Your own online store, built from scratch.
A storefront and checkout built for your products, on code and data you own. You don't pay a platform's monthly plan, or its fee on every sale.
Tell us about your storeWhat a platform costs
What does Shopify cost a store in India every month?
A plan, and a fee on each sale if your payments go through a third-party provider instead of Shopify Payments. These are the figures on Shopify's India pricing page, read on 22 October 2026:
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Fee on third-party payments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | ₹1,994 a month | ₹1,499 a month | 2% |
| Grow | ₹7,447 a month | ₹5,599 a month | 1% |
| Advanced | ₹30,164 a month | ₹22,680 a month | 0.6% |
An example, with our own arithmetic: a store taking ₹10 lakh a month through a third-party gateway pays Shopify ₹21,994 a month on Basic (₹1,994 plus 2%), or ₹17,447 on Grow (₹7,447 plus 1%), every month the store runs.
A store you own pays neither of those charges. The payment gateway's own fee stays the same either way, and the store still costs something to run: hosting and upkeep. You get that number before you commit, alongside the build.
What owning it changes
What does owning the store give you, and what does it take away?
You own the code and the data, and the design isn't limited to a theme. We build it so every order and customer lands in one database you control, which is what makes the AI layer cheap to add later: an agent or a dashboard reads one record, instead of stitching together a platform's data, WhatsApp and the ad accounts.
What you give up is the app store. A feature you'd install on Shopify in a minute has to be built or connected, and that goes into the quote. If you already sell well on a working Shopify store, rebuilding it may not pay, and we'll tell you which side of that line you're on.
How we build it
How do we build a store?
- 01Your catalogue and rules first: products, variants, prices, shipping, cash on delivery and returns, written down before any design.
- 02The storefront: product pages through to checkout, built in React and TypeScript for phones first, and connected to the payment gateway you choose.
- 03One database behind it: products, stock, orders and customers in Postgres, the same tables every later tool reads.
- 04Tracking that counts each sale once: the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API send the same event ID, so Meta can match the browser and server copies of one purchase.
- 05Launch and handover: the code, the documentation and the deployment access are yours.
Where it runs
Who sells from a store built this way?
Solar Vista, a lighting brand in India, sells from a store we built this way: a custom storefront and backend at solarvista.co.in, with no platform underneath.
MorningLabs AI, the other brand under Morningfield Ventures, then built its WhatsApp ordering agent, which takes orders and confirms cash on delivery, and two boards beside it: one for orders, and one for WhatsApp.
If you have a store already
Already selling on Shopify or WooCommerce?
Keep it if it works. The Morning Beer works on the store you have, from the ads to the product pages; that's our ecommerce growth service.
The AI layer is different. πCounter's connectors for Shopify and WooCommerce are planned, not live: its own integrations page labels them that way. Today its agents run on stores built the way this page describes.
πCounter, by MorningLabs AI
Where does AI come in?
When you want agents working on the store, that's πCounter, a product MorningLabs AI built. Its own description: “Five agents watch your storefront, orders, customer conversations, ads and money, write to one record, and bring you the change with the evidence attached.” On a store you own, that record is complete from the first order.
It takes its own enquiries at picounterai.com. How the three fit together is on our e-commerce page.
Owning the store, in four answers
Is a custom store cheaper than Shopify?
Over time it can be, because you stop paying a monthly plan and a platform fee on each sale. Upfront it costs more, because the store is built rather than rented. Bring your monthly order value and we'll work out both for your store.
Who owns the store?
You do. The code, the domain and the hosting account are yours at handover.
Can I add features later?
Yes. Because the code and the data are yours, a new feature is a change to your store rather than an app to find. Agents and dashboards from MorningLabs AI read the same database.
What if I want to keep my Shopify store?
Keep it. If your Shopify or WooCommerce store works, The Morning Beer works on it as it is.
Bring your order value and your platform
Bring your monthly order value and the platform you're on. We'll show you what owning the store would change, in rupees.
If it isn't worth it, we'll say so.
Tell us about your store