Practical notes on Shopify themes, apps and Shopify Plus from EC Web, drawn from real projects and the apps we run.
Latest/B2B
Shopify B2B is native on every plan now, and it's genuinely good, but native solves the plumbing, not the buyer experience. What native B2B handles, what it pointedly doesn't, and how to choose between native, a purpose-built theme, and a full custom wholesale build.
/8 min read
/Plus
Shopify Plus vs standard Shopify and Advanced, side by side: checkout, B2B, storefronts, API limits, support and the platform fee (£344 vs £1,800 a month). How to tell if you need Plus.
8 min read
/Hiring
The gap between someone who can install a theme and someone who can engineer your store is wide, expensive, and hard to see from a portfolio. How to vet a Shopify developer for how they think, not how they present.
6 min read
/Plus
Shopify Plus pricing for UK merchants, all in: the platform fee from £1,800 a month, the payment fees people underestimate, and the build as a separate line. Plus how the cost compares to Advanced and whether the price is negotiable.
9 min read
/Plus
Plus is a real step up in capability and a real step up in cost. The signals we look for before recommending a merchant makes the jump, and the ones that mean you should stay put and spend the money on the store itself.
7 min read
/Built it
We built the thing our last post described: an MCP server that lets Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity answer real questions about your store, across 20-odd data sources, read-only and encrypted.
6 min read
/Engineering
Discounts, shipping rules, and cart logic can live in a Function, an app, or both. A practical decision framework, with the trade-offs we weigh on real builds.
7 min read
/AI & MCP
Letting Claude or ChatGPT answer questions about your store is genuinely useful, and genuinely risky if you wire it up wrong. The MCP pattern we use to keep it read-only and audited.
6 min read