Founder & Lead Engineer
Headless Shopify costs 2–3× more to build than Shopify Plus and takes twice as long. Here's the pricing breakdown and how we decide which one a project actually needs.
Read article →Buying off-the-shelf software is usually the right call. Here are the specific conditions where building your own wins instead — and what that actually involves.
Read article →What actually breaks when you migrate a Shopify store, and the honest range for how long checkout realistically stays down during cutover.
Read article →What custom software costs by project type, what drives the price, and Cortexley's own fixed prices for POS, CRM and ERP work, from £6,000.
Read article →Off-the-shelf POS systems solve most retail problems well. Here are the specific conditions where they stop fitting — and what a custom build actually involves.
Read article →The complete Shopify migration checklist: redirect mapping, data export, pre-launch QA, cutover steps, and what to verify in the first 72 hours — with full coverage of SEO preservation.
Read article →A realistic breakdown of what drives ecommerce build costs — from a basic Shopify theme to a fully custom headless storefront — and how to scope your project before requesting quotes.
Read article →What a website costs in the UK in 2026, by project type: broad market ranges, Cortexley's own fixed prices, and the factors that move the price.
Read article →UI/UX design quotes range from £500 to £150,000 for what looks like the same deliverable. This breaks down what drives the difference and what to budget for each project type.
Read article →AI automation is being sold to every business right now. This is a plain-language guide to what it actually does, where it saves real time, and where it is still oversold.
Read article →The difference between a software partner that ships what you need and one that ships what you said isn't obvious from a proposal. Here's what to look for.
Read article →Freelancers are faster and cheaper for small jobs. Agencies are better for complex builds. Here's exactly where the line is — and how to tell which side your project is on.
Read article →A practical breakdown of which ecommerce operations benefit from AI automation, which don't, and what a realistic implementation actually involves.
Read article →A plain-English breakdown of when each platform wins — and the specific signals in your roadmap that should push you toward one over the others.
Read article →Most agency selection advice focuses on portfolios and pricing. The questions that reveal whether a team will actually deliver are different.
Read article →A behind-the-scenes look at how we built a Shopify storefront for a hard-water haircare brand that had to sell the problem before the product.
Read article →How we design AI-assisted support tools that genuinely speed teams up — without the risk of a hallucinated answer reaching a customer or damaging trust.
Read article →Most design systems fall apart the moment development starts. Here's how we structure ours so they survive real engineering handoff.
Read article →A behind-the-scenes look at the technical and design decisions behind our Shopify Prestige build for a luxury fragrance launch.
Read article →Lessons from building point-of-sale systems for pharmacy and other regulated retail environments, where compliance is an architecture decision.
Read article →Next step — 01 / 01
Tell us what you're building. You'll hear back from a founder within one working day — with honest next steps, not a sales sequence.
Or write directly
sales@cortexley.com