Over the past few years I’ve been working with e-commerce businesses through my small agency, Zenpexal. Most of the projects involve building or optimizing online stores using platforms like Shopify or custom stacks.

While Shopify has made it incredibly easy for people to start online stores, working with it as a developer sometimes reveals a few recurring limitations.

Some patterns I’ve noticed:

• Heavy reliance on third-party apps for even basic functionality • Performance issues when stores scale and accumulate many apps • Limited flexibility for developers who want deeper control over infrastructure • Increasing long-term costs for store owners

None of these problems are unique to Shopify. They exist in many SaaS platforms where convenience and abstraction come at the cost of flexibility.

Lately I’ve been thinking about a long-term idea: building a developer-first commerce infrastructure that focuses on modular architecture and performance.

Not necessarily a direct Shopify replacement, but something different in philosophy.

Some principles I’ve been exploring:

• Modular architecture – stores composed of independent services instead of a monolithic platform • Developer-first tooling – strong APIs, SDKs, and extensibility • High-performance storefronts – optimized rendering and minimal bloat • Reduced reliance on app marketplaces by integrating common features directly into the core system

Right now this is still just an early exploration. My current work is still mostly agency projects, but those projects keep revealing the same technical friction points.

So I’m curious about the perspective of people here.

For developers who have worked with e-commerce platforms:

• What are the biggest technical limitations you encounter? • What would an ideal commerce platform look like from a developer’s perspective? • Would a modular commerce infrastructure make sense compared to traditional SaaS platforms?

I’d love to hear thoughts from developers who have worked with Shopify, WooCommerce, headless commerce setups, or custom stacks.