Stores that run on Shopify, with a theme coded for what they sell

Shopify or custom: two rails, and how they differ

We build online stores on two rails. On Shopify, when you want its checkout, apps, and admin, we design and code the theme around your catalog instead of dropping your logo into a stock template. Off Shopify, when the catalog, the payment rail, or the search plan asks for more than a hosted platform gives you, we build a custom storefront. Either way you own the store, the theme, the content, and every account, you talk to the owner on every call, and the work is month to month.

Neither rail is better in general. They are built for different stores, and the differences show up in the same handful of places every time. Here they are side by side, stated plainly for both, because these rows are where the choice actually gets made.

• Checkout. On Shopify, the checkout belongs to the platform. Shopify hosts it, maintains it and keeps it current, which is much of the point of the platform, and theme work shapes how a shopper arrives at checkout far more than the checkout itself. On a custom storefront, the checkout is built for that store, so every step can be shaped to it, and keeping it working is part of the job rather than someone else's.
• Apps and admin. Shopify's admin is where products, orders, refunds and inventory live, and it is familiar to anyone who has run a store on it. Many features arrive as apps: install one for subscriptions, reviews or shipping rules, and remove it when it stops earning its place. A custom storefront has no marketplace of add-ons. Each feature is built, and the admin screens are the ones the build includes, so the list of what the store needs has to be settled early.
• Catalog size. Size on its own rarely decides it. Shopify carries large catalogs comfortably when the products fit its shape of products, variants and collections, with metafields holding the extra details each product carries. The catalog that pushes toward custom is the unusual one: parts that have to match other parts, or relationships between items that the variant structure can only hold with workarounds.
• Payment rail. Shopify's checkout is designed around Shopify Payments, and a store can use an outside processor instead, with trade-offs explained in the answer on whether Shopify charges transaction fees. A custom storefront takes cards through whichever processor the store chooses and qualifies for, and its checkout is wired to that processor directly.
• Search plan. Shopify's built-in search and filtering serve a typical catalog well, and apps or theme work extend them when shoppers need more. When search is the plan rather than a feature, and the categories, filters and page structure have to be designed together from the start, a custom storefront gives that plan more room.
• Ownership. On Shopify, the store account, the domain, the theme files and the product data are in your name, and the platform itself is a subscription billed by Shopify. On a custom storefront, the code, the hosting account and the data are in your name. On either rail, nothing is held back when the work ends.

The right rail is the one your catalog, your payments and your search plan point to. Settling that is the first job of the consult, before a single design decision gets made.

Who Shopify is for, and who it is not

Shopify suits a store whose owner wants to run the business, not the software. Products get added from a phone, orders get packed and labeled, refunds go out from the same admin, and hosting, checkout and platform updates are Shopify's to handle. For an owner who would rather spend those hours on the goods than on the software, that arrangement makes sense.

It tends to fit when:

• You sell things that ship or get picked up, and you want the whole day to day in one admin you can learn without a manual.
• You want to add a feature by installing an app and take it away the same way, instead of paying for a build every time something changes.
• You already sell somewhere else, at markets, on a marketplace or through social media, and want a store of your own with your own customer list.
• You want the store to look like your brand and read like your catalog, which is where a theme built for the store earns its place over one bought off the shelf.

The trade has a cost side, and it is fair to name it. The platform is a subscription for as long as the store runs, apps add their own charges, the checkout follows Shopify's rules rather than yours, and the store lives inside the limits the platform sets. For plenty of product businesses those limits never get in the way. For a few, they are the whole problem, and that is what the custom rail is for.

It is the wrong tool in a few plain cases. A business that sells services and has nothing to put in a cart needs a website, not a store, and custom web design is the page for that. A store whose catalog, payment rail or search plan asks for more than the platform offers belongs on the custom rail, covered further down this page. And a brand-new store with a small range and a tight budget may be well served by a Theme Store theme for now; the answer on hiring a Shopify developer or using a theme is honest about where that line sits.

If the question is still which platform to choose at all, the comparison of the best website platforms for small business sets Shopify beside the other options, and it is worth reading before a call with any developer.

Before hiring anyone for Shopify work, it helps to know what the titles mean: the answer on what a Shopify Partner is explains the program, so a title on any agency site can be read for what it actually means.

Not sure which side of those lines your store falls on? Book a free 30-minute consult with the owner and bring the store's web address, or the product list if the store does not exist yet. You get a straight answer about the platform before anyone talks about design, and sometimes that answer is that the store belongs somewhere other than Shopify.

What we build on Shopify

The Shopify web design and development services here come in the shapes below. Each has its own page with the detail; this is the short version, so you can find the one that matches where your store is today.

• Custom Shopify theme development. A theme designed and coded for your store instead of a purchased theme in new colors. That means theme sections you can rearrange and edit yourself in the theme editor, product templates shaped around what you actually sell, Liquid written for your catalog rather than for every catalog, and product markup built into the theme instead of bolted on afterward. When it is finished, it is a theme like any other in your admin, only built for one store.
• Shopify store setup. A new store opened properly the first time. The accounts are created in your name, collections are planned before products arrive, shipping and checkout settings are set to match how you actually sell, and the search groundwork is laid before launch instead of patched in after it. You come out of setup knowing where everything lives. It suits a business opening its first store as much as one adding a store beside the places it already sells.
• Shopify store redesign. A new look for a store that is already taking orders. The new theme is built next to the live one while the store keeps selling, product and collection addresses stay where they are, and the previous theme stays in the store so there is always a way back. The work can go in stages, and each one is previewed before shoppers see any of it.
• Shopify SEO. Search work fitted to the way Shopify builds pages: collection pages written so they can rank on their own, product titles and descriptions handled across the whole catalog, filtered and tagged pages kept from multiplying into near-copies, and product markup that matches what is on the page. It pairs with AI search optimization when the store also wants to be found through AI answers. No rankings are promised; the work is on the parts of the store search engines read.

Built for the catalog is the part that separates a coded theme from a decorated one. A store with deep product specifications needs product pages that show them in a readable order. A store that sells by collection needs collection pages that do the selling, not a grid and a filter bar. A store that changes its range every season needs sections it can swap without calling anyone. The theme is designed from those facts about the store outward, and the look comes after the structure is right.

None of these depends on the others. A store with a theme it likes can hire the search work alone, and a store rebuilding its theme does not have to touch its product data. If the store you have now is slow, start with the order of checks in how to speed up a Shopify store: it is a diagnosis you can run yourself before paying anyone.

New to the vocabulary? The glossary explains what a Shopify theme is and what Online Store 2.0 means, which covers most of the words that come up on a first call.

• Shopify themes designed and coded around your catalog
• Shopify store setup with every account in your name
• Shopify store redesign, done a wave at a time
• Shopify SEO built around how the platform shapes a store

When the rail should be custom

The case for building a store off Shopify is narrower than it sounds, and it usually comes back to the rows in the comparison at the top of this page. The signs are specific:

• The catalog only fits products and variants through workarounds, and someone would have to maintain those workarounds for as long as the store runs.
• The store needs a payment setup the hosted checkout does not offer, or control over checkout steps the platform keeps to itself.
• Search is the plan. The categories, filters and page addresses have to be designed as one structure, because that structure is how shoppers find their way through the store.
• The store has to exchange data with other software in ways that go past what apps and the platform's own connections allow.

What is not on that list matters as much. A store does not need a custom build because it wants a distinctive look, because it has grown past a starter theme, or because an app it installed turned out to be slow. Those are theme problems and app problems, and they get solved on Shopify without moving the store to a new platform. When a store owner arrives sure they need custom and every reason is one of these, the consult says so.

The consult tests a store against those signs with plain questions. What does a product record need to hold? How do shoppers look for things today? What does checkout have to do that a standard checkout does not? Which other software has to hear about an order? The answers usually point one way quickly, and when they do not, that is worth knowing before anyone designs anything.

Here is what that rail looks like in practice. A storefront with over 1,400 products and live card checkout, built for a Virginia retailer. It is custom work, not a Shopify store, and it appears here only as the example of the other rail.

Custom storefronts have their own page, with the process and the pricing for building off platform: custom ecommerce websites. If your store matches the signs above, start there.

The move can also run the other way. A store that went custom early can find the upkeep outgrowing the benefit long before the catalog outgrows anything, and moving it onto Shopify is a replatforming question worth asking plainly. Neither direction is a failure. It is a fit question, and it is far cheaper to answer before a build than after one.

How the work runs, from first call to launch

It starts with a conversation. A free 30-minute consult with the owner covers which rail fits, what the theme has to do for your catalog, and what can wait until later. Bring the store, or the product list if there is no store yet.

You can see the direction before you commit. Ask for a free homepage mockup: your store's front page as it could look, so the conversation is about something on a screen rather than adjectives.

Then a quote that fits the store. Shopify builds are scoped per store, quoted after the free consult, because a theme for a focused range and a theme for a deep catalog are different jobs. The parts that go into that figure are laid out in the answer on how much a Shopify website costs. Shopify's own plan fees and any app charges sit outside the build; the Shopify pricing guide lists the plan prices with the month they were checked.

Scope comes before the work. Which templates and sections the theme includes, whether product copy or data cleanup is part of the job, and what is left for later all get settled up front, so nobody is surprised by what the finished store does or does not do.

The build happens beside the live store. On a store that is already selling, the new theme is built as an unpublished theme, so the live store keeps selling while it takes shape and you can preview it in your own admin at any stage. How long that takes depends on the catalog and the scope, and the answer on how long a Shopify store takes to build walks through what moves the timeline.

What the owner needs from you. Access to the store that you grant and can remove at any time, the product data as it exists today, and decisions at the points where the theme needs them. The list of what is needed comes early and stays short.

Launch is a publish, not a leap. Approval is the moment the new theme goes live, and launch day means checking the things shoppers touch first: search, collections, product pages, the cart and the checkout.

After launch, the store keeps changing. Ranges turn over, seasons come around, an app gets replaced, a collection earns a page of its own. The work after launch is month to month, no long contracts, the owner on every call.

What you own, you own. The design, the product data, the payment account, the analytics and the domain are in your name. Nothing about the store depends on staying a client, and the theme keeps working if the work stops.

Shopify from Orlando, for stores anywhere

Kelly Webmasters and Marketers, founded in 2008 by Brandon Kelly, is based in Orlando, working with stores anywhere by video. Theme reviews happen on a shared screen, changes land on the unpublished theme for you to check, and a store across the country gets the same calls, the same owner and the same process as a store across town. Nothing about a Shopify store requires being in the same room: the store, its admin and its unpublished themes all open in a browser. For store owners who want the local detail, there is a page for a Shopify developer in Orlando. To hire a Shopify developer from anywhere else in the country, call or text (407) 694-2055 and the conversation starts the same way.