Why We Chose a Custom Laravel eCommerce Build Over Shopify (And What It Actually Cost Us)

We didn't start with Laravel. While the majority of teams launch using Shopify, it’s a fast way to get up and running with payment processing; we hit $100K in revenue very quickly with zero infrastructure headaches. For an early-stage store, that's genuinely the right call. Then we hit $400K annual GMV. The app stack started costing us over $700/month. Our checkout flow couldn't do what we needed without a Shopify Plus upgrade. We had three developers spending weekends fighting Liquid template constraints and Shopify's API rate limits instead of building features. That's when we started seriously evaluating a custom Laravel build. This post isn't a "Shopify bad, Laravel good" take. It's an honest breakdown, the real architecture, the real numbers, and the honest answer to when each one actually wins. As a PHP Laravel web development company that has shipped stores on both sides, we've seen enough of both to tell you the truth. Where Shopify Actually Breaks Down, With Real Numbers The h