E-commerce
OptimoWeb vs Shopify: hosted store vs a store you own
Pick Shopify if you’re early or mid-stage, want to be selling fast with a huge app ecosystem, and a stock theme plus per-order platform fees are acceptable. Pick OptimoWeb if your volume makes per-order fees bite, you need customization the platform charges for or forbids, and you want to own the store and customer data outright on self-hosted Next.js + Medusa. Shopify wins on speed, ecosystem, and being fully managed; the owned headless build wins on fees, control, and ownership at scale.
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The short answer
Shopify is a genuinely excellent product, and for a great many stores it’s the correct choice — so we’ll lead with that. It gets you selling fast, it’s fully managed, and its app ecosystem is enormous. The cost of that convenience is a monthly subscription plus, on most setups, a per-order platform fee that scales with your success, inside a theme system you don’t fully control.
OptimoWeb builds the owned alternative: a headless store where the open-source Medusa commerce engine runs on your own server behind an API, and a custom Next.js storefront calls it — designed pixel-by-pixel, with no platform fee and no theme ceiling. It’s more to stand up than clicking a theme together, which is exactly why the choice hinges on your volume and needs, not on which stack sounds more modern. We draw the full line in our headless-vs-Shopify guide.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | Shopify | OptimoWeb |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the store & code | Shopify owns the platform; your store lives inside it | You own the storefront code and the commerce engine |
| Monthly / platform fee | Subscription + per-order platform fee (most setups) | None — one-time build, then just hosting |
| Per-order transaction skim | Yes, unless you use Shopify’s own payments | None — only your payment processor’s standard rate |
| Lock-in & data portability | Store, theme, and data shaped to Shopify | Portable — your code, your database, your customers |
| SEO / schema control | Good, but bounded by theme + platform | Full — custom Product/Offer schema, entity graph, llms.txt |
| Customization ceiling | High with apps, but bounded (checkout, catalog logic) | Unbounded — bespoke checkout, catalog, B2B logic |
| App ecosystem | Enormous, one-click — a genuine strength | Deliberate integration; fewer moving subscriptions |
| Who maintains it | Shopify, fully managed | OptimoWeb (managed) or you — by arrangement |
| Speed to launch | Fastest — theme + apps | Slower — a real custom build |
Shopify’s speed and ecosystem are real strengths — named here — set against where an owned headless store wins: fees, control, and ownership.
The per-order fee is the deciding line
The single variable that decides this comparison is your sales volume, because a chunk of Shopify’s cost is a percentage of every order. At low volume that fee is a small absolute number and the convenience is easily worth it. As volume grows, the same percentage becomes a real yearly figure — money that, on a self-hosted store, simply doesn’t exist, because there’s no platform taking a cut of each sale (only your payment processor’s standard rate, which both models pay).
You are effectively funding the platform’s roadmap out of your margin, and the bill grows the more you succeed. That’s why the crossover favors owning as you scale. Our headless-vs-Shopify guide works a fee-math example at volume, and the 5-year ownership guide shows the same curve for the whole stack — run it on your real numbers before deciding.
When Shopify is genuinely the right call
We build headless stores and we’ll still tell you to use Shopify when it fits, because recommending a harder path you don’t need is bad advice. Shopify is the right call when:
- You’re early — validating a product and need to be selling this week with minimal build effort.
- Your volume is modest, so the per-order fee is a small absolute number and the convenience clearly wins.
- A stock theme fits your brand and catalog without a pile of paid apps or custom logic.
- You want one fully managed vendor for everything and are happy to pay a premium for it.
A store doing a few hundred orders a month with a standard catalog is usually worse off going headless — you’d take on build and maintenance cost to solve fee and customization problems you don’t yet have. Owning the stack is an investment that pays back at scale, not a default. If that’s you, use Shopify, grow, and revisit later.
Where OptimoWeb fits
An owned headless store on Next.js + Medusa pulls ahead when one or more of these becomes true:
- Your volume makes per-order and platform fees a number you’d rather keep — self-hosting removes them.
- You’ve outgrown the theme — bespoke checkout, unusual catalog logic, custom bundling, or B2B pricing.
- You want to own the customer relationship — orders, emails, and history in infrastructure you control.
- Performance is a conversion lever and you want a hand-built Next.js storefront tuned for speed.
- You’re cross-border or bilingual and need full EN/ES storefronts — the same stack behind live client stores like TuEstilo Moda.
That’s the profile of scaling e-commerce & retail brands and hospitality businesses moving orders off third-party apps. We build the store on self-hosted Medusa, host it on infrastructure you control, and wire it to your tools with automation. If you’re on the Shopify side of the line, we’ll tell you — start a project and we’ll run your actual numbers first. See pricing for what a commerce build costs.
Questions
FAQ
Is Shopify bad? Should everyone go headless?
No and no. Shopify is an excellent platform and the right choice for many stores — especially early or lower-volume shops where a stock theme fits and per-order fees are a small absolute number. An owned headless store on Next.js + Medusa wins in specific conditions: higher volume where fees bite, a need for customization the platform charges for or forbids, and a multi-year horizon. Going headless when you don’t need to just adds cost.
At what sales volume does an owned store beat Shopify on cost?
It depends on your plan and fees, but the deciding line is the per-order platform fee, which scales with revenue. As an illustrative rule of thumb: at low volume Shopify’s convenience wins on cost; as you move into higher monthly volume, the per-order fee typically makes a self-hosted build pay for itself within a year or two. Run the fee math on your real numbers — that fee is usually the crossover.
What do I give up by leaving Shopify for headless?
Turnkey convenience and the one-click app store. You take on a larger upfront build, ownership of maintenance and hosting (which managed hosting can handle for you), and deliberate integration instead of one-click installs. In exchange you get full control of the storefront, ownership of your commerce engine and customer data, and no subscription or per-order skim. It’s a bad trade early and a good one at scale.
Can I keep my Shopify products and customers if I move?
Yes — product catalog, customer records, and order history can be migrated into a self-hosted Medusa store. The move is a real project, not a one-click switch, but the result is a store where that data lives in infrastructure you own rather than a platform’s. We handle the catalog migration and set up redirects so SEO carries over.
Is there a real store running on Next.js + Medusa?
Yes — TuEstilo Moda is a live bilingual store built on exactly this Next.js + Medusa architecture, self-hosted. It’s a working reference build rather than a hypothetical, and it’s the same stack we deploy for cross-border EN/ES commerce.
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