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Shopify vs Astro
This is not a choice between two platforms. It is a decision about where the line goes between the site that explains the product and the store that sells it, and the answer for a working store is almost never to move the store.
- Price
- From $5,000
- Timeline
- Typically 4–6 weeks
- Included
- 30 days of hypercare
- Code
- In your name
Output
Migration trace
Sample run
northwind.example
- 01 Read the Webflow site
- 02 Map pages, CMS fields and redirects
- 03 Draft an Astro pull request
Pull request
The NewBase Stack
Astro, Sanity and Cloudflare. Sample only. This page does not open a pull request.
Site check
Not live
Not run on the sample
This trace is a sample of a migration. The site check has not run. Paste a Webflow URL and only this pane can go live.
- Platform
- Checked address
- Sitemap entries
- Mobile performance
Reasons
Move the marketing site to Astro, The NewBase Stack, when
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Campaign pages are theme templates only a developer can safely touch.
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Marketing is waiting on a deploy to publish a landing page.
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The app scripts are slowing every page, including the ones with no products.
Differences
Four things that change when the site becomes a codebase.
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Checkout
The commerce backend and checkout do not move
This is the whole design of the project rather than a caveat in it. Product data, cart state and storefront interactions can surface through the Astro front end. PCI scope, fraud, tax and the payment integrations are Shopify doing work nobody should volunteer to redo.
Shopify stays the system of record for products, inventory and commerce, Shopify Checkout stays responsible for completing the sale, and the store keeps selling throughout. A migration that touches the money is a different and much worse project.
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Publishing
Marketing gets a publishing system separate from the store
A well-built theme gives marketing real control. The constraint shows up when campaign content starts needing structures the theme was never designed to provide.
With Astro and a CMS, marketing content gets its own model and its own publishing workflow, without changing the storefront theme or anything responsible for commerce.
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App weight
The pages that sell nothing stop paying for the store
Commerce themes accumulate storefront scripts for reviews, loyalty, chat and recommendations, and some of that code ends up loading on pages where the feature contributes very little.
Separating the marketing front end lets those pages ship only what they need, while commerce code stays on the surfaces that actually use it.
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Product data
Product data is read rather than copied
Shopify remains the source for prices, stock and variants. Cached or built pages can become stale, so freshness rules and checkout validation need an explicit plan.
How stale a price may be before somebody is upset becomes an explicit caching decision, made by the merchant rather than discovered by a customer.
Compare
Capability by capability.
| What is being compared | Shopify | Astro |
|---|---|---|
| Design control | Shopify A Liquid theme, and the sections it defines | Astro Components, styled in code |
| Content model | Shopify Products, collections, pages, metafields | Astro Product data from Shopify, page content from a CMS |
| Where the cart lives | Shopify Shopify, end to end | Astro Shopify, still, reached through the Storefront API The most important row on this page. Whatever else moves, the cart and the checkout should not: PCI scope, fraud, tax and the payment integrations are Shopify doing work nobody should volunteer to redo. |
| Who can edit a landing page | Shopify Whoever can safely edit the theme | Astro Marketing, in a CMS, without touching the store |
| Where campaign pages go | Shopify Theme templates, or an app that injects them | Astro Routes in the codebase, or entries in the CMS |
| Who maintains it | Shopify Shopify, plus whatever the app list is doing | Astro Your team owns the front end; Shopify still owns commerce |
Questions
Shopify and Astro, answered.
Should I move my store off Shopify?
Almost certainly not. Shopify is doing genuinely hard work around payments, tax, fraud and inventory, and rebuilding that to save on a theme turns a marketing problem into a payments problem. What is worth moving is the marketing site in front of it.
Will my checkout still work?
Yes, because it is still Shopify's checkout. The new front end hands off to it, which is why the store keeps selling while the project runs and why nothing about compliance or payment integrations changes.
What happens to my Shopify apps?
Each becomes a decision. Reviews, bundles, upsells and loyalty inject script into the theme, and on a new front end each is a deliberate integration, replaced, or dropped. Some exist only as theme extensions, which means the feature is replaced rather than moved, and that list is worth having before anybody quotes.
Do my product URLs change?
No. The /products/ and /collections/ prefixes are load bearing for search and they keep working. What typically changes is /pages/about becoming /about, which is a redirect rather than a loss.
How long does it take?
Four to six weeks, then 30 days of post-launch checks. Most of the first week goes into deciding the boundary, which is the part that determines everything after it: draw it badly and you have either rebuilt a checkout for no reason or split a product page across two systems that disagree about the price.
Let me plan your next step.
I can scope a migration. Send a brief and I will reply by email with next steps.