Pick Shopify if you want the fastest route to a dependable checkout, a large app ecosystem and no servers to look after. Pick Craft Commerce if your store is really a content site that sells, with editorial pages, custom product data and storytelling at its center, and you have a developer you trust to maintain it. On platform fees alone, Shopify's entry plans are cheaper, while Craft's one-time licenses undercut Shopify's Advanced plan over three years once you host the site yourself.
We hear this question from independent brands around Greenwich, Stamford and the rest of Fairfield County: boutiques with a strong editorial voice, galleries, interior designers with a curated shop, specialty food makers. The comparison below uses each vendor's published prices as of September 2026 (Shopify's pricing page, Craft CMS's pricing and Commerce pages, and Craft Cloud's plans) so you can redo the math when those numbers change.
What is Craft Commerce, and what isn't it?
Craft Commerce is the first-party ecommerce plugin for Craft CMS. It adds products and variants, a cart, a checkout flow you design yourself, discounts, catalog pricing and payment through gateways such as Stripe, PayPal and Mollie. Commerce 5 also manages up to five distinct stores and up to five inventory locations on the Pro edition, according to Craft's Commerce page. Craft's documentation is explicit that Commerce requires Craft Pro, so the free Solo edition of Craft isn't an option for a store.
What it isn't: a hosted, all-in-one platform. You (or your developer) host it, apply updates, build the checkout templates and wire up shipping and tax. Card data stays with the payment gateway, but everything around it is your responsibility. That is the source of both its flexibility and its cost.
Shopify is the opposite trade. It hosts the store, runs the checkout, patches security issues and gives you a theme system and an app store. You customize inside Shopify's boundaries: product, collection, page and blog templates, metafields and metaobjects for extra data, and checkout extensions rather than a checkout you own.
Craft Commerce vs Shopify at a glance
The table summarizes the differences that decide most projects. Prices are the vendors' published rates in September 2026; Shopify plans are shown at monthly billing.
| Feature | Shopify | Craft Commerce |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Hosted ecommerce platform (SaaS) | Plugin for Craft CMS that you or your developer host |
| Pricing model | Monthly plan: Basic $25, Grow $65, Advanced $399; Plus from $2,300 | One-time licenses: Craft Pro $399 + Commerce Pro $1,199, then $99 + $299 a year for updates |
| Hosting | Included | Your own server, or Craft Cloud's Pro plan at $240/month (includes the Craft Pro license) |
| Per-order platform fee | None with Shopify Payments; 2% / 1% / 0.6% on Basic / Grow / Advanced with a third-party gateway | None; you pay only your payment gateway |
| Checkout | Shopify's hosted checkout, customized through extensions | Built in your own templates: full control, full responsibility |
| Content modeling | Products, collections, pages and blogs, extended with metafields and metaobjects | Custom sections, entry types and fields for any kind of content |
| Extensions | Large app store; many apps billed monthly | Smaller plugin store plus custom development |
| Who keeps it running | Shopify runs the platform; you manage theme and apps | Your developer applies Craft and Commerce updates |
Where does Craft Commerce win? Content-heavy stores
Craft's strength is content modeling. Every product type can have its own fields, and products can relate to any other content in the site: designer bios, collections written like magazine features, care guides, recipes, exhibition pages. Editors build long-form pages from structured blocks instead of fighting a theme. For a brand whose customers buy because of the story, that matters more than any checkout feature.
Picture a Greenwich gallery selling limited prints next to artist interviews and exhibition archives, or a New Canaan interior designer running a small shop beside a project portfolio. On Shopify, that editorial layer usually means metaobjects, a page builder app and some compromises. On Craft, it is the core of the system, and the shop is one more section of the same site.
Custom product data without apps
Artwork dimensions and editions, fabric specs, allergens, trade-only pricing notes: in Craft these are ordinary fields your developer adds once. There is no monthly app fee for the privilege, and the data is queryable anywhere in your templates or through Craft's GraphQL API if you later put a separate front end on it.
One system for content and commerce
If your marketing site already runs on Craft CMS, adding Commerce keeps content, products and customers in one control panel. Two systems (a CMS for content and Shopify for the store) are workable, but they double the logins, the search index and the places where brand content goes out of sync.
Where does Shopify win? Checkout, apps and payments
Shopify's checkout is maintained by a company whose whole business is checkout. You get accelerated payment options such as Shop Pay, fraud tooling and payment methods without writing code, and Shopify, not your developer, handles the platform's security patches and uptime. For most product-led stores, that is the single biggest reason to choose it.
The app ecosystem is the second. Subscriptions, reviews, loyalty, email capture, bundles and wholesale ordering are an install away, and staff can run the store without a developer on call. If you also sell in person, say from a shop on Greenwich Avenue, Shopify POS keeps inventory and customers in one system. The trade-off is that capability lives inside apps, and apps are usually billed monthly, forever.
What does each platform cost over three years?
Platform cost is the part you can calculate exactly. The table below covers subscriptions, licenses and Craft Cloud hosting only, using the lower annual-billing rates where vendors offer them. It excludes the build itself, apps or plugins, payment processing and your own hosting if you self-host Craft.
| Scenario | Year 1 | Years 2–3 | 3-year platform total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic, billed yearly ($19/mo) | $228 | $456 | $684 |
| Shopify Grow, billed yearly ($49/mo) | $588 | $1,176 | $1,764 |
| Shopify Advanced, billed yearly ($299/mo) | $3,588 | $7,176 | $10,764 |
| Craft Pro + Commerce Pro, self-hosted | $1,598 | $796 | $2,394 plus hosting |
| Craft Commerce on Craft Cloud Pro, billed annually ($220/mo, Craft Pro included) | $3,839 | $5,878 | $9,717 |
The costs the table leaves out
Payment processing costs roughly the same on both platforms: Stripe's standard US rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge, and Shopify Payments sits in the same range. The difference is Shopify's extra 2%, 1% or 0.6% per order if you use a third-party gateway on Basic, Grow or Advanced. Shopify Tax is free until $100,000 in sales, then 0.35% per US order on those plans, capped at $0.99 an order. Craft has no per-order platform fee at all.
The larger number on either side is development. For reference, NixMar's Shopify builds start at $2,000 and custom stores at $3,500 (see pricing). A Craft Commerce store is custom work by definition, so budget like one, and ask any developer you interview for Commerce-specific projects, not just Craft CMS sites. The honest long-term cost of Craft is the developer relationship; the honest long-term cost of Shopify is the app stack.
Can you migrate between Craft Commerce and Shopify?
Yes, but plan it as a project, not an export. Products, variants, customers and order history move through CSV files or APIs on both platforms. Customer accounts are the awkward part: password hashes generally don't carry across platforms, so plan an account-activation email for returning customers.
URLs need the most care. Shopify uses fixed path prefixes such as /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/, so a move from Craft to Shopify almost always changes most of your URLs and needs a complete 301 redirect map. Moving the other way is easier because Craft lets you define URL patterns, so you can keep Shopify-style paths. Rich Craft content (flexible page blocks, related entries) doesn't map one-to-one to Shopify pages and usually has to be rebuilt with sections and metaobjects.
Protect search traffic by keeping titles and meta descriptions, redirecting every old URL to its closest new match and watching Search Console for crawl errors in the weeks after launch. Our SEO service covers exactly this kind of migration check.
Decision checklist: Craft Commerce or Shopify?
Score your store against these questions. If most answers point one way, you have your platform.
Will non-technical staff run the store day to day?
Shopify. Its admin, apps and support are built for owners without a developer on call.
Does content drive the sale?
Craft Commerce. Editorial pages, custom product data and related content are where it outperforms a theme.
Do you sell in a physical shop too?
Shopify, for POS and shared inventory with no extra integration work.
Is your product data unusual?
Craft Commerce, or a custom build. Editions, configurators and trade pricing are fields in Craft rather than apps.
Who applies updates in year three?
If there is no clear answer, choose Shopify. An unmaintained Craft site is a security and compatibility risk.
Do you already run Craft CMS?
Adding Commerce keeps one system instead of two, which is often the deciding factor.
What we'd recommend for most Fairfield County stores
For most local retailers and direct-to-consumer brands we talk to, Shopify is the sensible default: faster to launch, cheaper to run at small scale and easier to hand to staff. Craft Commerce earns its place when content is the product experience and you have a long-term developer relationship. A third path, a custom front end on top of Shopify's checkout, sits between the two; our Shopify vs custom ecommerce guide explains when that makes sense.
Whichever platform you choose, Connecticut stores should set up sales tax correctly from day one, including the 7.75% rate on some luxury items; see our guide to Connecticut sales tax on Shopify. If you want a second opinion on platform choice, our team handles ecommerce development in Connecticut for stores in Greenwich, Stamford and Westchester.
Frequently asked questions
Is Craft Commerce free?
No. Craft CMS has a free Solo edition, but Craft's documentation says Commerce requires Craft Pro, which costs $399 per project. Commerce Pro costs $1,199 per project. Each license includes one year of updates, then updates cost $99 a year for Craft Pro and $299 a year for Commerce Pro. Enterprise pricing is available on request.
Does Craft Commerce charge transaction fees like Shopify?
Craft charges no per-order platform fee; you pay only your payment gateway, such as Stripe at its standard 2.9% plus 30 cents per US card charge. Shopify charges no extra fee when you use Shopify Payments, but adds 2%, 1% or 0.6% per order on the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans when you use a third-party payment provider, and 0.2% on Plus.
Is Shopify or Craft Commerce better for SEO?
Both can rank well. Craft gives full control over URLs, markup and content structure, which helps content-heavy stores. Shopify has solid defaults but fixed URL prefixes such as /products/ and /collections/. In practice, content quality, site speed and a clean migration matter more than the platform.
Can a small boutique run Craft Commerce without a developer?
Staff can manage products, orders and content in Craft's control panel without code. Hosting, security updates, checkout changes and plugin upgrades still need a developer. If you don't have one on retainer, Shopify is the safer choice.
Shopify by default, Craft Commerce when content leads
Shopify wins for most stores because it removes the hardest operational work: checkout, hosting and security. Craft Commerce wins for brands whose content is the product experience and who are ready to own a custom site for the long term. Run the three-year numbers with your own plan choice, apps and developer rates before you decide.
