Why we stopped recommending fully custom checkouts

Custom checkouts cost more than the conversion lift returns. Here’s our updated stance.

Building a fully custom checkout used to be the holy grail of Shopify Plus. We don’t recommend it anymore. Here’s why our stance changed.

What changed

Shopify’s native checkout has gotten genuinely faster and more customizable. Checkout Extensibility covers most needs. Custom checkouts are now harder to maintain than they’re worth for the marginal CR gain.

The math

Custom checkout build: $200K–$600K. Ongoing maintenance: 2–3 engineering hours/week. Average CR lift over native checkout in our tests: ~1–3%. The math doesn’t close for most stores.

Use the platform you’re paying for.