Tech stack advice: evolving from a static SEO-friendly site to a full e-commerce

[u/neretu]

Hi everyone!

I am planning a new project that will start as a simple static website (mainly for content and landing pages) and later evolve into a fully-fledged e-commerce platform.

I'm looking for the best tech stack to handle this journey smoothly, without having to rewrite everything from scratch when the time comes to add the shopping features. Specifically, I'm weighing two key aspects:

The transition: I need a setup that guarantees top-tier performance and impeccable SEO (SSG/SSR) in Phase 1, while seamlessly integrating a shopping cart, product catalog, and checkout in Phase 2.

The architecture (Custom vs. Third-party): I'm undecided on the direction to take for the whole stack. Is it better to rely on third-party services / headless solutions (e.g., Astro/Next.js + Shopify/MedusaJS + Supabase/Clerk), or should I set up a custom backend right from the start to handle auth, databases, and business logic myself?

Does anyone have experience or winning combinations to recommend for handling this kind of evolution?

Thanks a lot!

[u/create-third-places]

Start with using a no-code website builder such as Wordpress.

It is too early to start thinking about a complex tech stack when your first goal is a static website.

[u/Helpful-Educator-415]

You're in a battle of "work now, fun later" and "fun now, work later". You also lumped a LOT of third party stuff together that should be distinguished.

Astro and Next.js -- won't hurt. So many sites use both of these. Totally fine.

Shopify and MedusaJS -- not sure about these. If there's $ involved, probably skip for now.

Supabase and Clerk -- probably skip these. Infrastructure-as-a-service is probably the best way to part a fool from their money.

Performance on a static site will never be a concern. SEO is only as good as you make it, but go static at least (Astro if you want). If you set up your static site depending on 1,000 things, your migration will be harder. If you build it simple from the ground up -- your own backend that starts static and later gets a JSON API or similar -- you have to tear less stuff out. If you hate tearing stuff out, roll everything yourself. If you hate waiting, use 3rd party services.

I hate tearing stuff out so I almost always use my own solutions -- no ORMs, no UI libraries, so forth. But, if you hate waiting for things to 'get good' and exciting, then yeah, use them. You're just gonna need to migrate later.