I Tried Building My Own E-commerce Site (Spoiler: It Was a Disaster)

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this… I thought I was smarter than everyone else.

“Why pay for Shopify when I can just build it myself?” Famous last words, right? 🤡

Six months later I was crying into my laptop at 3am trying to figure out why my checkout page kept breaking. Spoiler alert: it was everything. Everything was broken.

The Brilliant Plan (That Wasn’t)

Started with grand ambitions. Had this whole vision — custom design, unique features, exactly what I wanted without paying monthly fees to “some corporation.”

I mean, I took a coding bootcamp like 3 years ago, built a few landing pages… how hard could e-commerce be?

Narrator voice: It was very hard.

Decided to go with React + Node.js because that’s what I kinda knew. Found some open-source shopping cart tutorials on GitHub, thought “ez pz lemon squeezy.”

Month 1: False Confidence

First few weeks actually went okay. Got the basic structure up, could add products, had a decent looking homepage. Felt pretty good about myself tbh.

Even showed my friends like “look what I built!” They were impressed. I was feeling like a real developer 😎

Then I tried to add payment processing…

The Payment Processing Nightmare

Oh. My. God.

Stripe integration looked simple in the docs. “Just a few API calls,” they said. Yeah, right.

Spent 2 weeks just trying to get the basic checkout flow working. Then another week on error handling. Then realized I needed webhooks for order confirmations. Then security became an issue…

By week 4 I had maybe 20% of what Shopify does out of the box. And mine barely worked.

When Everything Started Breaking 💥

The fun really started when I tried to add features. Inventory tracking? Broke the product display. Email notifications? Crashed the whole site. Tax calculations? Don’t even get me started.

Each new feature broke something else. It was like digital Jenga but way less fun.

My “simple” e-commerce site had turned into this Frankenstein monster of half-working code and band-aid fixes.

The Security Wake-Up Call

This is where it gets real. Found out about PCI compliance requirements for handling credit cards. Realized my little DIY site was probably breaking like 50 different security standards.

Started researching what I’d need to do to make it actually secure… SSL certificates, encryption, secure hosting, regular security audits…

The cost was adding up fast. And that’s assuming I could even implement everything correctly, which… let’s be honest, probably not.

Customer #1 (And Last)

Finally got brave enough to let my cousin try to buy something. You know, test it out with real money.

She got stuck on the shipping calculator. Then the tax calculation was wrong. Then her payment went through but no confirmation email sent. Then I couldn’t figure out how to mark her order as shipped in my system.

It was embarrassing. Like, really embarrassing.

She was cool about it but afterwards was like “maybe just use what everyone else uses?”

The Breaking Point

Month 5. Site went down for 6 hours because I updated something and everything exploded. Had to dig through error logs, rollback changes, fix the database…

Sat there at my computer at 2am thinking “I just want to sell stuff, not be a full-time system administrator.”

That’s when it hit me — I was spending 90% of my time fixing technical problems and 10% actually working on my business.

The Shopify Test

My girlfriend finally staged an intervention. “Just try Shopify for like a week. If you hate it, go back to your… whatever this is.”

Set up a basic store in maybe 3 hours? Had working payments, shipping calculator, email confirmations, mobile optimization, SSL certificate… all the stuff I’d been struggling with for months.

First test order went through perfectly. No broken pages, no error messages, customer got proper confirmation email, I could print shipping labels…

It just… worked. Like, actually worked 🤯

The Reality Check

Here’s what I learned (the hard way):

Time is money, and I was bleeding both
 Those 6 months I spent coding? Could’ve been 6 months actually selling products and making money.

E-commerce is harder than it looks
 Payment processing, inventory management, tax calculations, shipping integrations, security… there’s so much stuff you don’t think about until you need it.

“Free” isn’t really free
 Sure, I didn’t pay monthly fees. But I paid in hosting costs, my time (worth way more than $29/month), lost sales opportunities, and stress. Lots of stress.

I’m not as smart as I thought
 Took me 6 months to build a worse version of what Shopify gives you on day one. That’s… humbling.

What I Wish I’d Done Instead

Just started with Shopify from day one. Used those 6 months to focus on products, marketing, customer service… you know, actual business stuff.

Could’ve probably been making decent money by month 2 instead of still debugging code in month 6.

The customization I thought I needed? Turns out I didn’t really need it. The basic themes work fine, and there are apps for most everything else.

The Apps Revelation 📱

This part blew my mind. All those custom features I was trying to code? There were already apps for them.

Reviews, email marketing, inventory management, analytics, social media integration… it’s all there. Just click install.

Spent weeks trying to build a product recommendation engine. Found an app that does it better in 5 minutes. I mean… come on.

Don’t Be Like Me

If you’re thinking about building your own e-commerce site because “it’ll be cheaper” or “I want complete control” — just… don’t.

Unless you’re planning to become a full-time developer AND business owner AND security expert AND system administrator… it’s not worth it.

Focus on what you’re actually good at. For me, that was definitely not web development 😅

The Plot Twist

Funny thing is, I actually appreciate Shopify more now because I know how much work goes into all those “simple” features.

The fact that payments just work, orders sync properly, emails send reliably, the site stays up… that’s not magic, that’s a lot of engineering that someone else figured out so I don’t have to.

Worth every penny of that monthly fee. Hell, I’d pay double just for the peace of mind.

If you’re on the fence about trying Shopify vs building something yourself… learn from my mistakes. Try Shopify first. You can always go the DIY route later if you really want to hate yourself.

Save yourself the headache: https://shopify.pxf.io/mONqrO