My Journey Through 3 Ecommerce Platforms: Why I Migrated Everything to Shopify

Last year, I found myself in what felt like a developer's nightmare scenario. I had a client running their entire European operation on PrestaShop, and their hosting bills were eating into their profits faster than their Black Friday sales could compensate.

The irony? They'd chosen PrestaShop specifically to "save money" on platform fees. What they ended up with was a monthly hosting bill that made Shopify's transaction fees look like pocket change, plus the constant stress of managing server performance during traffic spikes.

After working with dozens of ecommerce projects over the years—from Webflow experiments to headless architectures—I've learned that the real cost of an ecommerce platform isn't in the monthly subscription. It's in the hosting requirements, maintenance overhead, and the opportunity cost of dealing with technical issues instead of growing your business.

In this playbook, you'll discover:

• Why hosting requirements often determine platform success more than features

• The real costs hidden behind "self-hosted" solutions

• My systematic approach to evaluating platform infrastructure needs

• How I reduced client hosting costs by 70% with strategic platform migration

• When PrestaShop hosting makes sense (and when it absolutely doesn't)

If you're choosing between platforms or reconsidering your current setup, this breakdown will save you months of headaches and potentially thousands in hosting costs.

Walk into any ecommerce discussion, and you'll hear the same tired debate: "Shopify is expensive but easy, PrestaShop is free but complex." What nobody talks about? The hosting reality that makes or breaks your business.

Here's what the industry typically tells you about platform hosting:

• Self-hosted means more control: You own your data, customize everything, and aren't locked into a platform

• Hosted solutions are more expensive: You pay monthly fees instead of owning your infrastructure

• PrestaShop is "free": No platform fees means lower total cost of ownership

• Scalability depends on your hosting budget: More traffic means bigger servers and higher costs

• Performance is all about server specs: Better hardware equals faster load times

This conventional wisdom exists because most platform comparisons are written by people who've never actually managed a high-traffic ecommerce site through a holiday season. They focus on features and forget that your platform choice fundamentally determines your infrastructure needs.

The reality? These assumptions miss the hidden costs that can destroy your margins. When your PrestaShop site goes down during a flash sale because your hosting can't handle the traffic spike, that "free" platform suddenly costs you thousands in lost revenue. Meanwhile, Shopify handles the same traffic spike without breaking a sweat—because they've built their entire infrastructure around ecommerce traffic patterns.

The conventional wisdom treats hosting as a separate decision from platform choice. But after migrating dozens of stores across different platforms, I've learned they're inseparable. Your platform doesn't just determine your features—it determines your entire operational overhead.

Let me tell you about the project that changed everything I thought I knew about ecommerce hosting. A European fashion retailer came to me running a heavily customized PrestaShop setup. On paper, everything looked great—they were saving money on platform fees and had total control over their codebase.

The reality was different. Their hosting costs were spiraling out of control, especially during peak seasons. They were paying for dedicated servers, CDN services, security monitoring, and backup solutions—all separately. Every traffic spike meant emergency server upgrades. Every security update required downtime. Every performance optimization was a custom development project.

But here's what really opened my eyes: they weren't just paying for hosting. They were paying for the expertise to manage it. Their "free" PrestaShop installation required a full-time developer just to keep it running smoothly. Between hosting costs, development time, and infrastructure management, they were spending more per month than a Shopify Plus subscription would have cost.

The breaking point came during their Black Friday campaign. Despite upgrading their servers and optimizing everything they could think of, their site became sluggish under traffic. Cart abandonment spiked. Sales dropped. Meanwhile, I watched other clients on Shopify handle similar traffic loads without any infrastructure concerns.

That's when I started questioning everything. Was the "flexibility" of self-hosted platforms worth the operational overhead? Was the apparent cost savings real when you factored in the hidden expenses? Most importantly, were we optimizing for the wrong metrics entirely?

This experience forced me to develop a different framework for platform evaluation—one that looked beyond monthly fees to total cost of ownership, beyond features to operational reality, and beyond theoretical scalability to real-world performance under pressure.

After that eye-opening experience, I developed a systematic approach to platform hosting evaluation that I now use with every client. Instead of starting with features or pricing, I start with infrastructure requirements and work backwards.

Step 1: Traffic Reality Check

Most businesses overestimate their hosting needs and underestimate their traffic patterns. I analyze actual traffic data, not projections. For most small to medium ecommerce stores, the "scalability" argument for complex hosting setups is completely unnecessary. Your site doesn't need to handle Amazon-level traffic—it needs to handle YOUR traffic reliably.

Step 2: Hidden Cost Audit

I map out every single cost associated with platform hosting:

• Server costs (including necessary redundancy)

• CDN and performance optimization services

• Security monitoring and backup solutions

• SSL certificates and compliance requirements

• Developer time for maintenance and updates

• Emergency support when things break

Step 3: Operational Overhead Assessment

The question isn't "Can you manage your own hosting?" It's "Should you be spending time managing hosting instead of growing your business?" I calculate the opportunity cost of infrastructure management. Every hour spent optimizing server performance is an hour not spent on marketing, product development, or customer service.

Step 4: Performance Under Pressure Testing

This is where most platform evaluations fail. I don't just test normal traffic loads—I simulate peak traffic scenarios. Black Friday traffic, viral social media posts, flash sales. How does your hosting handle sudden spikes? Can you scale quickly without downtime? What happens when something breaks at 2 AM on a weekend?

The Migration Strategy

For the fashion retailer, I proposed a gradual migration to Shopify Plus. We started by calculating their true hosting costs (server, CDN, security, development time) and comparing it to Shopify's all-inclusive pricing. The numbers were shocking—they were spending 70% more on their "free" platform than Shopify Plus would cost.

The migration itself was strategic. We moved their highest-traffic product categories first, keeping their custom features on PrestaShop temporarily. This allowed us to prove performance improvements and cost savings before committing fully.

The results were immediate and measurable. Within three months of completing the migration:

Cost Reduction: Monthly infrastructure costs dropped from €2,400 to €800 (including Shopify Plus fees). That's a 70% reduction in platform-related expenses, freeing up budget for marketing and inventory.

Performance Improvement: Page load times improved by 40% without any additional optimization. Shopify's CDN and infrastructure handled traffic spikes that previously caused performance issues.

Operational Efficiency: Their developer could focus on custom features and integrations instead of server maintenance. Development velocity increased significantly once infrastructure concerns were eliminated.

Stress-Free Scaling: During their next Black Friday campaign, the site handled 3x normal traffic without any manual intervention or emergency upgrades. No 2 AM panic calls, no revenue loss from downtime.

But the most important result wasn't financial—it was strategic. The business could focus on growth instead of infrastructure. Their team's energy shifted from fighting technical fires to building customer experiences. That's when real growth happens.

This experience taught me five critical lessons that apply to every platform hosting decision:

• "Free" platforms aren't free: Hidden hosting costs, security requirements, and maintenance overhead often exceed hosted platform fees

• Control isn't always valuable: Infrastructure control only matters if you can manage it better than specialized platform providers

• Scalability is about more than servers: True scalability includes operational processes, not just technical capacity

• Performance depends on the entire stack: Platform-optimized infrastructure often outperforms generic hosting solutions

• Opportunity cost matters most: The best hosting solution is the one that lets you focus on your business, not your servers

What I'd do differently: I should have conducted the total cost analysis earlier in the evaluation process. Too many businesses make platform decisions based on monthly fees without calculating the true infrastructure investment required.

Common pitfalls to avoid: Don't underestimate the complexity of ecommerce hosting requirements. Don't assume you can handle traffic spikes with basic shared hosting. Don't forget to factor in security, compliance, and backup requirements when calculating costs.

This approach works best for businesses prioritizing growth over infrastructure control. If you're a technology company that needs complete customization control, self-hosted solutions might still make sense. But for most ecommerce businesses, the operational overhead isn't worth the theoretical benefits.