Online store: platform or custom development?

Two paths to selling online

When a company decides to sell online, the first question is usually which platform to use. There are two main paths:

• An e-commerce platform, such as Shopify (a subscription-based cloud service) or WooCommerce (a WordPress extension you install on your own hosting). They provide a catalog, cart, payments and ready-to-use templates.
• A custom-built store, designed around your catalog, your pricing rules and your internal systems.

Neither is better in every case. The decision depends on how standard your way of selling is and how deeply the store needs to connect with the rest of your operation.

Marketplaces are worth mentioning too: you list your products on a site that already has buyers. They're a good additional channel, but they don't replace a store of your own: the rules, the customer relationship and the sales data belong to the marketplace, not to you.

Platform vs. custom, side by side

There's also a middle ground: use a platform as the base and build custom only the pieces it doesn't cover, such as an integration with your ERP or a product configurator.

When a platform is the right fit

A platform is usually the best option when:

• You're testing whether your product sells online and want to start soon.
• Your catalog is simple: fixed-price products with a few size or color variants.
• You sell to consumers with a typical checkout flow.
• You have no internal system the store needs to sync with in depth.

In these cases, building from scratch would mean investing in something that already exists and works well. What matters is choosing apps and extensions carefully, because each one adds a recurring cost and another dependency.

It's also worth considering who will run the store day to day. A platform makes it easy for your team to upload products, change prices and publish promotions without relying on a developer, which is very valuable when the catalog changes often.

When a custom store makes sense

Custom development starts to make sense when:

• You sell to businesses (B2B) with customer-specific price lists, credit, minimum orders or internal approvals.
• Your products are configurable: sizes, materials or combinations that change the price.
• The store has to talk to your ERP to show real stock, honor prices and record orders without manual entry.
• You already use a platform and depend on many apps that conflict with each other or don't cover your process.
• The store is central to your business and you want full control over the experience and the data.

If you're also planning an app for your customers, see the differences between native, hybrid and web apps to decide how it fits with your store. And if the question is broader, we compare both approaches in custom software vs. off-the-shelf.

Payments, inventory, shipping and invoicing

Whichever path you choose, an online store in Mexico has to solve four things:

• Payments. Credit and debit cards, bank transfers and, for many businesses, cash payments at convenience stores. Each gateway charges fees and has its own payout times, so it's worth comparing them.
• Inventory. If you also sell in a physical store or on marketplaces, stock has to stay in sync so you don't sell what you no longer have.
• Shipping. Quoting with one or more carriers, creating labels and giving customers tracking without doing it by hand in each portal.
• Invoicing. Your customers will ask for a CFDI 4.0 invoice. The practical approach is to let them request it from the store and have it certified through a PAC using the order data.

On top of that come aspects that are sometimes left for last: the privacy notice and terms of sale, return and exchange policies, loading speed on phones (where many customers shop) and measuring visits and sales to know what works.

At ProWeb we review how you sell before recommending a path. If a platform covers what you need, we'll tell you; if not, we design and build the store and its integrations around your operation.