Medusa commerce: the shop you own, no platform fee

TL;DR: Medusa commerce puts the shop in your name: the engine has no licence fee and takes no cut of an order, so your bill does not grow every time you sell more. Planning is one week at $2,500, the build starts at $8,000, and the store you end up with is yours.

A medusa commerce build keeps the engine, the catalogue and the order records in an account you open, on a bill you can read line by line. Nothing decides on your behalf what may be sold, no rate rises because a good month happened, and nobody holds the shop when you want to change host, supplier or agency. Planning takes one week at $2,500, the build runs two to ten weeks from $8,000, and the storefront your customers already recognise can stay exactly as it is.

What this includes

• The engine in your name: the account holding products, stock levels, orders and customer records, opened with your address and your card
• A storefront that holds its layout from a phone screen to the tablet at the counter, in English and Spanish
• One place to change a price, a stock level, a delivery rule or a pickup slot, with every page following behind it
• Links to what already runs your day: payments, shipping, accounting and your supplier feed
• Pages that open quickly on a phone, measured the way Google measures them
• A written guide and the shop's files, so whoever you hire next keeps the shop moving without us
• A running bill you can read: hosting, tools and support on separate lines, with nothing charged per order

Everything on that list stays yours after the planning week, whether or not you carry on with us.

What the engine takes off your bill

A rented storefront charges you twice: it takes a share of what you sell, then charges again for each feature you switch on. The engine behind a medusa storefront works the other way. It is open source, so there is no licence fee and no percentage lifted from an order, and the code is public, which means anyone you hire later can read what your shop runs on. Where the engine's own tooling is sold, it is hosting and support on a separate line (the engine's published terms), never a toll on each sale.

Two things push a shop this way, and they are not the same problem. The first is a bill that climbs every time the shop needs something new. The second is a platform that will not change the way an order behaves, however many features are paid for. If only the first one is true for you, we say so, and repairing the shop you own is the cheaper answer. Where no engine at all holds your rules, a store built to your own model is the other road, and the two share most of the work below.

You still pay for real things: hosting, card fees, the build itself. Those are bills you can price, compare and move supplier on. What stops is the toll, the slice taken from every order and the monthly charge that arrives each time your shop grows.

Ownership is easiest to see on the day you leave. Move host, bring the work in house or hand it to another studio, and the catalogue, the order history and the code go with you, with no contract standing between you and your own shop.

How it works

Every stage has a duration and a price before it starts, and the plan is written by the person who reads the code before it ships.

1. Scoping, one week, $2,500. We follow one real order from the click to the doorstep and note every point where your current platform forces a workaround. The written answer is yours to keep either way.
2. Architecture, the same week, $2,500, credited to the build. What gets built, what stays exactly as it is, the price of each stage, and the number we are trying to move.
3. The build, two to ten weeks of stage by stage work depending on what your shop has to hold, from $8,000. A test address goes out every Friday, so you open the real shop on your own phone instead of looking at pictures of it.
4. The medusa migration, one week, included. Catalogue, orders and customer records are copied to the test address first, and every order total is checked against the old shop before a single address moves. The switch happens on a date you fix, outside your busiest weeks. What moving a live shop involves.
5. The address check, before the switch. Every address that earns you visitors today is written down beside the address it becomes, and each one is opened after the move to confirm it landed. This is the part that protects the traffic a move can put at risk.
6. Care, from $1,500 a month, if you want it. Monitoring, content changes and small fixes on a monthly plan, and a month of notice on either side if you stop.

Speed is the part your customer actually feels, so we report the numbers Google measures (the numbers Google uses) rather than our own, and the budget sits inside the scope you sign.

What it costs

Nothing on this page is priced after a phone call. The figures below are the published starting points of each stage, and your scoped quote sets the perimeter, the final price and the dates, after which they stay put.

• Scoping: $2,500 for one week, ending in a written verdict on your shop, your orders and the stages that would follow.
• Architecture: $2,500 for one week, credited against the build. The plan, the price of each stage, and the way the result is measured.
• Build: from $8,000 across two to ten weeks of work, priced stage by stage so each payment follows finished work.
• The move and the launch: included in the build, with the address list checked before and after the switch.
• Care: from $1,500 a month, and you can leave it with a month of notice.

Where a shop lands inside those spans comes down to two things you can weigh before you call. First, how many rules the shop has to hold that a standard theme will not: three delivery zones and a pickup counter are a shorter build than a supplier feed, a price list per customer type, and a return flow that pays out in credit. Second, how much of the catalogue is already usable: products with real photographs and real descriptions go live at the short end, while a catalogue that lives in a spreadsheet pushes the other way. We name which one you have in Architecture, not halfway through the build.

You will not find a form here asking for a budget before we name a number, because a shop cannot be decided that way. Every phase and its published price is set out in the same form on that page, and the scope you sign spells out what it covers before any work starts.

Proof

Food By Box carries 2,500 products in a shop we rebuilt around its catalogue. On desktop, Google's speed score for it reads 95, and the visits it receives each month went from 20,000 to 500,000 inside 24 months, with every old address still carrying traffic. The numbers behind these projects are published.

Tatiana Miath is the other side of the same work, on the engine this page is about: her store took 4.8 seconds to open on a phone and now opens in just over one, with nothing she ranked for lost in the move.

The plan is written by Michael Agnassia, 15 years in ecommerce, who also reads the code before it goes out, and who writes the plan and signs it off is on our about page. We work from 78 SW 7th Street in Brickell, on site across South Florida, in English and Spanish.

No page about this work should promise you a ranking or a revenue figure, and ours does not. What we do put in writing is the measurement: the rules the shop has to hold, the price of each stage, and the number we are moving.

Questions

What does medusa commerce cost us over a year?

Add up the share taken from each order, the subscriptions and the hours your team loses to workarounds, then compare that with the scoped build, the hosting and the care plan. If the shop you already own comes out cheaper, we say so in the planning week.

Can we keep the medusa storefront our customers already know?

Often yes. What a customer sees can stay as it is, and only what sits behind it is replaced. A partial move like that is usually the fastest way to stop paying per order without losing the look your regulars recognise.

How does a medusa migration keep our sales and our addresses?

The catalogue and the order history are copied to a test address first, and order totals are compared with the old shop before the switch. The move happens on a date you choose, outside your busiest weeks, and every address that carries visitors is listed and checked.

Can our own team take over the medusa js ecommerce work after launch?

Yes, that is the point of the handover: the guide we write, the shop's files and the account all sit with you, and anyone you bring in can read the code that runs the shop. Some clients keep the care plan, others take it in house, and both are fine.

What happens to our catalogue and our orders if we stop working with you?

They stay with you, because they always did. The account is in your name, the files are on your side, and leaving takes a decision rather than a negotiation.

Who runs the shop after launch?

Your team, working from the guide we write, or us on the care plan from $1,500 a month. The difference is whose diary the small changes land in, not whose shop it is.

Can we buy only the planning week?

Yes. Scoping stands alone at $2,500, and the document is allowed to end with the conclusion that two repairs to the shop you own are enough.

Next

• What the work behind an order can do on its own once the shop is quick and the rules are yours
• The rest of the headless practice, and where this engine sits beside the others
• Book the scoping week: one week at $2,500, ending in a written answer either way