Before committing to a build
Discovery
Fixed price, credited backOne to two weeks
- We read the other system's API and test it
- Data flows, failure modes and conflict rules
- A written plan and a real estimate
- Cost is credited against the build
Hire a Shopify Full-Stack Developer
For the work that is only partly Shopify. Integrations with the systems you already run, custom applications around the store, and the sync layer that keeps them honest.
- Shopify plus the system on the other side
- APIs, queues and reconciliation
- You own the code from day one
Most "Shopify integration" projects are not Shopify projects. Shopify's APIs are well documented and predictable; the ERP, the 3PL or the twelve-year-old internal tool on the other side is neither. Full-stack here means someone who can work both ends and, more importantly, the seam between them.
When full-stack is the right hire
The situation, and whether this is the answer
A theme developer and a full-stack developer solve different problems. These are the cases where the second is the one you want.
| Your situation | What it actually needs |
|---|---|
| Shopify has to talk to an ERP or accounting system | Full-stack. The hard part is the other system's API, its rate limits, and deciding which side wins when the two disagree. |
| Stock lives somewhere else and must stay accurate | Full-stack. Inventory sync is a distributed-systems problem wearing an ecommerce costume — ordering, retries and idempotency all matter. |
| You need a customer portal or internal tool alongside the store | Full-stack. A separate application authenticating against Shopify, with its own data and its own interface. |
| You are considering a headless storefront | Full-stack — but read our take first. Headless is over-recommended, and the honest answer is often a better theme. |
| Orders must reach a warehouse, and status must come back | Full-stack. Webhooks in one direction, an API in the other, and a reconciliation job for everything both miss — see scaling a Shopify app. |
| You just need the storefront to look different | **Not** full-stack. That is theme work, and hiring for the wrong discipline costs more and takes longer. |
Engagement models
Three ways integration work runs
Integration work is the hardest to fix-price honestly, because the cost is set by the system on the other side rather than by Shopify. These shapes reflect that.
A scoped integration or applicationMost common
Build
Fixed scope after discoveryFour to twelve weeks
- Built against staging on both sides
- Idempotent handlers and a reconciliation job
- Cut over with monitoring and a rollback
- Your repository, your infrastructure
It is live and must stay live
Run & maintain
Monthly retainerRolling, one month notice
- API version upgrades, twice a year
- Someone who answers when the sync fails
- Reconciliation reviewed, not assumed
- Best for integrations carrying real revenue
We will not fix-price an integration before seeing the other system's documentation. Anyone who does is pricing a guess and will come back to renegotiate it.
What full-stack work looks like here
The pattern is nearly always the same: Shopify holds commerce, another system holds truth about something else, and the value is in the layer between them being reliable.
What hiring us includes
The things that should be standard and usually are not
Every point below is something we have been asked to promise by a client who had been burned by an agency that did not.
- Your repository, from day oneCode lands in your GitHub, not ours. There is no handover event because there is nothing to hand over.
- Commits you can readSmall, described, reviewable. Not one 4,000-line commit at the end of the month.
- Comments that explain whyOur code explains decisions, not syntax. Whoever inherits it — us or your next developer — can tell what we were thinking.
- Direct access to the engineerYou talk to the person writing the code. No account manager relaying technical questions in both directions.
- Overlap hours you can rely onAsync-first with scheduled overlap for US, UK and European time zones. Agreed before we start, not negotiated later.
- An honest noIf what you are asking for is the wrong solution, we will say so before you have paid for it.
- Staging before productionTheme changes on a duplicate theme, app changes on a development store. Nothing goes live untested.
- A defined exitYou can end an engagement and keep working. Nothing depends on us continuing.
How hiring works
From systems diagram to working sync
No sales process. The first conversation is technical, because it has to be — we cannot scope work we do not understand.
- Tell us what connects to whatWhich systems, which direction the data moves, and which one is the source of truth. That last question is usually the interesting one.
- A technical callWith the engineer who would build it. We will ask what the other system's API looks like and what happens today when it fails.
- A written integration planData flows, failure modes, what happens on conflict, and what we would not automate. In writing before any code.
- Build against a staging environmentA development store and a sandbox on the other side. Nothing touches production inventory until the behaviour is proven.
- Cut over with a rollbackGo live with monitoring and a defined way back. An integration without a rollback plan is a hope.
What we work in
Shopify on one side, your systems on the other
Full-stack work here is mostly the seam. Shopify's APIs are predictable; the ERP, the 3PL or the internal tool on the other side rarely is, and the value is in the layer between them staying correct when one of them misbehaves.
The seam
Webhooks, queues, idempotency, reconciliation
Shopify guarantees at-least-once webhook delivery. Any handler that charges, emails or decrements without an idempotency key will eventually do it twice — and the merchant notices before you do. Queues take the work off the five-second acknowledgement window.
- Shopify Admin GraphQL
- Shopify Storefront API
- Shopify Webhooks
- Bulk operations
- RabbitMQ
- Redis
- Idempotency
- Rate limiting
- Reconciliation
- app/webhooks/orders.paid.ts01
- app/queue/inventory-sync.worker.ts02
- app/integrations/erp/client.ts03
- app/jobs/reconcile-nightly.ts04
Application layer
Node, TypeScript, Remix, Next.js, React
Embedded Shopify apps on Remix, customer-facing applications on Next.js, typed throughout — a runtime error in a checkout flow is expensive in a way a compile error never is.
type SyncResult = { ok: true } | { ok: false; retryAfter: number };Data
Postgres, MongoDB, Prisma
Relational where the shape is stable and the joins matter, document where it evolves. Sessions always through Shopify's supported adapter rather than a custom store.
await prisma.$transaction([updateStock, recordEvent]);AI
Integrations and agents
Model calls with structured outputs, retrieval grounded in your own data, and agents scoped to a task. Sanitised on both boundaries — a model is an untrusted input in and out.
response_format: { type: 'json_schema', json_schema }Before you hire
- Almost entirely determined by the other system, not by Shopify. A modern ERP with a documented REST API and a sandbox is straightforward. A legacy system with a nightly CSV drop and no test environment is a different project at a different price. We scope after seeing the other side's documentation.
- Yes, and it is often the best arrangement — your team knows the internal system and we know Shopify. We work in your repository and through your review process.
- There is usually something: a file drop, a database replica, a vendor middleware product. It is worth being honest that these are less reliable than an API and need more reconciliation. We would tell you that before quoting, not after.
- Usually not. Integrations are backend work and have nothing to do with how the storefront renders. Headless is a separate decision with its own trade-offs, and we would rather talk you out of it than sell you one you do not need.
- By deciding the source of truth first, in writing, before any code. Most inventory sync failures are not bugs — they are two systems both believing they are authoritative, and nobody having decided which one is. The same discipline underpins revenue attribution, where the order event is the source of truth.
- They are per shop, and the GraphQL API reports your remaining budget on every response. Reading that and pacing against it beats firing requests until you get a 429, because by then you have already lost the round trip. For catalogue-wide work we use bulk operations rather than paginating a whole catalogue.
- Yes, starting with an audit. Inherited integrations usually work for the happy path and fail quietly at the edges, so the first job is finding out what happens when the other system is slow, down or returns something unexpected.
Still deciding?
Send us the store URL and what you are trying to do. If the honest answer is that you do not need to hire anyone, we will tell you that instead.
Our talk
Tell us what connects to what
Which systems need to talk to Shopify, which direction the data moves, and what happens today when the sync fails.
