Magento vs Shopify Plus vs Vosges Haut-Chocolat’s tech, what runs chocolate DTC best?

Honest cut, chocolate-specific:

Shopify Plus wins if you’re under 50 SKUs, no corporate B2B, gifting calendar is light, and you’re comfortable paying $400, $1,200/mo in apps to bolt on cold-chain (ShipperHQ, Shippo), gift options (Gift Reggie, Wrapin), and a thin B2B layer (Wholesale Hub). Cheap to ship, expensive to scale. Sugarfina ran Shopify Plus for years before moving to a custom stack at $20M+ revenue.

Magento wins if cold-chain rules need to be conditional on ZIP + weather + shipping method (not just a flat ice-pack toggle), gifting seasons need capacity-gated SKUs (not just “sold out”), corporate B2B needs Net-30 + bulk drop-ship + customer hierarchies, and origin + allergen attributes need to be filterable at category. Vosges Haut-Chocolat runs Magento. Tony’s Chocolonely (Netherlands) runs Magento for both DTC and corporate-gifting channels.

Custom / headless (Mast Brothers, Dandelion direction) is for brands above $25M GMV with in-house engineering. Don’t pick this lightly, it’s a $200k+/yr stack.

My rule: under 50 SKUs + DTC-only + light gifting → Shopify. Above 100 SKUs OR corporate B2B share >15% OR cold-chain rules complex → Magento. Above $25M with engineering team → consider headless.