Design Shopify
Last Updated: December 29, 2025
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a multi-tenant e-commerce platform that enables merchants to create online stores, manage products, process orders, and accept payments without building infrastructure from scratch.
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The core idea is to abstract away the complexity of running an online business. Merchants focus on their products and customers while Shopify handles storefronts, inventory, checkout, payments, and order fulfillment behind the scenes.
Popular Examples: Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento
This system design problem covers multi-tenancy, inventory management, payment processing, and handling traffic spikes during flash sales. It tests your ability to design a system that balances consistency (inventory, payments) with high availability (storefronts).
In this chapter, we will explore the high-level design of an e-commerce platform like Shopify.
Let's start by clarifying the requirements: