Build your own

Build your own Shopify alternative with AI

Shopify is a complete commerce platform, and for most shops it is the right answer. This page is for the other case: a small catalogue, a shop with an odd checkout or a product that does not fit a template, where you would rather own the code of the store than rent a plan. With Buildra you describe the store, an agent builds it, and it publishes to a buildra.page address you can put your own domain on from the Starter plan. Here is who should stay on Shopify, who should build, and what you give up.

Stay on Shopify, or build your own?

Stay on Shopify if

You sell in a physical shop and need a card reader and a till
You depend on apps from Shopify's marketplace for marketing, reviews or fulfilment
You need sales tax worked out for you at checkout
You have a large catalogue, many staff or many orders a day

Build your own if

You have a small catalogue and want a store that looks and behaves exactly as you describe
Your checkout, product options or ordering flow does not fit a store template
You want the source code of your store, downloadable on every plan
You are selling something unusual: bookings, a made-to-order product, a members-only shop

What Shopify says it does, read on 2026-10-29: A point of sale: accept payments with a phone or card reader; A large app marketplace: Shopify says its plans integrate with 1000s of apps; Automated sales tax calculations; Shopify Payments, and shipping labels you buy and print. Source: shopify.com/pricing.

What the app you build does

A storefront with a product grid, product pages and a cart

Checkout that hands payment to a payment provider such as Stripe, wired into the generated code

An admin area to add products, set prices and see orders

Customer accounts and order history

Order emails through an email service you connect

Responsive pages that work on a phone

The app is a web app on Buildra Hosting, at a buildra.page address, with your own domain from the Starter plan. The source downloads on every plan, and the GitHub mirror runs one direction only. See the E-commerce store use case for more of what Buildra builds.

How it works

Describe the store

Say what you sell, how many products there are, what a customer picks (size, colour, date) and how they pay. Name the payment provider you want to use.

Review and adjust in the live preview

The agent builds the storefront, cart and admin in a project you can watch. Ask for changes in plain language until the shop behaves as you imagined.

Publish and connect your payment account

Publish to a buildra.page address on Buildra Hosting, add your own domain from the Starter plan, and connect your own payment-provider account before you take real orders.

What you give up

No app store: you get the features you ask for, not a marketplace of ready-made extensions
No point of sale: there is no card reader or till for a physical shop
No built-in tax handling: the store does not work out sales tax for you, so set tax up with your payment provider and ask an accountant what applies to you
No shipping labels bought and printed inside the store, and no managed payments service: the payment provider is one you sign up with yourself

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Buildra replace Shopify?+

For a small store with its own shape, yes. You describe the store and an agent builds a storefront, cart, checkout and admin you own. For a business that needs a point of sale, a large app marketplace or sales tax worked out for it, Shopify is the better fit, and this page says so.

How do payments work in a store built with Buildra?+

Payments are something the built app integrates, not a Buildra feature. You ask for a payment provider such as Stripe, the agent writes the integration into the store's code, and you connect your own account to it. Check the result with a test payment before you take a real order.

Can I use my own domain?+

Yes, from the Starter plan. Free stores publish to a buildra.page address. A custom domain points at your published store and gets HTTPS.

Do I keep the code?+

Yes. The source downloads on every plan, and every commit the agent makes is mirrored to a GitHub repository you own. The mirror runs one direction only: a push you make on GitHub does not come back into Buildra.

Build your own instead

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Ready to Build?

Describe your app and watch an agent build it. Free to start.