Shopify, WooCommerce or Custom: Choosing an Ecommerce Platform
American Designs Agency Team
Your ecommerce platform shapes your costs, flexibility and day-to-day operations for years. Here's how we help clients choose.
Shopify
Hosted, secure and reliable, with a huge app ecosystem. Ideal for most direct-to-consumer brands that want to focus on selling rather than managing servers. Customisation is excellent within the platform's model.
WooCommerce
Open-source commerce on WordPress. Great when content and commerce are tightly linked, or when you want full ownership and control. Requires more care with hosting, updates and performance.
Headless or custom
A custom storefront on top of a commerce engine gives maximum control over performance and experience. It suits brands with unique buying journeys, complex catalogues or demanding performance goals — at a higher build and maintenance cost.
Our rule of thumb
- Starting out or scaling a DTC brand: Shopify.
- Content-led business already on WordPress: WooCommerce.
- Unique experience, high traffic or complex integrations: headless.
