Nobody reads your website. They scan it for three things, then decide.

Pick this when

• You ship, or customers pick up, something with a price and a stock count.

• You want subscriptions, local pickup or a wholesale channel on the same catalog.

• Orders need to land in QuickBooks and inventory without anyone retyping them.

• Your team will add products and run promotions themselves, without calling us.

Skip it when

The site is mostly a brochure with a contact form. Shopify’s monthly fee buys nothing there.

Pick this when

• Five to twelve pages: who you are, what you do, where, and how to reach you.

• Someone on your team will change hours, prices and photos without a developer.

• Bookings, forms and payments are simple enough to run on a built-in block.

• You would rather pay the builder’s monthly fee than own a hosting account.

Skip it when

The moment you need custom logic, a customer login, or real speed on a phone. We have moved a lot of sites off these for exactly that.

Pick this when

• Booking with real constraints: crews, zones, deposits, per-location stock.

• A customer portal, a login, or pricing that depends on who is asking.

• Load time on a weak phone signal is a conversion feature and the template cannot get there.

• You want the code, the domain and the hosting account in your own name.

Skip it when

You are not sure people will buy the thing yet. Prove it on a template first; the custom build can wait a year.