E-commerce without the transaction fees and bloat
Head-to-Head
| Category | Shopify | aio |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ruby on Rails, hosted | Cloudflare edge |
| TTFB | ~300 ms | <50 ms |
| Pricing | $39 – 399/mo | €49 – 189/mo |
| Transaction fees | 0.5 – 2% (without Shopify Payments) | None |
| Blog | Basic, limited | Full Markdown CMS |
| Sales funnels | No (needs apps) | Built-in multi-step |
| Shopify Email (limited free) | Full send/receive | |
| AI tools | Shopify Magic (basic) | Full AI suite |
| Community | No | Native Social Hub |
| Calendar | No | Built-in scheduling |
| Apps needed | 20 – 30 typical | Zero plugins |
| Content marketing | Minimal | Blog, funnels, email, SEO |
Competitor TTFB: CrUX median field data. aio: edge-cached response time.
Why Switch
Shopify takes 0.5 – 2% of every sale (plus payment processing). aio: zero platform fees on every transaction.
Shopify's blog is an afterthought. aio is a full CMS with AI-powered content creation and built-in SEO tools.
Shopify stores average $100 – 300/mo in app subscriptions. aio has everything built in — funnels, email, calendar, community.
Shopify median TTFB: ~300 ms (CrUX). aio serves from Cloudflare's edge in under 50 ms — static-site speed with full e-commerce functionality.
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