Headless commerce: when it's worth it (and when it's a tax)
Headless is the right answer for some teams and a costly mistake for others. A simple test for figuring out which side you're on.
Headless commerce splits the storefront from the commerce engine: Shopify or BigCommerce on the back, Next.js or Astro on the front. The benefits are real — performance, design freedom, multi-channel publishing — but so are the costs.
You should go headless when at least two of the following are true: you have an in-house front-end team, you sell across multiple surfaces (web, app, kiosks), your brand demands UX that your platform's themes cannot deliver, or you're already absorbing engineering costs that headless would amortize.
If none of those apply, a well-built theme on the platform's native storefront will outperform a half-maintained headless build every time. The fastest checkout in the world doesn't matter if no one is keeping the site current.