Shopify is a complete e-commerce platform that gives brands the ability to start, grow and manage their business. It is a subscription-based software that allows them to sell products through online stores and in physical locations using Shopify POS. Businesses of every size use the platform to unify their commerce into one command center and sell through multiple mediums like mobile, web, social media, pop-up shops, regular stores, online marketplaces and more. At peak times, Shopify processes around 80,000 requests per second.

The reason that the Shopify store can handle this volume of sales and, in turn, has become one of the most recognizable e-commerce platforms, is its tech stack. The tech stack is the behind-the-scenes (backend) of powerful software companies and is what builds the platform to run smoothly and efficiently. Users can build, modify and scale their online business, due to the power of the tech stack.

Shopify users are using Integrate.io to integrate their e-commerce data to empower their decision-making and operational systems.

Table Of Contents

  1. Shopify Tech Stack
  2. Shopify Tech Stack e-commerce Tools
  3. Shopify Tech Stack Applications and Tools
  4. Customize Landing Pages Using Shopify Plus Tech Stack
  5. Shopify Plus Tech Stack Application Partners
  6. Shopify Admin Tech Stack
  7. Shopify and Integrate.io, A Match Made in Heaven?

Shopify Tech Stack

The Shopify tech stack is made up of a large number (around 100) of applications and technologies. Logo Maker: Design & Create, Shopify Point of Sale (POS), Shop: Delivery and Order Tracker, Shopify Ping, and Shopify - e-commerce Business are some of the customers' favorites.

The Shopify tech stack empowers almost 3.5 million downloads every month, across platforms like Google Play and iTunes. The second most popular download is the Shopify – e-commerce Business, which gets around 300,000 downloads every month respectively.

Along with the vast number of applications that make up Shopify’s tech stack, there are also more than 4,000 applications that can directly integrate with the platform, through the Integrate.io platform and otherwise. Free tools also give users the ability to create logos, QR codes, gift certificates, business cards, and shipping labels.

Shopify Tech Stack E-commerce Tools

Shopify.com has two different types of tools. On one side are time-saving solutions, like automation and other utilities that make processes and workflows more efficient. These time-saving tools consist of things like privacy policy generators, templates, invoice generators and other tools that allow tasks that were previously manually carried out, to be automated or significantly sped up.

On the other side of the Shopify tech stack's e-commerce tools are KPI-drive solutions, which are focused on improving and scaling a brand’s revenue, profit margins and overall growth. Shopify’s profit margin and Cost Per Mile (CPM) calculator are two tools that users commonly use to analyze their revenue metrics in real-time when integrated with Integrate.io. Where merchants are concerned, these tools are invaluable for measuring any growth (in a positive or negative direction). Shopify advises users and bands to utilize as many tools as possible to ensure that their business has the best chance of succeeding.

Shopify Tech Stack Applications and Tools

Shopify tech stack utilized a relational database at the beginning of its operation, choosing to use MySQL. Structured Query Language (SQL) is a domain-specific language that is used in programming to manage data that is held in a relational database.

By 2014, the platform has grown so large that MySQL was not sufficient to hold the amount of data that Shopify needed. This led Shopify to move away from MySQL and store their data in several smaller databases (shards).

For their key-value storage and ques and memory caching functionalities, Redis and Memcached were then chosen, with some other databases complimenting them. This approach paid off for the platform in the short term, but as time passed the outages that individual databases experienced caused constant delays and disruptions, which naturally was not very good for user experience.

The Solution to the Outage Problem

Recently, Shopify has been moving its databases from shards to pods. Every pod had its own designated databases, which were isolated from others. Development applications like Docker and Kubernetes were used to set these pods up in their respective regions.

Fortunately for Shopify, this transition to pods has helped with their disruptions and outages. Since making the move from shards to pods, they haven’t experienced any global or major outages, and they have over 100 pods in operation. Lua, OpenResty and Nginx are used as their load balancers to make sure that outages remain a thing of the past for Shopify.

Customize Landing Pages Using Shopify Plus Tech Stack

A typical structure for an online brand or e-commerce site is a landing page that is a front door that allows users to enter the rest of the site. For some brands, the “front door” is the experience and features the full inventory of the e-commerce site right there on the front page. The landing page is the product page here, which is a setup that is unique to e-commerce. An out-of-the-box solution for this is not readily available with Shopify plus directly. 

Shopify has its own development company to deal with situations like these and ensure that the brand (and users visiting the site) receive the immersive experience that they are looking for, while also keeping the site functioning efficiently. This can be achieved by adding features like “Quick Shop” and Add-To-Cart directly on the Product Listing Page (PLP).

Shopify Plus is the second largest e-commerce platform in the world, and it has got that point by having ease-of-use and simple management at its core. It allows brands to focus on their inventory, brand identity and the direction the brand is going in, without immersing themselves in technical matters in the backend or frontend, which most would find daunting, if not outside of their realm of capability. Integrate.io accentuates this simplicity by providing a low-code ETL data integration platform for users.

Shopify Plus Tech Stack Application Partners

Similar to the applications that can integrate with Shopify that were mentioned previously, Shopify Plus can also sync with a large number of applications that complement the platform. For example, brands and companies that are interested in affiliate marketing can use Refersion, if they are interested in optimization of their conversion rates, Nosto, Privy, LimeSpot and Justuno can be used.

Similarly, for visual merchandising and content, there are a wide number of options like Shogun, InstantSearchPlus, SearchSpring and Klevu. Reward programs and loyalty systems can be put into place using Swell, LoyaltyLion or Smile.io.

For Product Information Management (PIM) Salsify or Jasper can be integrated. For business reporting and intelligence, Grow.com, Zaius and Daasity can be used, among others.

Shopify Admin Tech Stack

Prototype JavaScript Framework, jQuery and HTML templates are what Shopify was originally built on. Batman.js (Batman JavaScript) was the next tech stack that was used and a combination of Prototype JavaScript and regular HTML was settled on after that, a setup quite similar to what was originally put in place. TypeScript and React are what the current Shopify Admin tech stack is made up of.

Shopify Admin’s current framework is very efficient as it doesn‘t use a server to send and share information or access resources.

Shopify and Integrate.io, a Match Made in Heaven?

Using Shopify, users can create their online store using several templates provided to them. It also allows them to accept payments through a wide range of methods and also allows them to manage and analyze their business’ growth in real-time using a wide variety of tools like Google Analytics. Using Integrate.io, Shopify can be integrated with several different applications to ensure optimization of the user experience.

Integrations with applications and tools like Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Asana and many more ensure that your online store and the team that runs it has all of the functionality that it needs. If you are looking to optimize your e-commerce store or are curious as to how Integrate.io can help and their pricing, schedule a seven-day demo with their team of experts today.