How to choose your eCommerce platform in 2025: an honest guide

Platform selection is one of the most consequential decisions in eCommerce — and one of the most commonly made badly. Vendors oversell, analysts get sponsored, and most "comparisons" are written by someone with a commercial interest in the outcome.

We've built on Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, CommerceLayer, and custom stacks. Here's what we actually think.

The decision framework

Before platform, answer these four questions:

• What is your technical capability? Do you have developers in-house, and at what level?
• What is your complexity? Custom pricing, complex B2B, unique product configurations?
• What is your scale? Both current revenue and realistic 3-year trajectory.
• What is your true total cost of ownership budget — including development, maintenance, and ongoing fees?

Platform by platform

Shopify Plus

Best for: DTC brands from €1M to €100M+, brands that want to move fast, teams without large in-house tech capability.

Strengths: Best ecosystem of apps and integrations. Fastest time to market. Checkout is battle-tested. B2B features have matured significantly. Klaviyo, GA4, Meta, and Google integrations are seamless.

Weaknesses: Platform fees scale with revenue (not revenue-correlated costs). Theme customisation has a ceiling. Complex custom pricing logic requires workarounds or custom apps. You're renting, not owning.

Our honest take: Default choice for most DTC brands. The ecosystem and speed advantages are real. Don't let the revenue-based pricing scare you — the total cost of building on a more "open" platform is almost always higher when you include development.

BigCommerce

Best for: Mid-market brands with complex catalogues, B2B + DTC hybrids, brands that want more native flexibility than Shopify without going fully custom.

Strengths: No revenue-based fees. Better native B2B features (price lists, quote management). More flexible product structure for complex catalogues. Open SaaS approach means easier headless integration.

Weaknesses: Smaller ecosystem than Shopify. Fewer agencies with deep expertise. Checkout less polished than Shopify's. Slower product development pace.

WooCommerce

Best for: Content-led sites where eCommerce is secondary, very early stage brands with tight budgets, existing WordPress sites adding commerce.

Honest take: We rarely recommend WooCommerce for eCommerce-first businesses. The apparent low cost (open source, cheap hosting) quickly becomes expensive when you add up plugin licences, security maintenance, performance work, and developer time. The total cost of ownership over 3 years is usually comparable to Shopify Plus, with worse outcomes. That said, if you're a publisher adding a shop, WooCommerce makes perfect sense.

CommerceLayer

Best for: Multi-market brands, enterprises with complex pricing, headless-native builds, large engineering teams.

Strengths: Best-in-class multi-market support. Extremely flexible pricing engine. True API-first — designed for headless from the ground up. Market-specific promotions, tax, and payment logic handled natively.

Weaknesses: Not a self-service product. Requires significant engineering investment. No out-of-the-box storefront. Much higher implementation cost. Not suitable below €5M revenue.

Custom / Composable

Best for: Large enterprises with unique requirements, brands where commerce is deeply embedded in a proprietary product, companies with significant existing engineering investment.

Honest take: "Build your own" is almost always the most expensive path when you fully account for build, maintenance, and opportunity cost. The cases where it's right are rare and specific. If you're considering it, hire an independent advisor to stress-test the decision before you commit.

What we'd recommend right now

Under €5M revenue, DTC: Shopify Plus. Fast to launch, good ecosystem, manageable costs.

€5M–€50M, primarily DTC: Shopify Plus with a headless consideration if performance is a documented problem.

€5M–€50M, B2B + DTC: Shopify Plus B2B, or BigCommerce if catalogue complexity is high.

Multi-market expansion: CommerceLayer or headless Shopify with market-specific pricing logic.

Enterprise (€50M+): Context-dependent. We'd want to understand your existing tech estate before recommending anything.