Author: Borja Blanco Mendez

How 4,118 ecommerce brands actually build their stores: a tech-stack map

By Borja Blanco Mendez  /  May 11, 2026

How 4118 ecommerce brands actually build their stores: a tech-stack map

 Pick Shopify and you’re probably launching a fashion or beauty DTC brand. Pick  Shopify Plus or Adobe Commerce and you’re probably running B2B or a complex catalog. Pick Squarespace and you’re probably a creative business with a small store bolted on. Pick BigCommerce and you’re probably scaling past Shopify into multi-channel.

We have spent ten years curating a gallery of design-led ecommerce stores. We sat down to look at what 4,118 of them have in common, and the platform-by-platform brand clustering is sharper than we expected.

  • Wellness DTC clusters on Shopify (Vegan 1.64x, Wellness 1.59x, Sustainable 1.65x).
  • Mid-market apparel clusters on Magento Community (Footwear 2.48x, Eyewear 2.91x, Menswear 2.12x).
  • Indie handmade clusters on WooCommerce (Coffee 2.00x, Handmade 1.94x, Ethical 1.86x).
  • Art and small beverage cluster on Squarespace (Prints 3.66x, Art 2.88x, Drink 3.33x).
  • Outdoor clusters on BigCommerce at 3.97x lift — the single largest tag-platform pairing in the dataset.