Most Shopify stores don’t need to go headless. Most agencies will tell you otherwise — partly because headless is more work to build, and partly because it’s a more interesting story to tell.
Here’s our honest decision frame.
Go headless if: your brand experience needs editorial flexibility Liquid can’t support, your performance requirements need edge rendering Liquid can’t hit, your multi-region complexity needs routing Liquid can’t do cleanly, or your content team genuinely will benefit from a headless CMS.
Don’t go headless if: you have a small team that won’t maintain it, your performance issues are caused by 18 apps you haven’t rationalized, or your motivation is ‘we want to be on the modern stack’ without a specific outcome in mind.
When we recommend headless, we typically recommend Hydrogen on Oxygen for the closest-to-Shopify-native experience, or Next.js on Vercel for teams that already work in Next. Sanity for content. Algolia for search. Klaviyo for email. The stack is mature now.
The honest cost: 2–4× the build cost of a Liquid theme, and roughly 1.5× the ongoing maintenance cost. The honest payoff (when the use case is right): 30–50% faster page loads, 15–30% conversion lifts, and a content workflow your editorial team will actually use.
Written by the brainiac/studio team. We publish original work from the engineers, designers, and marketers who do the work — never outsourced to a content shop.