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Vercel x Shopify: Headless Commerce, Explained for Merchants

Shopify, Vercel and JIBE on what headless really means for a Shopify brand: what changes, what stays with Shopify, when it is worth the added complexity, and when it is not.

Vercel x Shopify: Headless Commerce, Explained for Merchants

In June, Shopify and Vercel announced a partnership, and Shopify opened up Hydrogen as open source. Steve Krueger (JIBE) sat down with Matt Hickey (Shopify) and Patrick Williams (Vercel) to talk through what that means for merchants weighing a headless build, in plain terms, including when it is the wrong call.

What we talked about

  • What headless actually means: decoupling your storefront from Shopify's back end, and why "why?" is always the first question to ask
  • Why Shopify and Vercel are partnering now, and how Hydrogen, Oxygen and Vercel fit together
  • The real reasons brands go headless: bespoke buying experiences, pulling ERP and other third-party data into the storefront (especially for B2B), and performance at scale
  • What stays with Shopify: checkout, Shop Pay, products, discounts, customer accounts and PCI compliance, so your operations team's day-to-day does not change
  • Vercel Shop, the new Next.js starter built on Hydrogen, and how Vercel sets up CDN, firewall and hosting best practices automatically
  • AI in practice: a non-developer building a playable game into a storefront with Claude and v0, and agent skills that turn a 20 hour upgrade into a one hour job
  • Caching, webhooks and rate limits: keeping prices and inventory fresh without hammering Shopify's APIs
  • Apps: why many Liquid storefront apps will not carry over to headless, and why API-first partners matter
  • Will AI replace apps and agencies? Why everything you build, you have to maintain
  • Is headless only for big brands? Why there is no magic GMV threshold, and how teams decide it is not the right fit
  • Where it is heading next: agentic commerce and shopping experiences that do not exist yet

Speakers

Steve Krueger
Steve Krueger
Founder & CEO
JIBE

Steve founded JIBE, a composable commerce agency that works with mid-market and enterprise brands across omnichannel D2C, B2B and retail.

LinkedIn profile
Matt Hickey
Matt Hickey
Partner Solutions Engineer
Shopify

Matt has been at Shopify for just under 10 years. Based in Montreal, he works with Shopify's partners to keep them up to speed on a fast-moving platform and make sure they get the most out of it.

LinkedIn profile
Patrick Williams
Patrick Williams
Partner Solutions Engineer
Vercel

Patrick brings more than a decade of ecommerce experience to Vercel. He makes sure agency partners and technology partners like Shopify have everything they need, technically, to build on the Vercel platform.

LinkedIn profile

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