Platform & Architecture — Build vs. Buy

Shopify documents 12 function error types and stores each run in the Dev Dashboard, but no default alert tells you a checkout function has started failing.

Platform & Architecture

Measurement is free on Shopify; storefront speed comes from an audit-and-remediation program, not a speed app.

Platform & Architecture

Staging, CI, and theme workflow on Shopify is a BUILD: free native rails (CLI + GitHub) plus a small owned pipeline beat renting the discipline.

Platform & Architecture

Shopify's docs assign webhook dedup to you, and no app documents an idempotency guarantee. Build the dedup table and reconciliation job into every ERP sync.

Platform & Architecture

Store backups and rollback is a BUY on Shopify: the platform documents no restore feature, so a backup app from $19/month (verified Sep 2026) is cheap insurance.

Platform & Architecture

Shopify stops retrying a failed webhook after 8 attempts over 4 hours. Own the durable queue, dead-letter replay and reconciliation; no reviewed app sells that.

Platform & Architecture

The checkout extensibility upgrade is a build, run as a program: Scripts already stopped, and the last legacy checkout scripts go away August 26, 2026.

Platform & Architecture

Markets made one store the modern default; extra stores are for true divergence, priced honestly at your app stack and ops multiplied by store count.

Platform & Architecture

Shopify records who signed in, never who changed a price. No app provides a field-level admin audit log, which makes this a build or nothing at all.

Platform & Architecture

A custom app wins for Shopify internal tooling once any dev bench exists.

Platform & Architecture