Introducing the New ShopsWired

Today we're launching a completely rebuilt ShopsWired. Not a redesign, not a feature release — a new platform, rewritten from the ground up. We tore down the old product and rebuilt commerce as something you can program, extend, and shape around your business — all on a platform we fully host and run for you.

Where we started

The original ShopsWired had a simple, useful idea: eCommerce for your local business. You could spin up a shop, import products from places like Etsy, set up local delivery, manage coupons, and drop your store onto an existing website with a few embed HTML tags. It was transaction-focused and deliberately simple.

That simplicity was also its ceiling. The embed model meant your store lived inside someone else's page, with little control over the experience. Customization was limited to the options we shipped. If your business needed something we hadn't built — a custom checkout flow, a bespoke data model, an integration with a niche carrier — there was no door to open. You were renting a fixed product, not building on a platform.

So we asked a harder question: what would ShopsWired look like if anything on the storefront could be changed, and the core commerce engine itself was open to developers?

What we built instead

The new ShopsWired is a full, fully managed commerce platform built for both merchants and developers. Instead of embedding a fixed widget, you launch complete, standalone storefronts on your own custom domain — install ready-made themes and plugins with no code, or build your own on an engine where even the basics of e-commerce are modular and extensible. Either way, we host, scale, and run all of it.

Five things define the new platform:

1. Plugins & Themes

The core e-commerce functionality is exposed to plugins. You can intercept, modify, and extend the entire shopping experience through event hooks — data hooks, cart and checkout hooks, custom payment gateways, search providers, dashboard widgets, and template render hooks. Themes use a Liquid templating engine with route data loaders, custom filters, and full control over markup. Want to change how checkout works? There's a hook for that. And anything you build, you can publish for free or sell to other merchants.

2. A real scripting engine

Plugins run secure, server-side JavaScript. You hook into lifecycle events, run background work, and talk to the database through built-in sw.* bridges — no external server required. A scheduled job is just a script with a cron expression in its manifest:

module.exports.run = function(ctx) {
    // Sync inventory, send a digest, reconcile orders —
    // runs on the schedule defined in your plugin manifest.
    console.log("Running scheduled job...");
};

For heavier work, durable background tasks (sw.task.bg) run outside the request lifecycle with continuations for long-running jobs — all subject to fair, per-plan limits.

3. Custom Records

Products and orders are just the start. With custom records you define your own database schemas directly from a plugin — build a CRM, an inventory manager, a booking system, or anything your business actually needs, all on the same platform that runs your store.

4. The Wired Network

The original "wired" idea — connecting shops — grew up. You can now seamlessly pull products from other ShopsWired stores into your own, or syndicate your catalog to other merchants with automated revenue splitting. Cross-store commerce is built in, not bolted on.

5. A CLI and native MCP server

Develop locally with instant live preview: edit plugins and themes on your machine and watch the changes hit your shop in real time. And because the platform ships a native MCP server, AI agents can work with your store directly — a first-class part of the toolchain, not an afterthought.

The economics changed too

We kept the part of the old ShopsWired that merchants loved — fair, predictable pricing — and made it sharper. The new platform charges 0% transaction fees on every plan. You pay your payment processor's standard rate and nothing to us on top. Every shop, on every tier, gets a custom domain with automatic SSL and global edge caching, so browsing traffic is served from the CDN and never eats into your rate limits.

Why this matters

Most platforms make you choose: the easy one you can't customize, or the powerful one you have to host and maintain yourself. We built ShopsWired so you don't have to choose. Install a theme and launch in minutes with no code — or open the hood, write plugins, define your own data, and build something no off-the-shelf store could be. The floor is low and the ceiling is gone.

Get started

The new ShopsWired is live today with a 30-day free trial — no credit card required. Spin up a shop, install the CLI, and build something that's exactly what you need.