The Honest Guide to E-commerce Stack Decisions
Shopify vs. headless vs. custom, a decision matrix based on real GMV, team size, and runway numbers.
Three weeks ago a founder asked us to "just build it on Shopify." His GMV was $80M, his catalog had 40,000 SKUs across four regions, his team had two backend engineers. Shopify was the wrong answer. So was headless. So was custom. We needed a matrix, not a religion.
The decision matrix
Three variables determine the right stack for the next 24 months: annual GMV, engineering headcount, and runway in months. Anything else is taste.
Shopify (or Shopify Plus)
GMV under $20M, fewer than 2 backend engineers, runway under 18 months. Pay the platform tax and ship. The thing that founders underestimate is how much surface area Shopify gives you for free: payments, fraud, tax, shipping integrations, a real admin UI. You'd burn six months rebuilding the boring parts.
Headless on a hosted commerce engine
GMV $20M to $200M, 3 to 8 engineers, runway over 18 months. You earn the flexibility but you also inherit the operations. The win is custom merchandising, custom checkout flows, real performance budgets. The cost is that you now own caching, observability, and the long tail of Shopify-shaped features you forgot you were getting.
Custom
GMV over $200M, 8+ engineers, runway over 36 months, and a competitive moat that genuinely depends on commerce mechanics nobody else can build. If those four conditions aren't all true, you're building infrastructure as a hobby.
The wrong stack burns 18 months. The right stack is forgettable. Pick boring infrastructure and reserve your interesting decisions for the product.
What we shipped this year
12 client launches in 2026 to date:
Shopify Plus: 7
Headless (Saleor + Next): 3
Headless (Medusa + Remix): 1
Custom (NestJS + Postgres): 1Boring wins. The single custom build is a marketplace, not a store, and the founder had a 12-engineer team and a Series B. The conditions matched the matrix.
If your engineer is excited about the stack, you might be the one paying for the excitement. Pick the option that the team won't be talking about in six months.
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Fivi Tech
Fivi Tech is a marketing and software development agency in the Ajman Free Zone, built by founders with 35+ years of combined experience across the GCC. Posts here are written by whichever of us has the most to say on the topic, then reviewed by the rest before they ship. The byline is collective on purpose.