How to Choose an Ecommerce Platform in 2026: An Australian Perspective

I've been involved in enough ecommerce platform evaluations to know how they usually go. Someone in the business says "we need to replatform." A shortlist gets drawn up — usually Shopify, Magento, maybe BigCommerce or CommerceTools. Vendor demos happen. Everyone gets excited about features. Then six months into the implementation, you discover the hard parts were never about the platform at all.

The platform matters, but less than you think. What matters more is how well it fits your operations, your integration landscape, and your team's ability to actually run it.

Here's how I approach the decision.

Start with your catalogue, not the platform

The single biggest factor in choosing an ecommerce platform is catalogue complexity. And most businesses underestimate theirs.

If you've got a straightforward product catalogue — a few hundred SKUs, simple variants like size and colour, standard pricing — Shopify handles that brilliantly. It's quick to set up, the ecosystem is enormous, and the operational overhead is minimal.

But if you're dealing with complex product configurations, B2B pricing tiers, customer-specific catalogues, or products with dozens of attributes — the picture changes quickly. I've seen businesses try to force complex B2B catalogues into Shopify, and it gets painful. It works, technically, but the workarounds pile up and you spend more time managing exceptions than selling.

CommerceTools is built for this kind of complexity. Its product model is flexible enough to handle B2B and B2C in the same instance, with different pricing, different catalogues, and different checkout flows. The trade-off is that it requires more development effort upfront, because you're building the frontend yourself.

The integration question nobody asks early enough

Here's what I keep seeing — businesses choose a platform, build the storefront, get halfway through launch prep, and then realise they haven't properly thought about how it connects to their ERP.

Your ecommerce platform doesn't exist in isolation. Orders need to flow to your ERP. Inventory needs to sync back. Customer data needs to be consistent. Tax calculations need to be correct for Australian GST. Shipping integrations need to work with local carriers like Australia Post, StarTrack, and Aramex.

Some platforms make this easier than others.

Shopify has a massive app ecosystem and well-documented APIs. If you're connecting to NetSuite or Business Central, there are established integration patterns on Celigo and Workato that you can leverage. The data model is predictable, which makes mapping straightforward.

CommerceTools has excellent APIs — it's API-first by design. But the integration work is more custom because there are fewer pre-built connectors. You're building more from scratch, which gives you more control but takes more time.

Magento's integration story is mixed. The APIs exist, but they have quirks — particularly around inventory and customer groups. If you're on Adobe Commerce Cloud, some of the managed hosting restrictions can complicate integration approaches.

Ask the integration question early. Talk to whoever is going to build your integrations before you commit to a platform, not after.

Australian-specific things to think about

Running ecommerce in Australia has some specific considerations that international platform comparisons often overlook.

GST handling. Australian GST is relatively straightforward compared to US sales tax, but your platform still needs to handle it correctly — inclusive pricing for domestic customers, GST-free for exports, and proper tax invoicing. Most platforms handle this fine, but check the edge cases for your business. Mixed supplies, GST-free products in the same cart as taxable ones, and marketplace facilitator rules can trip things up.

Payment gateways. Afterpay, Zip, and other BNPL options are expected by Australian consumers. Shopify has native integrations for most of these. On CommerceTools, you'll need to integrate these yourself or use a payment orchestration layer. It's doable but adds to the build scope.

Shipping. If you're using Australian carriers, check that your platform and fulfilment workflow integrates cleanly. Shopify's shipping is straightforward with Australian carriers through apps. On headless platforms, you'll be connecting to carrier APIs directly.

Hosting and performance. Your customers are in Australia. If your platform is hosted on US servers with no CDN, page load times will be poor. Shopify handles this automatically with their global CDN. For self-hosted or headless platforms, make sure you've got edge caching in an Australian region.

The team factor

This is the one everyone underestimates. Whatever platform you choose, someone on your team needs to be able to manage it day-to-day. Product updates, promotion setup, content changes, order management, customer service workflows — this is the daily reality of running ecommerce.

Shopify wins here for most teams. The admin interface is intuitive, the learning curve is gentle, and you can get a marketing coordinator managing products and promotions within a week.

CommerceTools requires developer involvement for many tasks that would be admin-panel clicks on Shopify. If you have a development team, that's fine. If your ecommerce is managed by a marketing team with no developer support, headless commerce is going to be frustrating.

Be realistic about your team. The most sophisticated platform in the world is useless if nobody on your team can actually operate it.

My recommendations for Australian businesses

For most Australian retailers and D2C brands doing under $20M online revenue, Shopify Plus is the sensible choice. It's fast to launch, easy to manage, has excellent integration options, and the total cost of ownership is predictable. You'll outgrow it eventually if you scale aggressively, but by that point you'll have the revenue and the team to justify a more complex platform.

For B2B businesses, or companies with genuinely complex catalogue and pricing requirements, CommerceTools is worth the investment. But go in with your eyes open about the build effort, the ongoing development cost, and the integration work required. And make sure you have the team — or the partner — to support it.

Magento (Adobe Commerce) still has a place, particularly if you're already on it and it's working. But I wouldn't choose it for a new build in 2026 unless there's a very specific reason. The ecosystem has shifted, and the total cost of ownership is high compared to the alternatives.

BigCommerce is a solid middle ground — more capable than standard Shopify for B2B scenarios, less complex than CommerceTools. Worth considering if you need some B2B features but don't want to go fully headless.

The real advice

Don't start with the platform. Start with your requirements — your catalogue, your operations, your integration needs, your team. Map those out clearly, then evaluate platforms against them.

And please, involve your integration partner early. The number of times I've been brought in after a platform decision to discover that the integration requirements don't fit the chosen platform's architecture — it's more often than it should be.

If you're going through this process and want someone to pressure-test your thinking, I'm happy to have the conversation. No platform agenda — just practical advice based on what I've seen work.