Sign in Subscribe

Insights

Sharing our knowledge, experience and insights

Search the blog

The Plug-and-Play Myth: What Shopify's App Store Doesn't Tell You

The Plug-and-Play Myth: What Shopify's App Store Doesn't Tell You

"Can't we just use a plugin?" Plug-and-play is real, but only for businesses shaped like the plug. Why ERP-connected businesses end up paying bespoke prices for templated constraints, and why the fulfilment integration everyone fears is the easy part.

Categories

200k Mid Market Ecommerce
Umbraco
Shopify
Plugin

Continue Reading

More articles

How We Price Projects We Can't Fully Scope Yet

How do you price a project you can't fully scope until discovery is done? Honestly: in bands that double, narrowed by discovery, then committed as a watermark figure with a visible contingency ceiling. Here's the model we use, including the bit we get wrong.

You're Not Buying a Website. You're Buying Operational Improvement

A client once briefed three agencies to build the same Christmas shop. We cost double, and our site made ten times the revenue. The lesson: nobody's really buying a website. They're buying operational improvement, and that changes how you price, pitch and choose.

AI agents can't buy what they can't read

AI agents read your site through its accessibility tree, the same structure screen readers use. That makes WCAG work commercially interesting for the first time. Here's what agents read, what the research does and doesn't prove, and why the AI framing is a trap worth avoiding.

Boring Technology Wins: Architecture for Mid-Market E-Commerce

Mid-market e-commerce architecture isn't complicated: Umbraco at the centre, the ERP as the source of truth, hybrid sync as the default. The complexity hides in the integrations, and the tell is always the same word: "just". Boring technology wins, and here's why.

Assume your software will outlive its end-of-life

We still run an Umbraco v4 site, on purpose. End-of-life is a date on the vendor's calendar, not a fact about your customer's business. Why the version you ship is the one worth designing for, and how to tell a managed risk from plain neglect.

Red Flags in E-Commerce Projects (From Both Sides of the Table)

"We just need a simple checkout." "The ERP integration should be straightforward." Four phrases that should make everyone in an e-commerce project slow down, plus the story of a site that made it to QA and never launched. Red flags, from both sides of the table.

"It Depends Who's Asking": Why Complex Pricing Breaks Most E-Commerce Platforms

How much is this product? €12.99. Or €11.50. Or €9.80, depending who's asking. Complex pricing is how B2B works, and it's one of the most reliable reasons businesses outgrow templated platforms. Featuring the silicone tubing with a price matrix from a sci-fi film.

What I Took Away From Codegarden 2026

There was a lot on AI at Codegarden 2026. That was not really surprising given how much it is changing the industry, and how much of an impact it is already having globally. All at a rapid pace. But what I liked was that most of the talks were not

Three Discovery Questions That Reveal What Your E-Commerce Project Will Really Cost

Discovery is where mid-market e-commerce projects are won or lost. Three questions reliably surface the real complexity: what happens when an order comes in, where does pricing live, and what's painful today. Here's how to use them, from both sides of the table.