Every store that is starting use apps that are considered as a starting pack as well during the evolution some of those apps would be replaced by another competitor either due to it's cost or specific integrations it missing and competitor app offering.
This page explore key categories of apps and tech around Shopify as a platform to give a general overview while each topic will be explored in-depth within dedicated blog posts.
Front-end Delivery Options
Native Liquid
Default and out of the box way of rendering content from Admin panel of Shopify. Popular as a quick straightforward way to start your own shop online. Entire further extensibility is based on 3rd party embeddable apps. Custom Themes or Custom Liquid Sections
Headless Storefront
All data is fetched form Shopify backend and then online store is populated via combination of content coming from Shopify and eventually other systems like PIM or CMS used by marketing department to build landing pages and marketing collateral offers best platform independency and reduce the vendor lock significantly
Hydrogen Headless Storefront
Worst of both worlds, you pay a lot for development hours, you have all the porting of 3rd party apps to cover and on top of it you are vendor-locked on entirely new level you used proprietary framework to host front-end of your store on proprietary cloud
License Cost
There are multiple Shopify plans, from $39 through $79 and $299 for Advanced and the most expensive one is Shopify Plus for $2500. To sum up when someone starting their journey and sell not intensively they would be able to keep their store on $39 or $79 plan, but when store gets into processing more orders it very quickly would require switching to Advanced for $299.
Switching to Shopify Plus plan makes sense when specific revenue is achieved and lower processing fee for payment processing would justify the cost of Plus plan.
Shopify Themes
There is plenty of options here, Shopify Official Theme Marketplace, Premium Shopify Custom Themes, Fully Custom Build Themes by agencies from scratch.
SEO Capabilities
- Customizable URL's - nope
- Custom title and meta descriptions
- Custom slugs
- JSON-LD
- Sitemaps
- Robots.txt
Key events and Annual Platform Roadmap
Shopify releasing their features throughout the year but also holds a Shopify Editions conference that usually contains a large list of new features announced (not always released).
there are 2 major shopify editions events during the year - Shopify Summer Editions and Shopify Winter Editions.
Important features changes and deadlines
August 28, 2025 Deprecation of:
- checkout.liquid
- script tags, and additional scripts on the thank you and order status pages.
- Shopify Scripts in favor of Checkout UI Extensions and Functions.
