Facts about Centra are from Centra’s website, developer portal, support pages and case studies, and from trade press. Shopify facts are from Shopify’s help centre, product pages and case studies. All were checked on 30 October 2026. Centra does not publish prices. Check the sources listed at the end before you decide.
Centra is a Stockholm platform built for fashion and lifestyle brands that sell direct to consumers and to wholesale buyers. Its clients include COS, Arket, Weekday, Paul Smith, Nudie Jeans and Eton, and in 2025 H&M Group took a minority stake in the business. Brands move in both directions: Centra publishes case studies on brands that left Shopify, and Shopify publishes case studies on brands that left Centra. This guide compares the two as they stand in 2026 and sets out which kind of brand each suits.
The short answer
- Centra is a headless back end: product data, pricing, orders, stock and wholesale in one system, with no storefront of its own. Your agency or in-house team builds and maintains the front end.
- Its wholesale tools are its strongest ground: a digital showroom, linesheets, lookbooks, pre-orders and re-orders, built for the way fashion brands sell to stockists.
- Shopify gives you a storefront, checkout, point of sale and app store in one platform, with B2B built in. Wholesale features such as linesheets and pre-order seasons need an app or custom work.
- Centra suits fashion brands with a large wholesale business and the budget to own a custom front end. Shopify suits brands that sell mainly direct, want to run the store without developers, or need shops and POS on the same platform.
Centra and Shopify in 2026
Centra
Headless back end for fashion
- DTC and wholesale in one system
- Front end built by your agency
- GraphQL APIs
- Price on request
Shopify
Basic, Grow and Advanced
- Storefront, checkout and POS included
- B2B on every plan
- Over 16,000 apps
- Published pricing
Shopify Plus
Shopify’s plan for larger brands
- Customisable checkout
- Fuller B2B and up to nine expansion stores
- Headless with Hydrogen if needed
- Published pricing
Centra was founded in Stockholm in 2016 and has offices in London, New York and Wrocław. It says more than 300 fashion brands run on it, and that 70% of them use both its direct-to-consumer and wholesale products. It releases new features every second week.
Shopify vs Centra at a glance
| Centra | Shopify Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Headless back end, sold as software | Full platform: storefront, checkout, admin and POS |
| Storefront | Built and hosted by your agency or team, for example on Next.js | Liquid themes edited in the theme editor, or Hydrogen (headless) |
| Pricing | Not published; an all-inclusive licence | Published on Shopify’s pricing page |
| Wholesale | Showroom, linesheets, lookbooks, pre-orders and re-orders built in | B2B built in; linesheets and pre-order seasons need an app |
| Several countries | One back end and catalogue, with prices, languages and stock per market | Shopify Markets, plus up to nine expansion stores |
| Point of sale | Integrates with third-party POS systems | Shopify POS, built in |
| Payments | Plugins for Adyen, Klarna, Stripe, PayPal, Qliro and others | Shopify Payments, Shop Pay and other providers |
| Apps and integrations | Integration partners and plugins, including Klaviyo, Voyado, Ingrid and Dynamics 365 | Shopify App Store, over 16,000 apps |
| Share of ecommerce sites (W3Techs) | Not listed | 32.4% |
Source: Centra’s website and developer portal, Shopify’s help centre and pricing page, and W3Techs, 30 October 2026.
Headless by design
This is the main difference. Centra has no storefront or theme of its own. Brands build the front end on its Storefront API, using any framework, and host it themselves or with a provider such as Vercel or Netlify. Centra publishes an open-source Next.js starter, but says it does not cover all of Centra’s features. Content usually sits in a separate CMS such as Storyblok or Contentful. Paul Smith, for example, runs its Centra store on Nuxt with Storyblok.
That gives a brand complete control of design and performance, and it means the front end is the brand’s to maintain. Centra’s own description is that the agency ‘delivers and maintains’ it. Every change to page templates, search, filters or checkout steps is a development task.
Shopify includes the storefront. Themes are built in Liquid, and marketers rearrange sections and blocks in the theme editor without a developer. Brands that want a custom front end can use Hydrogen, Shopify’s headless framework, but most brands are better served by a native theme. We moved Allbirds’ Canada and South Korea stores from headless back to native Shopify. See headless to native Shopify.
Wholesale
Centra’s wholesale product is built for fashion. Its digital showroom lets buyers place pre-orders and re-orders on any device, from shoppable linesheets and public lookbooks with live stock. Since its 2025 update, buyers can mix pre-order and in-stock items in one basket and add SKUs in bulk by CSV, and sales reps and agents have their own roles and approve accounts on negotiated terms. Buyers can pay by prepayment, card, invoice or on terms, with prices and promotions per account.
| Centra wholesale | Shopify (all plans) | Shopify Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company accounts and buyers | Yes, with reps and agents | Yes, with locations | Yes, with locations |
| Prices per account | Yes | Up to three catalogues | Unlimited catalogues |
| Net terms and invoices | Yes, plus prepayments | Yes | Yes, with deposits and partial payments |
| Pre-orders by season | Built in | App or custom build | App or custom build |
| Linesheets and lookbooks | Built in, shoppable | App or custom build | App or custom build |
| Quantity rules and price breaks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sales rep ordering | Built in | Draft orders, or an app | Draft orders, or an app |
Source: Centra wholesale pages and Wholesale 2.0 announcement, and Shopify help centre, B2B features by plan.
If wholesale is a large share of your business and your buyers order by season from linesheets, Centra’s tools are hard to match on Shopify without an app or custom work. If trade is a smaller channel, or buyers mostly re-order stock lines, Shopify’s built-in B2B usually covers it, from one admin and even one store. See Shopify B2B.
Markets, stock and orders
Centra runs every market from one back end and one catalogue, with prices, languages and currencies set per market. Its order management handles unlimited warehouses with rules that allocate stock by location, tags shops as warehouses for ship-from-store, and supports click-and-collect and endless aisle.
Shopify Markets sells in other countries from one store with local currencies, languages, domains and prices. Shopify Plus adds up to nine expansion stores for separate countries or wholesale. Ceva runs four brands, more than 20 sites and eight countries on one Shopify Plus codebase that we built. See international expansion.
Shops and point of sale
Centra connects to third-party POS systems through integrations, and supports ship-from-store and in-store returns through its API. It does not have a POS of its own.
Shopify POS is part of the platform, so stock, customers, orders and gift cards are shared between the shops and the website, with buy online and pick up in store, and buy in store and ship to the customer. For fashion brands with their own shops, this is often the deciding point. See Shopify POS, including Allbirds.
Checkout and payments
On Centra, the checkout is part of the custom front end, and payments run through plugins for providers such as Adyen, Klarna, Stripe, PayPal and Qliro. With Adyen Drop-in, card fields are hosted by Adyen, which keeps card data out of the brand’s code. Centra says its licence carries no transaction fees and that it supports over 200 payment providers.
Shopify hosts its own checkout and is certified as a Level 1 PCI DSS provider. Shop Pay is built in, and Shopify Plus brands customise the checkout with checkout extensions and Shopify Functions. Shopify charges a transaction fee only if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments.
Integrations and AI
Centra connects to ERP, warehouse, marketing and returns tools through partners and plugins, including Microsoft Dynamics 365, Visma, Klaviyo, Voyado, Ingrid, Klarna and Adyen. Centra MCP lets AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Gemini carry out around 300 tasks in the back end, within the access set for each user.
The Shopify App Store lists over 16,000 apps that install without a developer. Shopify sells through Google’s AI Mode and Gemini with Shopify checkout, and builds its Sidekick assistant into the admin. See our guide to Shopify Editions Fall ’26.
Peak trading
Centra says its platform is monitored around the clock and delivers 99.9% or better uptime through Black Friday, drops and flash sales. On a headless build, the front end’s hosting and caching also carry the load. Over Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025, Shopify served more than 81 million shoppers and peaked at 489 million requests a minute at its edge, across storefront and checkout.
What it costs to run
Centra does not publish its prices, so compare quotes. On a headless build, the back-end licence is only part of the cost. Compare these over three years:
- Platform licence or plan fee
- Front-end build, hosting and CMS
- Ongoing front-end development and maintenance
- Wholesale tools, and any apps needed to match them
- POS hardware and software
- Payment processing fees
- Your team’s time running the platform
Our Shopify Plus total cost of ownership calculator adds up the Shopify side.
When Centra makes sense
- Wholesale is a large share of your sales, and buyers order by season from linesheets.
- You want one system for direct and wholesale orders, stock and pricing.
- You want a fully custom front end and have an agency or team to maintain it.
- Your shops run on a POS system you plan to keep.
When Shopify is the better fit
- You sell mainly direct, with trade as a smaller or simpler channel.
- Your team wants to change pages, collections and promotions without developers.
- You run your own shops and want POS on the same platform as the website.
- You rely on apps for subscriptions, loyalty, reviews or retention.
- You would rather spend development budget on growth than on maintaining a front end.
Moving from Centra to Shopify
A Centra to Shopify migration moves products, customers, historical orders and content, and sets up a redirect from every old URL so you keep search rankings. Data comes out through Centra’s Integration API. Matrixify, the import tool most large Shopify migrations use, has no dedicated Centra connector, so the export is mapped to its templates. Content in a separate CMS, such as Storyblok, moves separately or stays connected to Shopify.
Customer passwords cannot be moved. Shopify’s new customer accounts sign shoppers in with a one-time code sent by email, so no password is needed.
Shopify’s case studies include NUDIENT, which moved back to Shopify from Centra and brought 15 storefronts into one store with Shopify Markets. We build and run Shopify stores for fashion brands including Represent and New & Lingwood. See fashion and apparel and Shopify migration.
Questions to ask before you choose
- What share of your sales is wholesale, and how do your buyers order?
- Who will build and maintain a headless front end, and what will that cost each year?
- Do you run shops, and which POS will they use?
- Which payment providers, ERP and warehouse systems need to connect?
- How often does your team change the site, and who makes the changes?
- Which apps or integrations do you rely on today?
FAQs
What is Centra?
A Stockholm ecommerce platform for fashion and lifestyle brands, founded in 2016. It runs direct-to-consumer and wholesale sales from one headless back end.
Is Centra headless?
Yes. Centra provides the back end and APIs. Brands build and host their own storefront, usually with an agency.
Is Shopify better than Centra?
For brands that sell mainly direct, run their own shops or want to manage the store without developers, yes. Centra suits fashion brands with large seasonal wholesale businesses and the budget for a custom front end.
Can Shopify handle fashion wholesale?
Shopify has B2B on every plan, with company accounts, catalogues, net terms, quantity rules and price breaks. Plus adds unlimited catalogues, deposits and partial payments. Seasonal pre-orders and linesheets need an app or custom work.
How much does Centra cost?
Centra does not publish prices. It describes an all-inclusive licence with no transaction fees. Add the cost of building and maintaining a headless front end.
Will we lose SEO rankings moving from Centra to Shopify?
Not if the migration maps every old URL to a redirect, keeps page titles and content, and is checked in Search Console after launch.
Can customers keep their passwords?
No. Passwords cannot be moved to Shopify. With Shopify’s new customer accounts, customers sign in with a one-time code by email.
Sources
Checked on 30 October 2026: Centra homepage, contact page, ecommerce back end, wholesale, Wholesale 2.0, order management, omnichannel, Centra vs Shopify, Adyen integration and Paul Smith case study; Centra developer portal on APIs, the storefront accelerator, payment providers and Centra MCP; Centra partners; Centra release notes; Retail Week on H&M Group’s investment; Shopify help centre pages on B2B plan features and importing customers; Shopify Markets, POS, Hydrogen, security, BFCM 2025 data and NUDIENT case study; Matrixify; Shopify App Store; W3Techs.
