Shopify or your own online store?

Shopify and platforms like it are genuinely good at what they do. If you're starting out with simple products, they're often the right answer, and we'll say so. But they're not the only way to sell online, and for some businesses they're the expensive way.

Here's how to decide, from a team that builds custom stores.

When a hosted platform is the right call

• You're just starting and want to sell this month.
• Your products are simple: a size, a color, a price.
• You want to run everything yourself from one dashboard.
• The monthly fee is small next to your sales.

What you pay on a platform

• A monthly plan, which rises as you need more features.
• App subscriptions. Many stores end up paying for several apps to cover things like product options, reviews, subscriptions or shipping rules.
• Transaction fees on some plans or payment setups, on top of normal card processing.
• Theme costs and changes, if you want it to look like more than the default.

None of that is a scam; it's the price of renting a store. The question is what it adds up to over a few years, and what you're working around.

When your own store pays off

• Your options are complicated. Products with power sources, patterns, add-ons and cases, where each choice changes the price, are hard to model with off-the-shelf options and a pile of apps.
• The fees add up. At some point the monthly plan plus apps costs more each year than owning the store outright.
• Your checkout has rules. Deposits, custom quotes, wholesale pricing, made-to-order lead times or bundles that don't fit a template.
• You want it connected. Orders going straight to your shipping software and your team, with nothing typed in by hand.
• You want to own it. Your store, your data, your checkout, on your own domain, without a platform's rules changing under you.

A real example: Goose-Grip

Goose-Grip sells a made-in-USA mechanic's work light. Six products, four ways to power them, twenty sleeve patterns, and optional housings and cases add up to hundreds of combinations, each with its own price.

We built them their own store. One pricing function is shared by the product page, the cart and the charge, so the number never disagrees. Sales tax is worked out from the shipping address and recorded for filing. Every paid order lands in their shipping software and two inboxes on its own, and nothing is typed in by hand. There's no monthly store platform underneath it. See the full case study.

What you still pay either way

• Card processing fees. Every processor charges them, platform or not.
• Hosting and a domain, either inside a platform plan or separately.
• Sales tax compliance, where you're registered. Your store should calculate and record it either way.