Shopify
Fully hosted SaaS storefront. Shopify takes care of hosting, security patches, PCI compliance, and CDN — you pay a monthly subscription and focus on selling.
Pros
- Zero infrastructure to manage — Shopify handles hosting, SSL, PCI, CDN, and uptime
- Massive app ecosystem (8,000+ apps) for shipping, marketing, and analytics
- Best-in-class checkout conversion rate — Shop Pay one-click typically lifts conversions 15-50%
- Native multi-currency, multi-language, and tax handling for global selling
- Predictable monthly pricing with no surprise infrastructure bills
Cons
- Transaction fees of 0.5-2% on top of subscription unless you use Shopify Payments
- Limited B2B features outside Shopify Plus tier ($2,000+/month)
- Theme customization beyond Liquid templates is constrained
- Hard to use for highly complex catalogs (10,000+ SKUs with deep configurators)