless you're on ($2,000/mo). On the base licence you get one of a handful of canned templates. On your own site the checkout is part of the design from the first pixel.
Every shop looks the same
You can spot a Shopify store at a glance, same header, same product page, same cart drawer. A brand identity dissolved in 30 seconds. If you want your shop to look like part of your brand, not part of Shopify, that's exactly what we are here to build.
Comparison
You rent the store, the code is theirs, your data lives there
You own the codebase from day one, portable like any other
$29–$2,000+/mo for the licence, app subscriptions on top
+ under $50/mo for most stores, no add-ons
0.5–2% of every sale on top of card fees (without )
0%, card fees go straight to your processor of choice
themes, every customisation locks you further into Shopify
Every line of code and design is yours and travels with you
Locked except on ($2,000/mo)
Bespoke from the first pixel, no paywall, no ceiling
Bound to the Shopify schema, anything else needs an app
A schema that fits your store, no framework cuffs
Export is , re-importing into another system takes time
Your own , takes everything in one shot
An app that ships your data out of the store, slow and costly
direct in the codebase, over the catalogue, streaming
Case
Wiim Home, bespoke storefront
A store you actually own.
Wiim Home is the Icelandic storefront for WiiM streaming hardware, built from scratch on with underneath. Catalogue in , images in Storage, orders and service through a bespoke admin. Payment is bank transfer, simpler for the local market than card processing, with no sales cut to any middleman. When the store grows the cost doesn't change: no licence step-ups, no checkout paywall, no app subscriptions.
See the case study →Our stack
- Next.js 16
- React 19
- TypeScript
- Supabase Postgres
- Tailwind v4
- Vercel Edge
- Server components
- Claude (Anthropic)
Common questions
But isn't Shopify simpler?
Simpler today, more expensive next year. You pay for the convenience with a percentage of every sale and a monthly rent that scales with you. Over three years a bespoke store is usually cheaper for anyone selling above the minimum, and you own the site at the end of it.
What about payment processing?
Teya, , Klarna, Apple , Google , all available directly, with no middleman and no sales cut to Shopify. We integrate whichever processor suits your market, and the card fee goes to them untouched.
What if an app breaks?
That's exactly the point, there are no apps. One team, one site, one codebase. No story about an plugin that stopped working on Black Friday, no helpdesk telling you to 'contact the app author'. We are responsible for everything that ships on the site.
What if I'm already on Shopify?
Shopify exports are , products, customers, orders. We write import scripts that normalise the data into , build the new site on your own design, and set up for the old URLs so traffic isn't lost. You move once, and then you live in a shop of your own.
See also
Next
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