Headless commerce on Shopify

Headless commerce with Shopify as your backend

Headless architecture separates the customer-facing frontend from the commerce engine: you keep Shopify for catalog, cart, checkout and payments, and build the storefront as a custom application with Hydrogen, Next.js or another framework on the Storefront API. It unlocks experiences a Liquid theme cannot, and it adds real cost and maintenance. Starcodia builds headless properly, and tells you honestly when you do not need it.

When headless makes sense

  • You need a frontend experience a Liquid theme genuinely cannot deliver.
  • You are building mobile apps or multiple frontends that share one commerce backend.
  • You run content-heavy experiences from a headless CMS that must merge with commerce.
  • You have the engineering capacity to own and maintain a custom application long term.

When it does not (and we will say so)

Most brands that ask for headless want speed and design freedom, and those are almost always achievable with a well-built, performance-tuned Liquid theme, at a fraction of the cost and without owning a frontend application. Going headless for those reasons trades a platform-maintained storefront for ongoing hosting, framework upgrades and developer dependency. We recommend against headless more often than for it, and would rather improve your theme and Core Web Vitals than sell you complexity you will maintain for years.

Headless approaches we build

Hydrogen. Shopify's React framework, purpose-built for the Storefront API with native commerce components and Oxygen hosting.

Next.js. A flexible React framework for content-rich or heavily integrated applications.

Custom builds. Any frontend stack connected through the Storefront API, handing off to Shopify checkout.

In every case checkout stays on Shopify, kept high-converting and compliant, and customizable with checkout extensions on Shopify Plus.

Headless work

The furniture headless commerce case study shows a brand that had a genuine case for a custom frontend, and what it took to build and maintain. Further examples are in the work hub.

Discuss headless

Tell us the experience you are trying to build and whether you have engineering to maintain it. We will give you a straight answer on whether headless, or a better theme, is the right route.

Discuss headless commerce

Frequently Asked Questions

Headless separates the frontend that customers see from Shopify's commerce backend. Instead of a Liquid theme, the storefront is a custom application (Hydrogen, Next.js or similar) that pulls products, cart and checkout from Shopify's Storefront API. Shopify still handles catalog, cart, checkout and payments; only the presentation layer is custom.
Headless is worth it when a Liquid theme genuinely cannot deliver the experience, for content-heavy sites, shared backends across web and app, or highly custom UX. It is not worth it if the goal is just speed or design flexibility, which a well-built theme usually achieves at a fraction of the cost and complexity. We recommend against headless more often than for it.
Yes, and it should. Shopify's checkout is high-converting, PCI-compliant and maintained for you, so a headless build hands off to Shopify checkout rather than rebuilding it. On Shopify Plus you can still customize it with checkout extensions.
A headless storefront is a custom application, so you own hosting, framework upgrades, and the maintenance that a Liquid theme would otherwise get from the platform. That ongoing cost is the main reason headless should be a deliberate decision, not a default.