Start with your catalog, not the feature list
Count your products, variants and parameters, and look at how they relate. Three option dimensions with a clean set of filter attributes fit almost any platform. Attribute sets that differ by product type, bundles, configurators, B2B price lists or thousands of variants narrow the field to platforms with a richer data model, such as Adobe Commerce, Shopware or a composable stack. Write down the five most awkward products in your catalog and ask each candidate platform how it would store them; the answers reveal more than any comparison table.
Market, language and integrations
A store selling to Czech and Slovak customers needs local carriers, payment gateways, comparison-shopping feeds and invoicing rules. Shoptet or Upgates deliver those natively; a global SaaS platform can do it through apps at extra cost and maintenance. Selling into several countries raises different questions: language mutations, currencies, VAT handling and whether one store or several is the right shape. List the systems that must stay connected - ERP, accounting, warehouse, PIM, marketplace feeds - and check whether each candidate has a maintained connector or only an API you would have to build against.
Ownership, cost and the migration path
Hosted platforms trade control for convenience: you cannot touch the database, but you also never patch a server. Open-source platforms give you the data and the responsibility. Total cost includes licence or plan fees, hosting, apps or extensions, agency hours and the internal time spent on updates. Finally, price the migration itself: how much data you carry over, whether order history and customer accounts matter, how many URLs need redirects, and which custom functions must be rebuilt. A platform that looks cheaper on paper can cost more once the migration effort is added.
Red flags that should stop the decision
Be cautious when a platform cannot show how a specific data type from your current store will be represented, when an essential integration exists only as a third-party app with unclear maintenance, when the vendor promises that rankings will not change after migration, or when nobody can explain how you would leave the platform later. A short discovery with real samples of your data resolves most of these before you sign anything.
Frequently asked questions
Should I choose the platform before or after the migration assessment?
Ideally the assessment informs the choice. A short discovery with real product, customer and order samples shows how each candidate would store your data and how much rebuild the migration would need.
Is a hosted platform always cheaper than open source?
Not always. Hosted platforms have predictable fees but app costs add up; open-source platforms have no licence fee but require hosting, updates and developer time. Compare total cost over three years, including the migration.
How important is the ecommerce platform for SEO?
Less than the migration process. Any mainstream platform can rank well; what loses visibility is a missing redirect map, changed content or slow pages after the move.
Can I switch platforms again later?
Yes, if your data stays exportable. Check that products, customers, orders and content can be exported in a structured format before choosing, so the next migration is possible without vendor help.