How do you vet real shopify development experts vs basic theme customizers?
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We’re getting ready to transition our unique e-commerce website to Shopify Plus in the coming quarter, making it challenging to differentiate between real Shopify developers with experience and people who simply customize templates for clients. Our catalog has over three thousand SKUs with complex product variants, multi-currency support, and custom ERP integrations, so we need custom Liquid coding and serious API work—not just someone installing five different third-party apps.
Every developer portfolio I review claims they are "experts," but when I ask about headless setups, checkout extensibility, or custom app architecture, the conversation stalls out. It’s frustrating because a bad migration can completely destroy our site speed and tank our organic search rankings overnight.
How did you guys vet your technical team before handing over access to your store? Did you do a mini technical project beforehand? Or do you depend on official partnerships? If you know highly regarded professionals in the shopify development experts who can help with executive migrations, please share your ideas or the type of questions I should be asking on discovery calls!