Ecommerce website development

Custom ecommerce sites for small businesses with real product catalogs and real margins. Stripe payments, fast page loads, no $300/month subscription tax.

When custom beats Shopify for small ecommerce

Shopify is great if you're selling 50+ SKUs with a standard checkout flow. For most small businesses, it's overkill. You're paying Shopify $29/month for a checkout you could host yourself for free, plus 2.9% transaction fees you can cut by going direct with Stripe.

Custom ecommerce makes sense when your product catalog is small (under 50 SKUs), when your customers expect a clean buying experience that doesn't look like every other Shopify store, or when you sell something that doesn't fit the standard product/variant/cart model. Booking-based services, tiered pricing, custom builds, recurring subscriptions with custom logic.

What we include in an ecommerce build

A custom ecommerce site from us includes everything you need to actually sell:

Pricing

Ecommerce builds add $1,500 to our base custom-website price for the cart, checkout, and product admin. So a typical small business ecommerce site runs $2,000–$3,000 one-time + $15/month hosting + Stripe's 2.9% on transactions.

Compare that to Shopify Basic at $29/month + 2.9% + $0.30 + $30/month for a decent theme + $20/month for required apps = ~$1,000/year forever, with no ownership.

Wix
$1,800
$30/mo × 60 mo. Cancel = site gone.
Squarespace
$2,160
$36/mo × 60 mo. Same lock-in.
Local agency
$5,000+
Wilmington avg per Clutch. Plus retainer.

Migrating from Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce

We handle migrations from any of the big platforms. We export your product catalog, customer database, and order history; rebuild the front-end as custom code; preserve your URLs so SEO doesn't break; and switch the DNS over once the new site passes a smoke test.

Shopify lock-in is real. They don't make it easy to leave. We've done it before and we'll handle the headaches for you.

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FAQ

Custom ecommerce builds typically run $2,000–$3,000 one-time, plus $15/month hosting and Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Bigger catalogs and custom checkout flows are quoted higher.

Yes. We export products, customers, and orders; rebuild as custom code; preserve URLs so search rankings don't break; and migrate your domain. No customer-facing downtime.

We integrate Stripe directly. Stripe charges you 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction with no monthly fee. Funds settle to your bank account every 1–7 days depending on Stripe's policy for your account.

Yes. Stripe has first-class subscription support, and we wire it up directly. Same with one-time and recurring billing for membership sites or SaaS-style products.

Roughly: custom = $2,500 once + $780/yr hosting + Stripe fees. Shopify Basic = $0 upfront + $1,000+/yr platform + apps + Stripe fees. From day one, custom is cheaper than the subscription tax. Plus you own everything.