Nostedt Sites
vs Shopify.

Are you a store, or a business that sells a few things?

This is the only question that matters and most people answer it wrong, in the expensive direction. Running a Shopify store when you are really a service business with a handful of products means paying for and maintaining a machine built for a job you are not doing.

The test we use: if you stopped selling online tomorrow, would the business survive? If yes, you are a service business with a catalogue, and the site should be built to get you contacted, with the products as a supporting act. If no, you are a store, and you want Shopify.

We have made this call in the client's favour more than once. N3 Sales had a Squarespace store attached to an auto shop, and the right move was deleting it, because nobody buys a remote start install in a cart. Their revenue is appointments.

Reasons to pick Shopify

• Real inventory. Stock counts, variants, bundles, low-stock behaviour.
• Complicated shipping or tax. Multiple zones, weight-based rates, cross-border. This is genuinely hard and Shopify has solved it.
• Subscriptions or memberships.
• You want the app ecosystem. Reviews, loyalty, email, analytics, all one click away.
• Scale. If you are doing real volume, the platform fee is noise against what it saves you.

Reasons to pick us

• Your products are a small part of the business. A trades company selling a few parts does not need a commerce platform.
• You want to be found, not browsed. Most local businesses need enquiries, not sessions.
• You do not want to run it. A Shopify store is a job. Someone has to mind it.
• You want the content to be good. Shopify treats pages as an afterthought to products; for a service business it is the reverse.
• One bill. No theme purchase, no six apps at nineteen dollars a month each.