Shopify Winter '26: The Platform Gap Just Got Wider. Here's Why.

Spoiler: they can't catch up. Not without significant custom development budgets and timelines that stretch into 2027. But by that time, Shopify is light years ahead.

At Ask Phill, we build the next. That means staying ahead of where commerce is heading, not where it's been. When we evaluate platform releases, we're not asking "what's new?" We're asking "what would this cost our clients to build if they weren't on Shopify?"

This Winter '26 Edition, Shopify's "RenAIssance" release, answers that question with uncomfortable clarity for anyone still on legacy platforms.

Here are the 10 features that would cost you 4 weeks to 6+ months of custom development and maintenance if you're running Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce (Magento), or Centra. On Shopify Plus, they work out of the box.

Sidekick is Shopify's built-in AI assistant. Think ChatGPT, but trained on commerce and your store data. Pulse takes it further: instead of waiting for questions, it proactively analyses your store and surfaces actionable suggestions. It might flag that your return policy is missing, suggest bundling products based on cart patterns, or identify why customers are abandoning checkout.

Our take: Sidekick was already powerful, but giving it these extra capabilities transforms it from a chatbot into an actual tool. Shopify shows the long-term vision here. They're investing in making AI genuinely useful for day-to-day operations, not just adding it as a checkbox feature.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Einstein AI requires all your data to live within the Salesforce ecosystem. If you're using external tools for analytics, email, or inventory, Einstein can't see it. And Einstein is fundamentally CRM-focused, not commerce operations-focused.
• Adobe Commerce: Sensei handles merchandising recommendations but doesn't proactively analyse your operations. You'd need to integrate Adobe Analytics, Real-Time CDP, and Journey Optimizer to get close, each requiring separate implementation.
• Centra: Still building native AI features. Their AI capabilities are in early access testing, not production-ready.

Build-it-yourself estimate: +3 months minimum to integrate a third-party AI analytics layer with proactive alerting.

Explore Sidekick Pulse on Shopify Editions

What it does: Describe what you want to automate in plain English. "Tag customers if they place an order over €200" or "Send a notification when inventory drops below 10." Sidekick builds the complete Flow automation for you. No coding.

Our take: This is where commerce is heading. The ability for brands to build internal AI solutions to speed up processes and become more efficient, without needing developers for every automation, changes the operational economics of running an e-commerce business.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Flow automations require certified administrators. Even simple automations need someone who understands the Flow builder interface and Salesforce's data model.
• Adobe Commerce: You'd need to implement Adobe's Agentic AI capabilities through their Sensei framework, which requires integration with Adobe Experience Platform, a separate product with its own implementation timeline.
• Centra: No native automation builder. You're relying on third-party tools like Zapier or custom webhook implementations.

Build-it-yourself estimate: 4-6 weeks to implement a natural language automation layer on top of existing workflow tools.

Explore Flow Builder on Shopify Editions

What it does: Click on any element in your theme editor and tell Sidekick what to change. "Make this button rounded." "Change this heading colour to match our brand." "Add more padding here." Sidekick understands and modifies the appropriate settings instantly.

Our take: Although it looks amazing and we're excited to see Shopify go this direction, we do expect challenges in managing codebase quality over the long run. There's real risk of people at brands changing things outside of brand guidelines they shouldn't be touching. For enterprise implementations, governance around who can use this feature and what guardrails exist will be critical. But the direction is right: lowering the barrier between "I want this change" and "this change is live."

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Doesn't exist.
• Adobe Commerce: Page Builder exists but has no conversational interface.
• Centra: Headless by design. All frontend changes require developer involvement.

Build-it-yourself estimate: This capability doesn't exist as a third-party solution you could integrate. You'd be building from scratch for a long, long time.

Explore Theme Editing on Shopify Editions

What it does: One toggle in your Shopify admin makes your products discoverable and purchasable inside AI conversations on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and other AI platforms. Customers can find products, add to cart, and complete checkout without ever visiting your website. Your checkout, your customer data, your attribution: all retained.

Our take: If your e-commerce platform has no native AI agent integrations yet, you're already late. This is the foundation of commerce in an AI-first world. What impresses us most isn't just the feature. It's how fast and well-executed the integration is with LLMs. And Shopify isn't keeping this proprietary: they've made the MCP (Model Context Protocol) and development kit available for anyone building AI tools. That's platform thinking, not feature thinking.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Would require custom API development for each AI platform, plus ongoing maintenance as these platforms evolve their commerce capabilities.
• Adobe Commerce: No native integration exists. You'd need to build custom connectors and figure out attribution yourself.
• Centra: Nothing available. Their focus remains on traditional storefront channels.

Build-it-yourself estimate: 6+ months to build integrations with multiple AI platforms, plus ongoing maintenance resources.

Explore Agentic Storefronts on Shopify Editions

What it does: A flight simulator for your store. SimGym creates AI shoppers based on aggregated shopping patterns from billions of Shopify transactions, then lets you test business decisions (new themes, pricing changes, UX modifications) before real customers see them. Get early signals on how changes might impact conversion without risking actual revenue.

Our take: This is something we never thought about, and that's exactly why it matters. The idea of helping brands and agencies optimise storefronts using automated AI agents shows Shopify's thought leadership. They're thinking several steps ahead of where the competition is, solving problems the rest of the market hasn't even articulated yet.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: A/B testing exists, but predictive simulation based on AI shoppers? You'd need to build this from scratch or find a specialised vendor.
• Adobe Commerce: Adobe Target provides testing capabilities, but nothing approaching AI-driven predictive simulation.
• Centra: No equivalent exists.

Build-it-yourself estimate: This is genuinely novel. Building something similar would require AI developers and will take a lot of effort.

Explore SimGym on Shopify Editions

What it does: Schedule, test, and ship storefront changes directly from your Shopify Admin. Built-in A/B testing, staged rollouts, and the ability to test changes in a sandbox before going live. All without external tools.

Our take: This is what we've been waiting for: native A/B testing in Shopify. The advantage goes beyond convenience. Native testing means faster page loads without CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) issues and flickering that plague third-party testing tools. It means more reliable data because Shopify controls the entire stack. And it means store managers can run experiments without needing technical resources to manage external integrations.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Requires third-party tools like Optimizely or LaunchDarkly, each with integration overhead and additional licensing costs.
• Adobe Commerce: Adobe Target integration is possible but requires Adobe Experience Cloud licensing and implementation.
• Centra: No native experimentation. You're implementing external tools.

Build-it-yourself estimate: 4-6 weeks to integrate a third-party experimentation platform, plus annual licensing.

Explore Rollouts on Shopify Editions

What it does: A first-of-its-kind professional POS hub that connects card readers, receipt printers, barcode scanners, and cash drawers to iOS or Android tablets via wired connections. The hub contains a processor that actively manages peripherals, monitors connections, and handles automatic updates. MFi-certified for Apple devices, supporting multiple simultaneous connections.

Our take: This shows Shopify is taking POS seriously for enterprise retail. Combined with all the POS improvements over the past year (offline payments, expanded Tap to Pay, bundles support), this hardware release demonstrates commitment to making Shopify work for larger retailers with demanding requirements and multiple locations. The reliability focus (wired connections, active monitoring, automatic updates) addresses real pain points we hear from retail brands.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Limited POS capabilities. Most enterprise retailers using SFCC integrate third-party POS systems, adding complexity and data sync challenges.
• Adobe Commerce: Requires third-party POS solutions entirely. No native hardware integration story.
• Centra: Headless platform with no POS offering. Retailers need separate systems entirely.

Build-it-yourself estimate: POS hardware integration isn't something you "build yourself." You select and integrate a third-party vendor, which comes with ongoing licensing costs and integration maintenance.

Explore POS Hub on Shopify Editions

What it does: Set different prices for the same products across retail locations. Run premium pricing in high-rent districts and value pricing in other markets. Manage location-specific catalogs while maintaining unified inventory management. Markets for Retail brings the same localisation power that exists for international e-commerce to your physical store network.

Our take: This is the natural evolution of Shopify's Markets feature into physical retail. For brands operating stores in different economic zones (think central London vs. regional outlets, or flagship stores vs. pop-ups), the ability to price strategically without managing separate systems is significant. Combined with POS Hub, it shows Shopify building a complete enterprise retail stack, not just an e-commerce platform with POS bolted on.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Possible but requires significant configuration and often custom development to handle location-based pricing at POS level.
• Adobe Commerce: Multi-store pricing exists but the POS story is third-party, so synchronisation becomes a complex integration challenge.
• Centra: Strong on online multi-market support, but no native POS means retail pricing flexibility requires separate systems.

Build-it-yourself estimate: +8 weeks of configuration and custom development to achieve location-based pricing with proper inventory sync.

Explore Markets for Retail on Shopify Editions

What it does: Apply once for ongoing access to funding, then draw what you need when you need it, up to your approved limit. As you repay, your available funds replenish. No reapplication required. Pay fees only on your outstanding balance, not the full credit line. Now expanding to the Netherlands, Spain, and Ireland alongside the existing US availability.

Our take: This reflects Shopify's philosophy of empowering builders and entrepreneurs beyond just software. Traditional business financing requires extensive documentation, personal guarantees, and lengthy approval processes. Shopify Capital uses your actual transaction data to underwrite decisions, making capital accessible to brands that might struggle with traditional banking relationships. For scaling brands, having working capital access embedded in your commerce platform reduces friction at exactly the moments when speed matters most: inventory purchases before peak season, marketing spend to capture momentum, or hiring to support growth.

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: No equivalent. Financing is entirely separate from your commerce platform.
• Adobe Commerce: No financing offering.
• Centra: No financing offering.

Build-it-yourself estimate: Not applicable. This isn't a feature you can build. It's a financial product that requires the scale and transaction data Shopify has.

Explore Shopify Capital on Shopify Editions

What it does: A complete toolkit for developers building AI shopping experiences. The Shopify Catalog API lets AI agents search across billions of products from all Shopify merchants. The Checkout MCP (Model Context Protocol) enables secure, merchant-branded checkout directly within AI interfaces. Dev Dash provides an all-in-one workspace for experimenting with and building these capabilities. This is the infrastructure layer that powers Agentic Storefronts, but opened up for anyone to build on.

Our take: This is where Shopify's ecosystem advantage becomes undeniable. When you're on Shopify, your products become part of a searchable catalog of billions of items. Your checkout can be embedded anywhere an AI agent operates. Developers can build shopping experiences that span your brand and others, creating discovery opportunities that don't exist on siloed platforms. The MCP approach (making this an open protocol rather than a proprietary Shopify feature) suggests they're thinking about becoming the infrastructure layer for AI commerce, not just a participant in it. For brands evaluating platforms today, this is the question: do you want to be on the platform that's building the future, or the one that will be integrating with it years later?

The competitor reality:

• Salesforce Commerce Cloud: APIs exist, but nothing purpose-built for AI agent integration. Building an AI shopping experience on SFCC means custom development from scratch.
• Adobe Commerce: REST and GraphQL APIs available, but no MCP server, no agent-specific tooling, no catalog that spans beyond your own products.
• Centra: GraphQL API available, but headless means you're building everything yourself anyway, and there's no ecosystem-level catalog to tap into.

Build-it-yourself estimate: This isn't about building one feature. It's about whether your platform is positioned for the AI commerce future.

Explore Commerce Agents on Shopify Editions

Every feature on this list can theoretically be replicated on other platforms. That's not the point.

The point is opportunity cost. While you're spending 6 months and €300,000 building AI agent integrations, Shopify merchants are already selling through ChatGPT. While you're evaluating experimentation vendors and negotiating contracts, they're running native A/B tests. While you're integrating yet another third-party tool, they're managing everything from one admin.

By the time you achieve parity, Shopify will have shipped another 150 features.

Shopify Winter '26 is the evidence of a widening innovation gap.

Traditional enterprise platforms, built on architectures from the 2000s and 2010s, are fundamentally constrained in how fast they can evolve. AI integration requires rethinking data models. Native experimentation requires controlling the entire stack. Agentic commerce requires ecosystem-level thinking.

Shopify can ship these capabilities because they built for this moment. Legacy platforms will retrofit them: slowly, partially, expensively.

If you're evaluating platforms for a migration that will launch in 2026 or 2027, you're not choosing between today's feature sets. You're choosing between innovation trajectories. Where will Shopify be in 3 years versus where will Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento or Centra be? Based on Winter '26, that gap is widening, not closing.

Let the "RenAIssance" begin.