Build vs. Buy on Shopify
Build, buy, customize, or wait — decided with numbers. Capability-by-capability verdicts with honest 3-year cost math.
Custom wins on 3-year cost or fit — with maintenance counted honestly.
The app wins your scenario — we say so plainly.
Buy the app, build the glue: very often the honest mid-market answer.
Shopify is shipping this natively. Don't spend yet; we'll tell you when it flips.
Latest Decisions
Build or Buy POS Hardware Fleet Management on Shopify?
CUSTOMIZEAn MDM manages the tablet for about a dollar a device. Nothing manages the card reader, the printer or the drawer that actually break in store.
Retail & POS
Build or Buy Predictive Churn Scoring on Shopify?
BUILDRetention apps report churn after it happened; a score that flags a customer while they can still be saved is a build.
Analytics & Attribution
Build or Buy Private Catalog and Page Access Control on Shopify?
BUYShopify's password protection hides the whole store from everyone, search engines included, with no page-level gating at all.
Support & Self-Service
Build or Buy Private-Label vs. Resold-Brand Governance on Shopify?
BUILDNo Shopify app or native field tracks content rights, MAP rules or imagery licenses per SKU. Build a Brand metaobject and enforce it with Flow.
Product Data, Catalog & Merch Ops
Build or Buy Proactive Shipping Delay Comms on Shopify?
CUSTOMIZEAfterShip alerts per shipment; Narvar's Notify is an enterprise contract, not a Shopify app. Delay rules and cohort messaging during a carrier event are a build.
Shipping, Delivery & Fulfillment
Build or Buy Sizing and Fit Data Governance on Shopify?
CUSTOMIZESize-chart apps render whatever numbers you give them. Nobody owns whether those measurements stay accurate as new styles ship, and that is the real failure.
Product Data, Catalog & Merch Ops
Build or Buy Store-Specific Assortment and Planograms on Shopify?
BUILDShopify tracks inventory per location and decides nothing about assortment. No App Store listing does planograms, and the enterprise suites are quote-based.
Retail & POS
Build or Buy a Subscription Save Desk and Cancel Flow on Shopify?
BUYNative Shopify Subscriptions has no save step: cancel ends billing immediately. Recharge, Loop and Skio ship the flow as configuration, so buy, or migrate to one.
Subscriptions & Memberships
Build or Buy Supplier and Vendor Risk Monitoring on Shopify?
BUILDShopify holds no supplier record, and the platforms that monitor supplier risk are sold to enterprise procurement teams.
Trust, Legal & Compliance
Build or Buy App Data Breach Incident Response on Shopify?
CUSTOMIZENo Shopify app performs incident response. Cyber insurance funds it after the fact, and Shopify's data-access tiers shrink the blast radius, not the duty.
Trust, Legal & Compliance