Your Custom Platform Is Slowing Innovation. Here's How to Fix It.

Brands running custom e-commerce platforms often see a pattern: technology budgets grow while platform capabilities stagnate.

Why? Custom platforms connect to critical systems—CRM, ERP, PIM, OMS, and dozens of other integrations built over years. Each integration adds value. Each also creates brittleness. Platform changes require testing across the entire ecosystem. Meanwhile, costs compound while developer time shifts from building features to maintaining infrastructure. The features competitors launch in weeks take your team quarters.

The consequences extend beyond budget. Development capacity goes toward keeping the platform running rather than building competitive advantages. Strategic initiatives stay in the backlog. The gap between what your platform can deliver and what modern commerce requires widens every quarter.

Breaking this pattern is more feasible than it might seem. According to Shopify's time to value research, migrations to Shopify are 36% faster, 56% less expensive, and 74% more likely to finish on time compared to custom platforms. Beyond migration efficiency, the ongoing economics are compelling: Shopify's total cost of ownership is 33% lower than any other platform, while checkout performance converts up to 36% better than alternatives—meaning platform savings on both sides of the P&L.

Here's what this pattern actually costs—and what becomes possible when you redirect IT capacity from infrastructure to growth.

The compounding cost: rising budgets, declining capabilities

The pattern is predictable. Your technology budget for e-commerce starts reasonable. Over time, it doubles or triples while your platform delivers fewer capabilities than modern alternatives.

Infrastructure and hosting fees increase as traffic grows, but without economies of scale. Security and compliance work expands—PCI audits, PCIv4 requirements, SOC certifications, quarterly vulnerability scans. Integration maintenance multiplies as your tech stack grows; each API update from Microsoft Dynamics, SAP ERP, or Salesforce CRM requires regression testing across your entire system. Developer time shifts from innovation-focused to maintenance-heavy.

Meanwhile, here's what remains in your backlog:

• Checkout optimizations that would reduce customer acquisition costs

• Conversion improvements that would protect your profit margins

• Loyalty programs that would drive more repeat purchases

• Enhanced mobile experiences your customers expect

• AI channel expansion (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) that would require months to build per platform

• Internal analytics tools that consume developer time but could be replaced by AI-powered insights

Consider emerging sales channels. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot are becoming product discovery platforms where purchase intent begins. Building those integrations independently would require months of development per platform, ongoing maintenance as those systems evolve, and infrastructure that scales for agentic traffic patterns. On Shopify, Agentic Storefronts enable channel expansion in a few clicks—your catalog syndicates with real-time product data to AI conversations where shoppers can check out directly.

The opportunity cost shows up in internal operations too. How much developer time goes toward building custom dashboards and analytics tools just to understand your business performance? Shopify's AI assistant, Sidekick, handles this work instantly—turning tasks that used to require custom BI development into simple questions. Since January 2025, Sidekick has powered nearly 100 million merchant conversations across enterprise brands.

Why this gets harder: Integration complexity and innovation velocity

Here's the enterprise-specific challenge: The integrations that made your platform valuable are now what make it difficult to change.

Your custom platform connects to Dynamics 365, your PIM, your OMS, and dozens of other systems. Each integration took months to build. Each one requires ongoing maintenance. Each one creates brittleness—any change to the e-commerce platform requires regression testing across the entire integrated ecosystem.

Ryan from CQL explained the fundamental tension: "The market is going to move much faster than your company can, no matter how good your team is."

That's the reality when significant technology resources maintain integrations and legacy infrastructure rather than building new capabilities.

While your team tests whether a platform change will break your Dynamics integration, competitors launch checkout innovations, AI-powered personalization, and flexible payment options. The features that convert browsers into buyers.

The talent picture compounds the challenge. Finding developers excited about maintaining legacy Java, .NET, or proprietary systems becomes harder each year. The developers who built your original platform have moved on. What remains is tribal knowledge distributed across a team that maintains more than it innovates.

So, your platform costs rise while feature velocity slows. Your best technology talent focuses on keeping old systems running instead of building competitive advantages. The gap between what your platform can do and what modern commerce requires widens every quarter.

Kyle from Dollar Shave Club described the platform decision as a pendulum. On one end, 100% custom means controlling every detail but maintaining everything yourself. On the other, out-of-the-box solutions require no maintenance but offer no flexibility. After migrating to Shopify, Dollar Shave Club found the middle ground: "Leveraging what already exists, but making it your own."

That middle ground means Shopify handles the infrastructure—security, compliance, hosting, platform updates—while you customize checkout flows, design experiences, and build the integrations that differentiate your brand. You gain the efficiency of a managed platform without sacrificing the flexibility your business requires.

How Shopify solves this for enterprise brands

Can Shopify handle enterprise at scale? Leading analyst firms have evaluated this question. Here's what they found: Forrester ranked Shopify at the top of their B2C Commerce Wave in 2024, and IDC named Shopify a Leader in the 2024 IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprises for B2C Digital Commerce Applications.

Both assessments evaluate platform breadth, integration depth, security, and market responsiveness against enterprise requirements. And the numbers back it up. Shopify powers over 14% of all US ecommerce, and more than 1,000 enterprise brands run on the platform, including Staples, Mattel, Allbirds, and Dollar Shave Club. 

Behind that scale, Shopify invested $1.5 billion in R&D in 2025 across thousands of engineers focused entirely on making commerce better. That focused investment shows up in checkout optimization informed by billions of transactions, emerging capabilities like agentic commerce integrations, and continuous platform improvements. 

Here's what comes built into the platform.

Enterprise security and compliance as infrastructure

Security and compliance on custom platforms requires dedicated resources: audit cycles, manual patching, vulnerability monitoring, specialized expertise, and ongoing documentation. On Shopify, it's platform-managed infrastructure.

Shopify is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant (the highest level), SOC 1, 2, and 3 certified, with automatic PCIv4 compliance as regulations evolve. Security updates, compliance certifications, vulnerability patching, SSL encryption, fraud detection, and DDoS protection are all handled at the platform level.

On custom implementations, maintaining PCI compliance means annual audits and attestations, quarterly vulnerability scans, manual patching across infrastructure, specialized security staff, and ongoing compliance documentation as regulations change.

The technology budget and developer time that would go toward security and compliance work can be redirected to strategic initiatives. What used to require specialized teams and ongoing resources is now built into the platform.

Pre-built integrations and API-first architecture

The integration concern is legitimate. Your custom platform connects to critical systems—Dynamics 365, SAP, Salesforce, NetSuite, proprietary ERPs. Migration seems impossible.

Steve from Arhaus emphasized the ecosystem advantage: "There's this huge community of folks that are developing for this platform for all different sizes of businesses. How do you keep your platform current? How do you keep the features you serve the consumer more current? It's through a lot of these innovative and super thoughtful app creators."

Through Shopify's enterprise technology partner network, major technology providers collaborate to ensure seamless integration between Shopify and enterprise systems. This partnership approach enables pre-built connectors for Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Salesforce, NetSuite, Oracle, and hundreds of other platforms—built and maintained by integration specialists, tested across thousands of implementations, and updated as those systems evolve.

For custom or proprietary systems, Shopify's API-first architecture enables phased migration. You don't have to replace everything simultaneously. Start with one channel, one business unit, or one region. Validate the approach. Then scale systematically.

Ryan from CQL described the contrast: "If you're using a Klaviyo or a Yotpo, you may have had to do a custom integration to those platforms. They have the APIs, but that might have taken months to do… The most stark example we like to use is Apple Pay. That's a checkbox on Shopify, but it's a three-month project with really good engineers and a lot of testing if you're on custom."

Shopify's 21,000+ apps aren't unvetted plugins. They undergo review, meet performance and security standards, and are sandboxed to prevent the integration brittleness you've experienced with custom platforms. When thousands of enterprises use the same platform, solutions exist for complex requirements. You benefit from collective R&D.

Expert migration and implementation partners

Many enterprise migrations from custom platforms involve implementation partners who understand both your current complexity and Shopify's architecture. Shopify's partner ecosystem includes global systems integrators and specialized commerce agencies with deep migration experience from all types of platforms, systems, and technologies.

Enterprise implementation partners like EY, Accenture, IBM, Deloitte, and Domaine have migrated complex custom platforms to Shopify. These partners bring proven methodologies for:

• Legacy system integration and data migration strategies

• Phased implementation approaches that minimize business disruption

• Enterprise security, compliance, and governance requirements

• Organizational change management across tech and business teams

Superior ROI: Time to value and total cost of ownership

If you're evaluating migration, you're likely comparing Shopify against other enterprise platforms—not just evaluating whether to leave your custom build. The question becomes: which alternative delivers the best return on your platform investment?

The ongoing cost advantage

Independent TCO analysis comparing Shopify to enterprise alternatives like BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Adobe Commerce shows Shopify delivers 23% better platform costs, 19% better operation and maintenance costs, and 33% better total cost of ownership on average.

Every dollar not spent on platform infrastructure and maintenance can be redirected to customer acquisition, product development, or market expansion. Platform costs that stay flat as you scale free budget for growth initiatives—the inverse of custom platforms where costs rise while capabilities stagnate.

The revenue side of the ROI equation

Cost savings matter, but revenue improvements often justify migration on their own. Shopify Checkout—optimized by data from billions of transactions—converts up to 36% better than alternatives. For enterprise brands processing significant transaction volume, even a 10-15% checkout improvement can offset migration costs in the first year through increased revenue.

Shop Pay accelerates this. Trusted by 150 million shoppers annually, Shop Pay lifts conversion by up to 50% compared to guest checkout, and outpaces all other accelerated checkouts by at least 10%.

The migration efficiency advantage

According to Shopify's time to value research commissioned and published by EY in October 2025, migrations to Shopify compared to custom platforms are 36% faster to implement, 74% more likely to finish on time, 56% lower in budgeted costs, and 1.9x more likely to stay on budget.

The efficiency advantage isn't just about speed and cost—it's about predictability too. Being 74% more likely to finish on time and nearly 2x more likely to stay on budget means you can coordinate launches, align marketing, and commit resources without hedging against migration risk. Decision makers can plan with confidence rather than bracing for uncomfortable conversations about delays or cost overruns.

What enterprise brands actually build on Shopify

Steve from Arhaus described their transformation: "We had a lot of big dreams and the speed to market was a lot slower than we wanted it to be. We really wanted to start moving on to those next generation projects."

After migration, Steve's current focus shifted: "The big thing for me right now is kind of pushing the envelope of what is next. What is the thing that no one in our industry has done but is going to make an impact?"

That's the question product and engineering teams can pursue when platform maintenance isn't consuming capacity.

Real outcomes from enterprise migrations from custom builds:

Arhaus scaled nationally with consistent customer experience, testing industry-first innovations without platform constraints. Their assessment: "As we were really thinking about that scalability, it was one of those core financial reasons why we knew we were outgrowing this homegrown solution and had to move to something else."

Dollar Shave Club decreased tech maintenance resources by 40%. Kyle described their evolution: "We were playing a lot of defense at the very beginning of our relationship. We really turned a corner of making sure that we're being more thoughtful about what that two- or three- year roadmap looks like and how we can delight our consumers even more and drive business KPIs around retention."

Lull rebuilt a decade of infrastructure in 6 months for under $10,000, achieved 25% cost reduction across infrastructure and payment processing, and redirected development capacity from platform maintenance to growth initiatives.

JB Hi-Fi redeployed 3 resiliency engineers from platform uptime management to strategic work—Shopify's 99.9% uptime eliminated the need for dedicated site reliability resources.

And they're not the only ones — thousands of merchants have switched from custom platforms to Shopify.

What's next?

The core question: what could your technology teams build with development capacity focused on strategic initiatives instead of platform maintenance? Consider:

• What features have been on your roadmap for over a year that haven't been resourced?

• What capabilities are your competitors launching that you can't match?

• What happens when selling through AI platforms becomes standard and you're still scoping the integration?

• How much of your technology budget goes toward maintaining current capabilities versus building new ones?

• If your development team could shift from 70% maintenance to 70% innovation, what would you build first?

Eduardo Fris, Field CTO at Shopify, described the shift he's watched enterprise brands make: "There are so many things that we have built just because we could, not because we needed to. And over time, we have forgotten the reasons and in many cases the reasons are no longer valid."

Migration creates the opportunity to evaluate: what actually drives your business versus what's accumulated technical debt?

Steve from Arhaus described reaching their decision point: "As we were really thinking about that scalability, it was one of those core financial reasons why we knew we were outgrowing this homegrown solution and had to move to something else."