Headless Shopify
- Price
- from $18,000
- Timeline
- 3–4 months
- Experience
- 100+ projects · 10+ years · 9+ countries
A storefront on your own front-end, with catalog, cart and checkout on Shopify
- Shopify
- Nuxt
- Vercel
Our usual stack. We bring in other tools when the task or the project calls for it.
Shopify themes limit design and speed. The headless approach keeps the catalog, cart, checkout and payments on Shopify and builds the storefront as a separate fast app on the Storefront API.
That way the store can look like a full brand website with animation and rich pages, while your team keeps working in the familiar Shopify admin.
What we do
- A storefront on Hydrogen or Nuxt via the Storefront API
- Catalog, filters, cart and handoff to checkout
- CMS-driven content pages next to products
- Animation and interactivity themes can’t do
- Hosting on Oxygen, Vercel or your own server
When a Shopify theme gets too tight
Our designer drew a site the theme can only half deliver
We build the storefront on Hydrogen or Nuxt, free of theme section limits. Catalog and cart come from the Storefront API, and checkout stays on Shopify.
Editorial content and products live in separate places
We connect a headless CMS for stories and lookbooks and embed products right inside them, so readers add items to the cart without leaving the page.
Browsing and filtering the catalog feels sluggish
We cache the catalog on a CDN and prefetch the next page ahead of the click. Filters update results without a full reload.
We're afraid search engines won't see the new storefront
Pages are server-rendered with clean markup, product structured data and a sitemap, so crawlers see the catalog just as they would on a regular theme.
Who headless is worth it for
A good fit if
- Your brand needs motion and storytelling on par with a flagship site, not stock sections
- You publish a lot of content — stories, lookbooks, collabs — next to products
- You're ready to maintain a separate app, in-house or with us on subscription
Not a fit if
- A modest catalog where a customized theme covers everything — staying on a theme costs less
- The store relies on a dozen apps with widgets that need a theme — theme customization fits better
Design freedom, Shopify reliability
Brand site and store in one
Stories, lookbooks and landing pages sit next to products and feel as cohesive as the rest of the site.A fast catalog
Pages are server-rendered and cached, so the catalog opens quickly even on a slow mobile connection.Interactive know-how
We’ve spent years building sites with WebGL and complex transitions, and we bring that experience to e-commerce.An honest call on the approach
If a good theme is enough for your store, we’ll say so: not every brand needs headless.
How we work
- 01
Architecture
1–2 weeksWe pick the front-end (Hydrogen or Nuxt), hosting and a content CMS and design the Storefront API layer.
You get An architecture diagram and a working Storefront API catalog query - 02
Storefront design
3–4 weeksWe design without Shopify theme limits: complex filters, product builders, editorial content.
You get Designs for every page and a design system for the front-end - 03
Front-end
7–8 weeksWe build a server-rendered storefront with catalog caching and instant page transitions.
You get The storefront on staging with real products from Shopify - 04
Cart and checkout
1–2 weeksWe wire up the cart, the hand-off to Shopify checkout, customer accounts and ecommerce analytics.
You get The full purchase path from storefront to Shopify checkout - 05
Load test and launch
1 weekWe load-test the storefront, set redirects and switch the domain. A 3-month bug warranty applies.
You get A live headless store and a load test report
What a headless build needs
- A live Shopify store, or a decision to open one
- Mockups or references for a storefront your theme can't deliver
- A list of apps that must keep working on the new storefront
- Where content will live: your current CMS or a new one
- Someone to evolve the storefront after launch — on your team or ours
A call: theme or headless
In half an hour we unpack the task and tell you straight whether a customized theme would do. If headless is justified, we send an architecture, timeline and estimate.
Has your theme
hit its design limits?
We’ll look at your store and tell you honestly whether headless is worth it. If it is, we build a fast storefront while checkout stays on Shopify.
When unique design, rich content and speed matter to the brand and the theme can’t keep up. For a standard store a theme is faster and cheaper.
From $18,000. That’s more than a theme-based store because the storefront is designed and built from scratch. The total depends on the number of templates, CMS content, markets and languages, and checkout integrations. It pays off for brands whose storefront is their main sales tool. We send an estimate after a call where we check whether headless fits.
Products, inventory, orders, checkout and payments. Your team works in the same admin.
Apps that work with data and checkout, yes. Apps that modify the theme need to be replaced by storefront features.
Yes, development is more complex. It pays off for brands whose storefront is their main sales tool.
Related solutions
- Shopify store developmentLaunching a new Shopify store: structure, design, theme, payments and shipping
- Migration to ShopifyWe move your store from WooCommerce, Magento and other platforms to Shopify without losing data or traffic
- Shopify themes & appsWe customize themes, speed up stores and connect apps and integrations