The ecommerce stack

Ecommerce stacks get crowded fast because every category has a plausible app. The four layers below cover almost everything a store under seven figures actually needs.

The layers that matter

01
Storefront
Where people buy. Speed and clarity beat features.
02
Payments
Checkout, tax and invoicing handled for you.
03
Audience
Email or newsletter. Repeat purchase is cheaper than acquisition, and this is where it lives.
04
Support
A number or inbox customers can reach. Refund friction costs more than support software.

Audience before ads

Paid acquisition without an owned audience means renting every customer twice. Get the list going in month one even if it's only a few hundred people.

What can wait

Delay these until the underlying volume exists:

Loyalty and subscription apps before you have repeat buyers to reward.
Advanced analytics before you have enough traffic for the numbers to mean anything.
Warehouse and inventory software while one person can count the stock.

Review the per-order costs

Subscriptions are visible; per-order fees aren't. Once a month, divide total tooling and transaction cost by orders shipped and watch that number rather than the invoice total.

What it costs

$80–$300 a month plus transaction fees for most small stores.