Nobody sets out to run fifteen systems. You buy a shop, then an app for the thing it does not do, then another.
Two years later somebody spends a day a week keeping them agreeing with each other, and that person is usually your best one.
What it actually costs
1
day a week, spent making systems agree with each other.
This is the number nobody puts in the business case, because it does not arrive as an invoice. It arrives as your operations person not doing operations.
Where it goes wrong
Four failures that are structural, not fixable.
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The numbers disagree
Two stock counts syncing overnight are wrong by mid-morning. You do not solve this with a better sync; you solve it by having one count.
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The customer is five people
One record per system means loyalty points that vanish, win-back emails to people who just bought, and a phone call where nobody can see the order.
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Every new capability is a project
Opening a shop, adding a brand, starting wholesale, launching an app — each one becomes an integration rather than a setting.
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Nobody owns the failure
When an order goes missing between two systems, each vendor is confident it is the other one. You are the integration layer, and you are not being paid for it.
The honest other side
When fifteen tools is the right answer.
Buy the suite when
- You sell in more than one way
- Stock accuracy costs you money
- You are adding channels, not just volume
- Somebody is reconciling by hand today
Buy best-of-breed when
- One capability is genuinely your edge
- You have engineers to integrate
- You are already deep in a stack that works
- Your requirement is unusual enough to be niche
Either way
- Ask what the integration costs
- Ask who owns it when it breaks
- Ask what happens when you want to leave
- We will tell you if you should not move
"The integration cost is the part nobody quotes you for. It is paid every month, in reconciliation, by the person you can least afford to have doing it." The argument in one line
We are not neutral about this. We also sell every product separately to merchants who stay on Shopify, which is the version of this argument we are willing to lose.
Next step
See what one system looks like against your own data.
We will load a sample of your catalogue and show you the same question answered once instead of three times — and tell you honestly whether the move is worth it yet.
- If you should not move
- We will say so
- If one product is enough
- Buy one
- If your stack works
- Keep it