Build an e-commerce storewith AI.

Stripe Checkout (hosted). The right default. Stripe hosts the checkout page, handles extra card verification, accepts every payment method automatically (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, Afterpay, Link), and keeps up with compliance for you. It takes very little code: a small piece to start the checkout and another to hear back when the payment completes. Done.

Use Stripe Checkout if: your store has fewer than 100 products, you're not doing unusual upsells or one-click add-ons after purchase, and your customers won't blink at being sent to a stripe.com page to pay. That's 90% of stores.

Custom cart with Stripe Elements (built into your page). Right when you need full control over checkout: multi-step flows, upsells after purchase, cart discounts that update live, or you need to keep customers on your domain the whole way for conversion tracking.

You're trading 1–2 weeks of build time for the control. WebTwizz can set up either; tell the AI "use Stripe Checkout" or "use Elements with a custom cart" upfront.

Avoid: building your own card-entry forms. Card security rules are a swamp, and Stripe Elements or Checkout both keep you out of it.

Shopify Basic is $39/mo + 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. Plus apps. The average serious Shopify store spends $200–400/mo before they realize it: Klaviyo for email, Judge.me for reviews, Subbly or Recharge for subscriptions, a theme upgrade, a custom-checkout app. By the time you're at scale, you're $500–1,000/mo in SaaS to run the store.

WebTwizz + Stripe is $25/mo (WebTwizz Standard) + Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢. That's it. Email goes through Resend ($20/mo). Reviews are a table in your Supabase. Subscriptions are Stripe Billing.

When Shopify still wins: if you want every payment method, fraud detection, abandoned-cart recovery, multi-currency, dozens of pre-built apps with no engineering effort, and your store is genuinely 100+ SKUs with complex variants. Shopify is the right tool for the job.

When WebTwizz wins: narrower stores (digital goods, subscription boxes, single-product, niche merch) where Shopify's plan and app fees add up faster than the apps save you. You also own the storefront, change anything, no theme limits, no app conflicts. Move off WebTwizz any time; the real code is yours.