“Should we be on Shopify?” We get asked it every week. Sometimes the answer is a straight yes. Sometimes it’s “you’re asking the wrong question.”
We build in Shopify, WordPress and custom code, so we’ve no reason to push one over another. Here’s how we actually decide.
Start with the job, not the platform
Before anyone mentions a platform, we ask one thing. What does this website have to do?
- Sell products online? That’s Shopify’s home ground.
- Publish a lot of content, with a team that already knows WordPress? WordPress is a solid choice.
- Bring in enquiries for a service business, and load fast? That’s where custom code wins.
- Take bookings, run calculators, or give customers a login? Custom code again.
Get that answer right and the platform mostly picks itself.
When Shopify is the right call
If your website’s main job is selling products, Shopify is hard to beat.
Checkout just works. Payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, discount codes, abandoned basket emails. All built in, all well tested.
Stock and orders in one place. Your team manages products, inventory and orders from one admin, on a phone if needs be.
Hosting and security are handled. No servers, no security patches, no 2am outages to worry about.
A huge app store. Reviews, subscriptions, wholesale pricing, loyalty schemes. If you need it, someone has probably built it.
It scales. Twenty products or twenty thousand, the platform copes.
For Irish shops, it handles euro pricing and VAT, and selling into the UK and EU without much fuss.
Where Shopify gets awkward
It’s not perfect, and it’s worth knowing the trade-offs before you commit.
- Monthly costs add up. There’s the Shopify plan, then the apps, and many apps charge monthly too. Budget for the running cost, not just the build.
- Content isn’t its strength. Blogs and rich content pages are possible but clunky compared to WordPress or a custom build.
- Services fit badly. If you sell appointments, quotes or bookings rather than boxes, you’ll be bending Shopify into a shape it wasn’t built for.
When WordPress still makes sense
WordPress runs a huge share of the web, and for good reason. If your team publishes a lot and already knows their way around the editor, keeping them there is often the sensible move. WooCommerce can add a small shop without a full migration.
The cost is upkeep. WordPress sites lean on plugins, and plugins need updating every month. Skip that and the site gets slow, or worse, gets hacked. It’s why we always pair WordPress builds with a proper care plan.
Why we build more in custom code now
This is the biggest change in how we work over the last year.
Not long ago, almost every site we built was WordPress. Today it’s around a third. The reason is simple. We kept running into the limits of the platform. With custom code, those limits go away.
For marketing and service sites, custom code gives clients three things:
Speed. Pages are built ahead of time and load almost instantly. Google notices, and so do customers on a dodgy mobile signal.
Very little upkeep. No plugins means nothing to patch every month.
Control without the wait. Clients still edit their own content in a simple editor. And because we use AI tools inside the code to do the legwork, a change that used to take a week can be live the same day. A developer still checks every change before it goes live.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Waiting from Monday to Friday for a simple change just isn’t good enough anymore.
The new Shomera website was built this way. Organic search now brings in 56% of all its visits.
A quick way to decide
| If your site needs to… | We’d usually pick |
|---|---|
| Sell physical products online | Shopify |
| Publish lots of content, with a team that knows WordPress | WordPress |
| Bring in enquiries and load fast | Custom code |
| Take bookings or give customers a login | Custom code |
| Keep working, and it already does | Stay put and improve it |
That last row is worth a second look. If your current site is working, a redesign or a speed fix is often a better spend than a full rebuild. Come in and we’ll talk it through.
What about cost?
Shopify is often the cheapest way to get a proper shop live, but the monthly fees run for as long as you trade. WordPress is cheap to start but needs ongoing maintenance. Custom code can cost more upfront for complex builds, then very little to run. We break down the numbers in our guide to website costs in Ireland. And if you’re a small business, the Trading Online Voucher can cover up to half of eligible costs.
Talk it through
Not sure which fits? That’s what a first call is for. We’ll look at what your site has to do, who’s going to run it, and talk it through with you. Sometimes the answer is “stay where you are.” See all three compared on our website design and build page, or tell us what you’re working on.
