Rethinking Build vs Buy: How Modern Platforms are Changing the Game

Explore the basics of the build versus buy decision and how the conversation has shifted for enterprise retailers over time.

The traditional build versus buy conversation in ecommerce is rapidly evolving. In the past, many enterprise retailers chose to build their own platforms for greater customization, flexibility, and scalability. At the time, many ecommerce platforms were limited in many ways and somewhat slow to innovate. 

Older models of ecommerce often forced brands to create their own platforms to offer the unique buying experiences their customers wanted. Fast forward to now, where platforms like Shopify have evolved, offering modern solutions with the flexibility and customization capabilities to meet a range of unique enterprise retail needs.

Today’s market is shaped by mobile commerce, identity-accelerated checkouts, and social commerce, as well as the effects of global economic changes. When evaluating whether to build or buy your ecommerce site, agility, performance, and scalability are key when it comes to keeping up with today’s rapidly evolving consumer.

In this article, we’ll explore the basics of the build versus buy decision and how the conversation has shifted for enterprise retailers over time. 

Build vs. buy: The benefits and drawbacks of each approach

The choice to custom build your enterprise ecommerce website, often with a team of in-house developers, comes with its upsides and downsides. It’s helpful to understand the full ramifications of your choice before choosing this approach.

Benefits of building your own ecommerce platform

With a skilled in-house team, some retailers find that a custom built website suits their unique requirements and needs. Some of the benefits of a custom build can be:

• Complete customization: A custom build provides complete flexibility and control for businesses with unique requirements impacting every level of their enterprise tech stack. When you and your in-house team make every decision, you can make any necessary choice and integrate with any platform or resource required.
• Consolidated costs: You can save on certain costs if your skilled in-house technical team creates your custom build. By avoiding some third-party services and platform fees often associated with buying a platform, you reduce expenses. However, not all costs are eliminated, especially if outsourced resources are required or integrations and plug-ins have their own licensing costs. Not to mention shifting costs like hosting, compliance, and security costs.
• Targeted scalability: Some platform and software providers lock retailers into packages with specific, inflexible upgrade tiers, forcing ecommerce businesses to pay for unneeded resources. With a custom-built website and the right in-house technical resources, you can flexibly scale individual functions or resources. 

Some of these benefits are highly dependent on the comparison to a specific ecommerce platform. In today’s marketplace, not all platforms have the same focus or are seeking to serve the same types of retailers. For example, in terms of scalability and performance, our dedicated engineering team implemented major performance improvements and significantly reduced our platform’s complexity in 2023. This allows us to scale rapidly when retailers have product launches or a holiday sale.

Drawbacks of building your own ecommerce platform

While building your own ecommerce storefront can give you flexibility and extensive freedom to customize, it can come with some major costs and challenges.

• Significant technical resources: Today’s buyer has high expectations when it comes to seamless, sophisticated buying experiences. Creating a great ecommerce experience can take significant effort from skilled in-house resources. Your team’s talents will also be spent on maintenance, security, hosting, and other activities that just keep the lights on. This can mean a lot less time for innovation and new feature development.
  
• Maintenance and security: When you own every part of a custom-built ecommerce website, your team is also responsible for every part of it. This includes securely storing customer data, processing transactions, and meeting stringent requirements for PCI DSS and other compliance standards. If your in-house team doesn’t include dedicated security specialists, your ecommerce site could quickly become very vulnerable to data breaches.
• Integration complexity: With custom builds, your team has to build each and every connection to the resources you want to integrate. Achieving seamless integration in a custom-built ecommerce website can be complex and costly, especially when your team could be working on more strategic initiatives.

Ecommerce website developers often adopt a microservices approach when they custom build a storefront. You can learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of using microservices.

Benefits of buying an ecommerce platform

Buying a storefront lets you partner with any one of several available ecommerce platform providers to power your build. Modern platforms like Shopify can now provide much of the customization, flexibility, and scalability of a custom build, while providing additional benefits.

• Faster time to market: When you partner with a modern ecommerce platform, you can get the most out of everything they’ve already got in place, from hosting and infrastructure to payment processing and checkout. Prebuilt solutions and components allow developers to create an ecommerce site much faster, so that products can be launched sooner. Even large enterprises, including B2B-focused brands, can benefit from buying a platform. One example is Sunology, which was able to enter three new European markets just one month after switching to Shopify.
• Lower upfront costs and technical resources: With a platform provider, you don’t have to invest the upfront time and costs building and configuring the parts of the stack that aren’t critical to the buying experience for your customers. You can rely on their teams for hosting, maintenance, updates, and compliance without having to hire your own in-house resources. This allows you to hire more strategically and focus more on revenue-generating initiatives.
• Built-in maintenance and security: When you build your website on a modern platform, you don’t have to worry about vulnerability and risks of data breaches. A provider will have their own in-house teams focusing on routine maintenance, timely upgrades, and the urgent tasks required to stay compliant with standards like PCI DSS. Earlier this year, we created a new sandbox architecture for our checkout systems so all customers were automatically compliant with PCI DSS v4.

Drawbacks of buying an ecommerce platform

There used to be significant drawbacks of working with a platform in years past. Some still hold true for many providers in the market today. At Shopify, we operate at scale so you don’t have to, and we prioritize flexibility, security, reliability, and speed. Others in the market don’t—and if you partner with the wrong provider, you could face challenges when buying. Some of those challenges include: 

Lack of flexibility

With some providers, lots of decisions can be made for you, which might limit your flexibility. You may get locked into a tech stack, only have access to a handful of themes, or run into other limiting factors. Their ecosystem might be limited and only include certain vendors in their marketplace. 

With Shopify, we recognize many retailers experience this with other platforms, and that’s why we built our platform for flexibility and extensibility, with a large vendor ecosystem.

Slower innovation

When you choose some providers, you can get locked into their roadmap. Access to new features and capabilities will depend solely on the provider’s own timelines. This can slow down your pace of innovation, and limit the experience you provide for your customers—and it’s just one of several reasons why everyone at Shopify is committed to constant innovation.

Just last month, we announced over 150 new features in our Summer 2024 Editions. And before that, we released over 100 new foundational product updates in our Winter 2024 Editions. 

Performance issues and scalability

Fluctuations in traffic volume can be predictable, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, other times you might have popular products drop or other unanticipated spikes in demand. Not every provider prioritizes platform performance and availability. You want to be sure your platform is ready whenever peak transaction times happen, or you could end up with lag, outages, and other issues that lead to lost sales and frustrated customers.

But with Shopify, you get a platform designed to keep businesses online and responsive. A platform built to be reliable and ready to scale, from the smallest startup to the largest enterprise. In 2023 alone, Shopify processed 5.5 billion orders from more than 675 million unique shoppers: that’s an average rate of 40,000 checkouts per minute. 

Can you build and buy enterprise software?

Today, modern platforms like Shopify have eliminated the traditional build versus buy dichotomy. Retailers of all sizes and industries can now build and buy, and by doing so, get the benefits of both approaches.

At Shopify, we understand the unique needs of a wide range of retailers, and we’re constantly improving, innovating, and expanding our offerings. While our platform is best known for DTC , we also fuel commerce in B2B, retail, social, and mobile—delivering a versatile, flexible, and unified experience.

Beyond that, our development philosophy is to reduce complexity for brands so you can focus on more strategic projects. Our platform is optimized to ensure every site is fast as soon as it is launched. We also offer numerous options for customization, including GraphQLs, APIs, webhooks, and custom data modeling.

Three ways modern platforms are enabling retailers to build sophisticated enterprise storefronts 

Modern platforms are supporting more ways to architect storefronts. For example, our platform is engineered to support different headless ecommerce approaches while providing best-in-class features like fast, customizable, and secure checkout. 

No matter how you want to build, we’re ready to support your requirements, and our platform can even be the reference implementation for many types of builds. Here are three key ways platforms like Shopify are supporting retailers to build and buy.

Supporting multiple ways to build and optimize storefronts 

One of the big benefits of building your own custom storefront is having more flexibility and opportunities for customization. Modern providers are bridging that gap by letting brands customize extensively and supporting different architectures. This allows retailers to build and buy storefronts that align with their own unique brand experiences.

Today, we empower retailers to build effective and engaging storefronts using any and all popular development frameworks. We also provide customizable Liquid themes that connect to GitHub for easy updates and improvements.

For retailers that want to use the latest web technologies, we offer Hydrogen and Oxygen, a ready-made library of Remix commerce components hosted on a globally distributed Cloudflare Web Worker architecture. Plus, Hydrogen React components allow for rapid development with your own hosting solution. Shopify Storefront APIs serve as the reference implementation for other frameworks like NextJS or Vue, letting developers build highly customized and dynamic ecommerce experiences.

Unifying management for ecommerce, app, retail, and B2B

For an effective build and buy approach, a platform must unify ecommerce, apps, brick-and-mortar retail, and B2B operations seamlessly. For example, the Shop app not only allows customers to track order confirmations and statuses, but also offers a branded, curated shopping experience on their phones with one-click checkout.

Equally important is the integration of brick-and-mortar retail with online, DTC operations. Shopify POS provides dedicated hardware, such as phones and tablets, along with modern and customizable POS software. This empowers staff to deliver robust customer experiences with instant access to a customer's online and in-store order history, notes, and tags. Associates can even add items to a cart for customers, saving time and providing a white-glove shopping experience across channels.

Not all retailers are focused on DTC operations, and platforms like Shopify can give B2B ecommerce retailers all the tools they need to build and buy. They can draft orders with large quantities of items, maintaining the same seamless experience as DTC transactions. We also support essential B2B features like net terms for buyers and the ability to extend their data model with custom meta fields, ensuring compatibility with existing ERP systems.

Shopify allows businesses to choose their preferred frameworks and connect their accounts effortlessly. Businesses can quickly add social media accounts as sales channels within a unified admin interface, experiencing a holistic view and streamlined management experience. This helps businesses reach more buyers in more places, providing a foundation for rapid growth.

Providing proven, tested, and scalable must-haves for every business

Modern platform providers like Shopify can power an enterprise build and buy approaches with robust, proven, out-of-the-box fundamentals, and extensive connectivity options. These platforms offer pre-built components that have been thoroughly tested and optimized, alongside a massive ecosystem of pre-integrated resources.

A platform that offers a reliable, fast, and customizable checkout experience is critical for a successful build and buy approach. Building and optimizing a high-converting checkout can be a big challenge, especially during peak retail events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday—even though it is solidly a "table stakes" function. Platforms like Shopify even allow extensive customization of their core checkout functionality, so that the experience can be tailored to meet specific business requirements.

Providers that fully support build and buy approaches are typically engineering-led, with a committed focus on scalability, uptime, and performance. With a performance-first mindset and a strong technical focus, these platforms can deliver enterprise capabilities across every facet of commerce.

When tech teams don't have to build essential ecommerce functions from scratch, they can focus on developing innovative, unique, and highly customized features and capabilities that differentiate their brand. This is the core of a build and buy strategy: enabling extensive customization and limitless innovation by providing robust essentials, a large ecosystem, and flexible platform access.

Three examples of build and buy ecommerce platforms

Ruggable

Ruggable, known for their innovative washable rugs, chose to build and buy with Shopify when they needed to scale their operations and improve the customer experience. The team at Ruggable wanted to find a platform that would support a headless ecommerce build while handling high traffic as they grew into eight new international markets.

They chose Shopify for our robust infrastructure, ease of use, and powerful, prebuilt ecommerce features. Their partnership with Shopify allowed them to easily add apps, expand into new sales channels, and grow to new international markets—much faster than if they’d built their own storefront. After the switch, Ruggable experienced significant improvements in site performance, customer satisfaction, and overall sales growth.

“There’s a big difference between build versus buy,” said Daniel Graupensperger, director of product management at Ruggable. “If you’re building it all yourselves, that’s going to slow things down. You’re limited by the resources that you have. We’ve been able to partner with Shopify, and they’ve been able to do a lot of the building for us. Shopify builds the features before we even need them, and we’ve been able to scale using their enterprise ecommerce. It’s been great for us.”

Arhaus

High-end furniture retailer Arhaus originally built their own ecommerce website, which operated alongside more than 90 showrooms and design studios across the country. When COVID started, their ecommerce website started to see much more traffic and activity. They began to face serious challenges with site speed and flexibility. Lengthy and costly development times for new features was slowing their growth. They also needed a more efficient way to manage complex inventory and customer data. 

They chose to use a build and buy approach with Shopify to create the online experience their customers wanted. Our platform offered seamless integration capabilities, superior site speed, and the ability to provide a personalized shopping experience. Since making the switch, Arhaus has improved their site performance, increased customer satisfaction, and streamlined operations, allowing them to grow during a critical time.

“One of the biggest advantages we've experienced with Shopify is the significantly shorter timelines for building solutions within the platform,” said Steve Bauer, vice president of ecommerce and digital at Arhaus. “Previously, on our homegrown site, it could take 12 to 18 months to develop a specific feature. With Shopify, that timeline could be reduced to just three months. Whether it's an existing feature or a customized solution, chances are someone has already dealt with it within the Shopify ecosystem. Being able to leverage the knowledge and experiences of other Shopify users helps us scale our business in the long term." 

MakerFlo

MakerFlo is a highly creative custom tumbler business. Their goal is to make sure that their customers get the best possible products and education so that they can bring their own creative dreams to life. MakerFlo originally built their own ecommerce site to capture their vision, but it required the constant assistance of a developer to get anything done. 

“To implement anything creative on the website, it was a big ask for the developer and for us,” said John Modi, cofounder and chief imagination officer at MakerFlo. “We had to think about the logistics of how everything would work, how the entire back end would talk to each other—if we implemented this custom code, how it would work with this, this, and that, and how everything would talk. Even to add the simplest thing, the developer would say, ‘It's going to take me 6 months and it's going to cost us $60,000 to get it done.’”

Their custom website had become a roadblock for the company—it was impacting larger decisions about which products they could offer their customers. This in turn affected their ability to move fast, innovate, and, ultimately, grow the company.

MakerFlo chose to build and buy with Shopify to take advantage of our ease of use, powerful features, and seamless integration capabilities. Since the switch, they have grown significantly, boasting an impressive 8.5% conversion rate and an eight-figure revenue. The improved site speed, reliable infrastructure, and enhanced customer experience on Shopify has been pivotal to their success.

A modern platform for building unique and powerful enterprise brand experiences

The build versus buy debate in ecommerce has evolved. Building a bespoke platform or buying a ready-made solution is no longer a choice: retailers can now get the best of both worlds. Modern platforms like Shopify enable extensive customization and agility in enterprise storefront builds, while providing robust, optimized core ecommerce functions and rapid scalability.

At Shopify, our teams continually work to improve bottom lines in meaningful ways without compromising flexibility or agility. We help retailers seamlessly integrate their existing systems to power sophisticated ecommerce operations and experiences.

Our checkout systems are continually tested and upgraded, providing retailers the latest features without having to do anything themselves. Developers can extensively customize and test checkout upgrades in a sandbox environment, and quickly add third-party pixels and custom UI elements. This enables unique order routing, discounts, promotions, and more.

Retailers can easily customize their ecommerce environments to meet specific needs while relying on Shopify's proven infrastructure. With exceptional uptime, performance, and reliability, we provide retailers a fast, secure, and reliable foundation for ecommerce operations.

In short, Shopify is opinionated on all the decisions you shouldn’t have to make and maintain—all while being unopinionated on the decisions that empower brand expression and address business requirements. 

Recently, we overhauled our platform to improve speed and performance. The results? We found that our stores are the fastest in the world. We’re here to deliver powerful essentials so retailers can build everything their customers demand today—and innovate the buying experiences of tomorrow.

Use our calculator to learn more about the total cost of ownership when you partner with Shopify.

FAQ on building vs. buying software

What is build vs. buy?

In ecommerce, build versus buy refers to the decision-making process where online retailers examine the choice between developing their own ecommerce platform (building) or partnering with a platform or software provider to buy an existing solution (buying). Building involves customizing and developing a platform from the ground up. This offers complete control over the entire stack but relies on significant time, resources, and technical expertise. Buying generally refers to using a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or other out-of-box solutions, which are quicker to implement and come with built-in features, support, and scalability.

What is a build vs. buy software analysis?

A build versus buy software analysis is the process of evaluating whether a retailer should use in-house resources to build a custom software solution or buy an existing software product or service (including ecommerce platform providers) to meet their ecommerce goals. The build versus buy analysis process includes examining several factors to determine the right strategy. These factors can include total cost of ownership, access to in-house resources, technical capabilities, compliance requirements, required features, and much more. The goal of the analysis is to make sure the chosen approach aligns closely with a retailer’s goals and resources.

What are the main factors to consider when deciding whether to build or purchase enterprise software?

There are several factors that should be documented and reviewed throughout the build vs. buy decision process, and you should choose the one that best meets your business requirements, goals, and priorities. These factors include:

• The specific needs and unique requirements of your online business, such as functionality, features, customization, and integration capabilities. 
• Your available budget, as well as time and skills of your in-house resources. 
• Overall timelines for implementing the new solution, and any hard deadlines involved, such as product launches or major shopping holidays. 
• What sort of hosting, infrastructure, and long-term maintenance and support you need, and what kind of scalability will be required for future growth and upgrades.

Is it better to buy software or build your own?

The decision to build or buy software is very dependent on your online business. With modern platforms, there is also a third option to build and buy. Buying software often means faster deployment, access to built-in features, and customer support. On the other hand, building custom software provides complete ownership, with the ability to tailor the entire stack precisely to business needs. However, this often requires a substantial investment in resources, time, and ongoing maintenance and security vigilance. Building and buying involves partnering with a platform provider like Shopify that allows greater flexibility while providing faster time-to-market, robust performance, and teams to handle ongoing maintenance and security. When choosing an approach, you should consider factors such as budget, timeline, technical resources, scalability, and make sure your approach will power your business today and in the future.