10 Things to Consider Before Choosing Your E-commerce Tech Stack - SHOPLAB Blog

Choosing your e-commerce tech stack is one of the most consequential decisions you’ll make as a business leader. Get it right, and you’ve built a foundation for years of growth. Get it wrong, and you’re looking at painful migrations, technical debt, and missed opportunities.

After helping dozens of Nordic e-commerce brands navigate this decision, here are the 10 critical factors you need to evaluate.

1. Total Cost of Ownership, Not Just License Fees

Everyone focuses on the monthly subscription cost. Smart operators look at TCO:

Implementation costs: How long to go live? Who’s paying the consultants?
Integration costs: How many systems need connecting? What’s the API situation?
Operational costs: How many FTEs to run the thing?
Opportunity costs: What can’t you do while you’re managing infrastructure?

A “cheap” platform that requires 2 FTEs to maintain costs more than an “expensive” one that runs itself.

2. Integration Architecture

Here’s the dirty secret of e-commerce: you’re not buying a platform, you’re buying an integration hub.

Your e-commerce system needs to talk to:

ERP (Fortnox, Visma, SAP)
Shipping (PostNord, DHL, Bring)
Payment (Klarna, Swish, Adyen)
Marketing (Klaviyo, Mailchimp)
Marketplaces (Amazon, CDON, Zalando)

Ask these questions:

Are integrations pre-built or custom development?
What’s the API quality and documentation like?
How do you handle sync failures and data conflicts?
Is there rate limiting that will bite you at scale?

3. Scalability (Real Scalability, Not Marketing Slides)

“Scalable” is meaningless until you define the parameters:

What happens during Black Friday traffic spikes?
How does the system handle 100K SKUs? 1M SKUs?
What’s the order processing capacity per minute?
How do costs scale with volume?

Get concrete numbers. Ask for reference customers at your target scale. Run load tests if they’ll let you.

4. Nordic Market Compatibility

If you’re selling in the Nordics, certain things are non-negotiable:

Payment methods:

Klarna (invoice, installments, checkout)
Swish (essential for Swedish consumers)
MobilePay (Denmark)
Vipps (Norway)

Shipping:

PostNord service points
Budbee/Instabox same-day
Cross-border Nordic shipping

Compliance:

Swedish bookkeeping format (SIE)
GDPR (obviously)
Norwegian/Finnish VAT handling

If your platform doesn’t natively support these, you’re in for a world of custom development.

5. Composable vs. Monolithic

The composable commerce movement is real, but it’s not for everyone.

Go composable if:

You have strong technical capabilities in-house
You need best-of-breed in multiple categories
You’re at scale where optimization matters
You value flexibility over simplicity

Go monolithic if:

Speed to market is critical
Technical resources are limited
You need predictable costs and timelines
You’re still figuring out product-market fit

There’s no shame in choosing a monolith. Some of the most successful brands run on Shopify.

6. Vendor Lock-in and Exit Strategy

Before you sign, ask: “How do I leave?”

Can you export all your data in standard formats?
Who owns your customer data, order history, product content?
What happens to integrations if you migrate?
Are there contractual exit fees or notice periods?

The best platforms make it easy to leave. They’re confident you’ll stay because you want to, not because you’re trapped.

7. Build vs. Buy Philosophy

Every e-commerce team faces the eternal question: build custom or buy off-the-shelf?

Build custom when:

It’s genuinely your competitive advantage
No solution exists that fits your model
You have the team to maintain it forever
The ROI math makes sense

Buy when:

It’s commodity functionality (checkout, payments, shipping)
Someone else has solved it better
Your time is better spent on differentiation
You want to focus on business, not infrastructure

Most teams overestimate their uniqueness. 95% of e-commerce is solved problems.

8. Team Capabilities and Hiring

The best platform is the one your team can actually use.

Consider:

What skills does your current team have?
What’s the local talent pool for this technology?
Is training available and affordable?
How dependent are you on specific vendors or consultants?

Choosing a niche platform might seem smart until your only expert leaves and you can’t hire a replacement.

9. Time to Value

How fast can you go live and start learning?

Some questions to ask:

What’s the typical implementation timeline?
What’s the minimum viable configuration?
Can you launch simple and add complexity later?
What does the onboarding process look like?

Velocity matters. A platform that takes 18 months to implement better be dramatically better than one that takes 3.

10. The Vendor Relationship

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: who are you getting into bed with?

Evaluate the vendor, not just the product:

What’s their financial stability and funding situation?
What’s their product roadmap and vision?
How do they handle support and escalations?
What’s the community and ecosystem like?
Do their values align with yours?

You’re entering a multi-year relationship. Make sure you like who you’re partnering with.

The Bottom Line

There’s no perfect platform. There’s only the right platform for your specific context, constraints, and ambitions.

Take the time to evaluate properly. Talk to reference customers. Run pilots. Don’t get seduced by demos.

And remember: the platform is just the foundation. What you build on top of it is what actually matters.

Need help evaluating your e-commerce tech stack? SHOPLAB offers free architecture consultations for Nordic brands. Request a call.