“Headless” means building your own storefront and running Shopify behind it for products, carts and checkout. It gives you complete control. It also gives you more to build and maintain.
What a theme gives you
Online Store 2.0 themes are built from sections your team can edit, reorder and reuse without a developer. Most Shopify apps are designed to work with them. A well-built custom theme can be very fast, and it’s the quickest and most affordable way to launch.
What headless gives you
With Shopify’s Hydrogen framework hosted on Oxygen, or a framework such as Next.js, every part of the front end is yours. You can build rich, story-led content, combine several brands or content sources, and create interactions a theme can’t.
The trade-offs are real:
- Higher build cost and longer timelines.
- Apps that add features to themes often won’t work, so some need rebuilding.
- Most changes need a developer, so running costs are higher.
Four questions to ask
- Can a custom theme do 90% of what we need? If so, start there.
- Does our content go beyond products, collections and a blog?
- Do we have budget for ongoing development, not just the build?
- Is our current site slow because of the theme, or because of apps and images?
The middle ground
Many brands get what they want from a custom theme with bespoke sections, plus Shopify Functions and checkout extensions for custom discounts and checkout features. It also leaves a clear path to headless later if you need it.