Craft Commerce vs Shopify: Key differences explained
The way we shop has transformed dramatically over the past decade, with e-commerce now considered a core pillar of retail. According to the Office for National Statistics, online shopping accounted for around 28% of retail sales in Dec, and appears to be consistent throughout 2025. In fact, this number represents only a slight drop from pandemic figures, particularly when compared to pre-2020 figures.
With purchasing habits transforming so significantly, it’s now more important than ever that businesses get their online customer purchase journeys right, from the basics such as seamless checkout experiences, to publishing complex content that supports high-value product purchases.
This guide has been designed to help you understand the difference between Craft Commerce and Shopify so that you can choose the right commerce platform to help you achieve your business goals.
What is Craft Commerce?
Craft Commerce is an e-commerce platform capable of helping businesses build, manage, and scale high-performing online stores with ease. It started life in 2013 as a plugin for Craft CMS, and it wasn’t long before the team at Pixel and Tonic saw the opportunity to bring it on board and develop it further as part of its wider offering. They launched it in 2015, and over the past decade, it’s continued to go from strength to strength.
It’s no secret that we’ve been working with it since the very early days; one of our former developers went on to join the Pixel and Tonic team! We’re not bitter about it, though, quite the opposite. Craft Commerce became our platform of choice, and, thanks to our many hours working with the system, we were even the first UK agency to become Craft Commerce verified.
Unlike templated platforms, Craft Commerce gives developers full control over the front end, content structure, and checkout logic, making it ideal for content-rich, bespoke e-commerce experiences. It integrates seamlessly with Craft CMS, allowing teams to manage content and commerce from a single, flexible system.
What is Shopify?
Unless you’ve been living off-grid, chances are you’ve heard of Shopify. Since its launch in 2006, its proactive marketing strategy has helped it become the commerce platform of choice for a reported 5 million businesses globally.
Designed to support businesses of all sizes, Shopify lets you create an online store using pre-designed templates and themes, making it accessible to non-technical users who want to get up and running quickly without needing to know how to code. As you scale and your needs become more complex, however, you may want to turn to a developer for support.
How do Craft Commerce and Shopify Compare?
Ease of use
While both commerce platforms, Shopify and Craft Commerce, are very different systems. With Shopify, you can get a store up and running quickly without the need for a developer. But because it’s an off-the-shelf product, everyone gets the same interface, which can make for a slightly clunky user experience that’s sometimes trickier to navigate.
Craft Commerce is built from the ground up, so you only get what you need. And while you always need to commission a developer, the system offers a fantastic authoring experience. Features include a live preview so you can see exactly what your content will look like, and the ability to create entries in rich text, a feature we’ve found saves a huge amount of time.
Scalability
Is Shopify scalable? Absolutely. As long as you have the budget and a good development team, just about anything is possible. Perhaps because it’s straightforward to set up a basic commerce site, though, many people underestimate the costs when it comes to scaling. If the goal is to grow significantly, you’ll need to be realistic and budget for Shopify apps and integrations.
Combine these ongoing costs with your maintenance or advanced subscription costs, and monthly fees can easily run into the thousands. This is not to suggest that there aren’t success stories; plenty of large sites happily use Shopify. Perhaps most famously, Gymshark re-platformed from Magento after a disastrous Black Friday. Although in recent years, they have actually opted for a headless CMS alongside Shopify to give them more flexibility when it comes to content. More on that later.
A good website should grow effortlessly alongside your business. With Craft Commerce, your developer has complete control over your site structure and architecture, and the platform’s flexibility allows it to scale continuously as your needs evolve. Likewise, its lean codebase also means less bloat, while meta tags, descriptions, and images can be easily managed through the SEOmatic plugin, making everything as efficient and straightforward as possible. All in all, Craft Commerce is a highly scalable system.
Plugins
Shopify has an absolutely huge app marketplace; we’re talking thousands. They’re generally plug-in and play, and extend store-related functionality. And this functionality is broad; they can manage everything from product reviews, marketing automation, shipping tools, analytics, custom checkouts, and more.
Cost-wise, while the typical app falls anywhere between £10 and £200, premium apps are around £300 to £1,000 and enterprise can be £4,000 plus.
Craft has a small but growing plugin portfolio. With most of what you need readily available between Craft CMS and Commerce, many extensions are designed to be developer tools to help them extend existing functionality or meet bespoke requirements. The benefit of having a smaller, specialist community is that any bugs can be resolved fairly quickly, with developers readily supporting each other.
Compared to Shopify’s Enterprise-level apps, Craft CMS plugins aren’t especially expensive. With the exception of Craft Commerce, of course, which is itself a plugin for Craft CMS. Many are free or fall under the £15 mark, and the most expensive are about £100. And, if we can’t find a plugin, it’s usually relatively easy to develop something in-house.
Content
Shopify is commerce-first. Its content tools are intentionally simple as it’s designed to support product sales. Pages and blogs work well enough, but more advanced content structures will require apps, custom theme work, or even an external CMS (as with Gymshark). For many, Shopify’s strength lies in its simplicity. At an entry level, the admin is easy to learn, allowing you to focus on selling.
When it comes to content, Craft Commerce shines. You may need a developer for the build, but it offers a super seamless experience for content authors. This is because Craft Commerce is actually built on top of Craft CMS, which is widely regarded as a content-first system. It allows teams to create highly structured, flexible content models and blend editorial storytelling directly with commerce. This makes it ideal for brands that rely on rich pages, campaigns, and narrative-driven experiences where products are only one part of the story.
Which is better, Craft Commerce or Shopify?
An effective commerce website is an ongoing investment. How it functions today may not be the right approach one, two, or five years down the line, so try to consider where you want to be, the costs associated with getting you there and whether you want to invest in something that’s right from day one or allocate budget to evolving it over time.
In short, Craft Commerce shines when content and brand experience are central to the business, while Shopify is better suited to teams that prioritise simplicity and standardised ecommerce workflows. Realistically, the best platform is the one that aligns with your team, your resources, and how you plan to grow your business.
If you’d like to discuss your needs with an expert before committing to any costs, why not get in touch with us for a chat?
User-friendly and scalable, our clients love Craft Commerce because it helps them tell their stories while achieving their goals. Why not have a closer look at our Craft Commerce services?
