Does Headless Shopify require maintenance?

There can often be more moving parts in a Headless Shopify store, but this also balances itself out as their modular architecture permits bite-sized, incremental upkeep – as opposed to a time-intensive maintenance schedule.

Does Headless Shopify require more maintenance than Shopify Liquid?

This is actually a fairly tricky question to answer, because it really does depend. There are some "givens" in terms of the maintenance level required by a headless Shopify store, which are expected updates that should always be anticipated.

Shopify-related maintenance in a headless build

These are things like updating of the frontend and any middleware to maintain compatibility with the Shopify API over time. This is required because Shopify releases updates to its APIs, and sometimes deprecates a certain API or query in favor of a revised approach as the platform changes. The Shopify platform itself undergoes frequent updates, which Shopify known to release seasonal enhancements (usually in the form of Editions) to address changes to the platform in a way that’s succinct and easy to digest. Beyond Shopify Editions, updates are routinely made to service their collection of APIs as well, such as updating requests and queries, restructuring how queries and mutating should be written, and modifying API response structure or moving things around.

This is a natural part of the software development process and comes part and parcel of maintaining such a large platform.

These kind of updates affect Shopify stores whether they’re headless or not, though. Even if you’re using a Liquid theme on native Shopify, platform updates will require updates to the theme and any custom functionality over time. In this sense, making adjustments to the store in response to Shopify’s wider platform updates is to be expected from time to time, whether you’re headless or not. This ensures that the store remains compatible with Shopify’s latest releases, and that it equally makes use of new features introduced by Shopify.

For a headless Shopify store, this process is  quite comparable to the level of maintenance that would be required by a theme, a custom app, or any other custom code.

Shopify usually provides ample notice ahead of major changes, or otherwise breaking changes, that affect an API in use by the store, sometimes with a window of several months or more. This allows headless stores the ability to forward-plan, giving time to consider any updates that may be required, as well as testing time.

Takeaway: Maintaining peak compatibility with changes to Shopify APIs over time is fairly comparable to making updates to a Liquid theme or custom apps. Updates to Shopify’s APIs usually mirror or follow changes that are made to the Shopify platform as a whole, and generally occur in bite-sized amounts. Most of the headless Shopify stores we maintain require API-related updates no more than a couple of times per year, if that. The frequency that your agency or developer partner will be required to make these kind of updates varies, based on the specific API requests that the store makes, and how the data is used or mapped to the frontend, its middleware, or any other parts of the stack. Certain updates won’t affect your store, such as when Shopify updates an API or the required query/ response structure of an API that isn’t used by your store.

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Maintenance of composable modules or microservices

Many headless Shopify stores implement a composable architecture, a development approach that sees a combination of best-fit, modular tech married together within a tech stack to deliver a stronger overall build. For example, delegating specific features such as on-site search, user authentication, and content creation to individual applications that each provide the best possible feature set and most applicable use case for the store individually - and then allowing them to pass data between them via APIs while delivering a unified experience all from one interconnected front end.

In a composable setup, there are more microservices to keep track of in total, with each potentially requiring small amendments or updates to the codebase as changes are released over time. However, on the flip side, a composable setup ensures that each integrated platform or micro-service is modular by design, meaning that the effects of updates in one area won’t impact another, and these changes are usually resolved with small adjustments to the codebase in bite-sized amounts over time. The types of changes to expect are similar to that of the Shopify platform. Even when Shopify updates a particular API, query, or response format, the changes won’t necessarily affect the headless store at all — unless it directly uses the APIs that have been updated, and often in a specific way.

Takeaway: The amount of maintenance required by third-party platforms as part of a Headless Shopify setup that uses composable architecture is likely to be fairly minimal over time.

Maintenance of the JavaScript frontend framework

Headless Shopify stores use JavaScript, most often in the form of a frontend framework, to deliver the headless storefront.

The most popular frameworks remain under constant development, introducing new features for developers and gradual improvements to performance. This helps to keep them secure, up to date and most excitingly — innovative.

Like all other software, these updates tend to be released as either minor version updates or major releases, in order to provide a reliable and stable framework that’s also manageable to maintain.

These types of updates aren’t mandatory, particularly if they don’t concern security, and can often be made as and when they make sense from a business and development point of view.

For production stores, it makes sense to stick to LTS (long-term support) releases, as these are more stable and reduce the need to update frequently.

However, for fast-moving stores that are under continual development and iterative improvement, it’s a wise idea to keep an eye on releases to ensure things stay up to date and that your development team has access to the latest stable feature set.

Lagging too far behind can introduce additional complexity when the codebase is finally updated, in the form of refactoring. As with many things, little and often is probably the winning approach here, as long as the production build sticks with stable releases and undergoes sufficient testing after big version updates. Generally, the bigger the codebase, the more intensive it is to update the frontend framework between major releases to ensure optimal support. This can be mitigated by employing a highly reusable component architecture, which is something to raise with your development team or agency partner.

Maintenance of the headless CMS

Many of our headless Shopify builds incorporate a headless CMS into the tech stack. These can either be open source, or SaaS/PaaS based. We tend to find that SaaS offerings require less in the way of ongoing maintenance, which makes sense as they’re hosted and updated by the CMS provider. However, some changes can still occur over time, such as to API endpoints, query requirements, or the formatting of response data. Similarly to how Shopify updates its own APIs, these changes tend to be fairly minor, usually with a good notice period, and can be addressed in small doses as and when needed.

The story is somewhat different when hosting an open source headless CMS, as these can require some kind of server maintenance, in addition to manual upgrading of the CMS itself upon desired version releases. The maintenance burden can be eased by opting for cloud-based serverless architecture, but you’ll typically still be required to host and maintain a database for the CMS.

In respect to self-hosting a headless CMS–with each major upgrade (and some minor upgrades), maintenance in the form of refactors or replacement of deprecated methods and functions can be expected, particularly if your self-hosted CMS uses large amounts of custom code in the form of integrations, hooks, or lifecycle events.

SaaS/PaaS options (even if open source) will — by and large — require much less maintenance (if any), at least in terms of software upkeep. In general, maintenance of a SaaS headless CMS within your headless Shopify build will pertain to any portions of custom code that hook into or respond to the headless CMS.

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Not all releases will be mandatory, but as we mentioned above, little and often is usually the best approach.

Takeaway: a headless CMS can introduce a small amount of additional maintenance into a headless Shopify build. This remains manageable while keeping things stable by adopting a "little-and-often" approach. In general, self-hosted open source options will involve a greater level of maintenance to remain up to date, but SaaS offerings can also require action in the event of updates or changes to queries or APIs. 

Maintenance of Shopify Apps

Retaining the headless storefront’s compatibility with any Shopify Apps installed in the store is something you should bear in mind. Public apps can make changes to their APIs over time, which may involve minor updates as to how the headless storefront interacts with them.

These types of changes will largely be limited to API updates by the apps in use. It's common for apps to release new versions or major releases of their APIs over time, though these events are usually years apart. Besides this consideration, the most popular Shopify apps don’t tend to undergo changes frequently enough to require large amounts of maintenance or developer input. In our experience, popular Shopify Apps generally experience API updates at a lower frequency than the Shopify platform itself. Sometimes, apps will need to update their APIs in response to large changes that Shopify makes to its own platform or APIs, in order to maintain compatibility, which in turn can mean updates to individual apps' APIs too.

Takeaway: Prepare to keep an eye on any changes made to the APIs of Shopify apps over time, when used in a headless setup. However, these changes are typically quite infrequent, and shouldn't require continual maintenance. Maintenance level in this regard will be dictated by the number of different headless-supporting apps used on the headless storefront, and how these integrations interact with the said Shopify apps. APIs can be updated or change over time, so this should be monitored and action taken in response.