Why the platform choice matters
It’s the least reversible decision in the stack: everything else plugs into it, staff learn it, and content, SEO equity, and integrations accumulate on it. Migrations are possible and painful, which makes choosing for the business you’re becoming, not just today’s, the real skill.
What separates platforms
- Hosted SaaS versus self-hosted control and responsibility
- Ecosystem: themes, apps, developers, and hiring pool
- Native strength where you need it: B2B, multi-store, content, headless
- Total cost: subscriptions, transaction fees, apps, and development
Questions
What actually drives platform choice?
Fit to the operating model: catalog complexity, channels, team skills, and the specific workflows the business lives in. Feature checklists tie; the tiebreaker is which platform’s opinions match how you work.
When is replatforming worth it?
When the platform blocks the roadmap, not when it merely annoys: chronic workarounds, missing capabilities the business needs, or costs scaling badly. Annoyance is a theme or app problem; blockage is a platform one.