When is a hosted platform right?
Where the catalogue is manageable, variants are simple, selling is direct to consumers and the flow is standard, a hosted platform is genuinely a good choice. It opens fast, payment and shipping come ready, and the first year stays cheap.
For someone starting out or testing an idea there is nothing to argue with. It is usually the cheapest way to find out whether a business works.
Where do you hit the wall?
In three places. Variants and pricing: companies selling by the square metre, making to measure or running customer-specific price lists do not fit the platform’s model. B2B: accounts, statements, credit limits and dealer pricing are either absent or forced through add-ons.
And integration. When you need to reach an ERP, production or a warehouse, you can use as much as the platform grants you; once your need falls outside what it offers, there is nothing to be done.
How should total cost be calculated?
The honest comparison runs over three years. On the platform side: monthly rent, per-transaction fees, add-on subscriptions and theme costs. On the custom side: the build, servers and a maintenance agreement.
For most mid-size businesses the two totals cross somewhere between the second and third year. Where exactly depends on volume: as sales grow, per-transaction fees overtake the rent and the platform gets expensive.
What happens when you want to leave?
The least asked and most expensive question in the decision. Leaving a platform you can usually take your product and customer data; order history, the URL structure that earned its place in search, and the integrations built on top stay behind.
With a custom build the system runs on your server and moving is your decision. That does not make platforms bad — it means the difference between renting and owning has to be paid for one day.