Shopify

Shopify remains the default answer for most people standing up an online store. The value was always the ecosystem: a stable core, a huge app marketplace, payment processing, and enough flexibility to scale from a single-SKU side project to an eight-figure brand without replatforming. The recent AI push adds Shopify Magic for product descriptions, Sidekick as an admin copilot, and image generation for product backgrounds and lifestyle shots.

The native AI tools are convenient rather than revolutionary. Magic saves time on the tedium of writing 200 product descriptions and email subject lines; Sidekick can answer admin questions about things like which products had low conversion last month without you hunting through reports. None of it is a reason to pick Shopify on its own, but for existing merchants it's a meaningful productivity boost included at no extra cost.

The known tradeoffs persist. Transaction fees on top of the monthly plan if you don't use Shopify Payments, app costs that stack quickly, and theme customization that often needs a Liquid developer. Checkout conversion and hosting reliability remain industry-leading, which is why most serious brands stick with it despite the cost. For anyone choosing a commerce stack today, it's the safest default; alternatives make sense only with specific requirements Shopify can't meet.