21phi designs, builds and keeps running headless storefronts on Hydrogen, Oxygen and the Storefront API for Shopify Plus brands, and stays embedded with your team as the people who own the store after launch.
21phi is a Shopify Hydrogen agency that designs, builds and keeps running headless storefronts for Shopify Plus brands across North America. Shopify Hydrogen development is for brands whose Liquid theme has become the limit and who want one senior team that owns the storefront after launch, not a developer who ships and leaves.
Shopify Hydrogen is Shopify's React-based framework for building headless storefronts on top of Shopify's Storefront API; current versions are built on React Router (formerly Remix). Headless means the storefront front end is decoupled from Shopify's back office and checkout and talks to Shopify through APIs; Shopify still runs products, orders, customers and checkout.
Hydrogen is the right choice when the theme is the problem: too many apps working against each other, product experiences the theme cannot express, pages slowed by accumulated scripts. It is the wrong choice when the store is simple and a well-built Liquid theme, a conventional Shopify storefront built with Shopify's Liquid templating and the theme editor, would do. We say so on the first call.
Brands hire us for the build and keep us as the embedded team behind the store: integrations, visuals, broken apps, urgent fixes, analytics, with a named senior person on the other end. It costs more than a body shop. It is also why the storefront keeps improving instead of slowly breaking.
We start with the catalog, the merchandising rules and the pages that make money, then decide what Hydrogen has to express and what stays in Shopify's admin. The output is a shared brief: product systems, color logic, cart behavior, account area, markets, content model.
We are honest about platform limits. Shopify's hosted checkout stays Shopify's: branding moves within what checkout extensibility allows, and we tell you before the build what it can and cannot do. If a request is better deferred, we say so.
The stack is Shopify's own, and headless Shopify development on it rests on three pieces. Oxygen: Shopify's global edge hosting for Hydrogen storefronts, included with Shopify plans; deploys from Git. Storefront API: Shopify's GraphQL API that a headless storefront uses to read products, collections, carts and customer data. Customer Account API: Shopify's API and passwordless login for customer accounts in headless storefronts.
Editorial content lives in Sanity, a headless CMS 21phi uses for editorial and marketing content on its own site and on client storefronts. Product data stays in Shopify and video streams through Mux. Every component comes from the design system, and every change goes to staging with a preview link before production.
Third-party tools are integrated into the Hydrogen storefront rather than bolted on: reviews, helpdesk chat, returns, a store-credit wallet in the account area, inventory sync, and ad pixels in code rather than a tag-manager container.
We sit in your channels. 21phi joins the group chats for web, customer care and the wider team, and a question from any teammate gets answered there directly by the person who will do the work. A shared task board shows what is in progress and what shipped.
Requests come from every department and all of them land with us: a final-sale label from customer care, a speed check from logistics, a pricing display from operations, a landing page from marketing, a navigation change from the founder. At one of our Shopify Plus clients, a chat widget the support team asked for was scoped, reviewed with the founder and shipped by the same people.
Maintenance is budgeted, not improvised: framework, package and Shopify API version upkeep is a standing monthly item, so the storefront does not quietly break between projects.
Moving from a Liquid theme to Hydrogen is a cutover planned with your ads team and your rankings in mind: redirect maps, structured data, a staged rollout, test orders in every market, a monitoring window after the switch. The detail lives on Shopify migration services.
Then the real work starts. An embedded team is 21phi's engagement model after launch: the agency works inside the client's channels and roadmap as the storefront, analytics and growth team, on a monthly retainer scoped per client. Any request from any department gets closed by people who know the codebase: integrations, visuals for a launch, a broken app whose vendor needs chasing, an urgent fix, the weekly analytics review. On the other end is a named senior person, not a ticket queue.
This costs more than a body shop, and it should. A body shop bills for tasks and forgets your store between tickets. An embedded team carries the context: why the color logic works the way it does, which test is running, what the ads team changed last week. See Shopify support and maintenance.
Some brands come to us to hire Shopify Hydrogen developers for a build their theme cannot carry. Others want a headless Shopify agency to take over a storefront that already exists. Either way, this is what you get. 21phi is a small senior team. Sergey Gridin, co-founder, leads the engineering and analytics work with clients.
You get dedicated Shopify Hydrogen developers for the build. The same people stay afterwards, inside your channels and roadmap, not a rotating bench. We are a Shopify Partner with Shopify Plus experience and build on Plus features such as Shopify Functions, checkout extensibility and Markets. See Shopify Plus development.
Every Shopify Hydrogen development project is scoped individually. An agency that publishes packages is pricing a storefront it has not seen, so we do not.
Three live Hydrogen storefronts show the range. AsWeMove is a premium men's essentials brand on Shopify Plus: a Hydrogen storefront on Oxygen replacing a Liquid theme, product and colorway systems, a tiered-pricing cart, store-credit accounts, US and Canada markets and ongoing support.
Kayusha is a Shopify Hydrogen storefront 21phi designed and built for Kayusha, a premium pet-carrier brand. Éva Blanc is a 21phi concept store, built in-house.
A Shopify Hydrogen storefront for a men's performance apparel brand, built around product systems and run by 21phi as the embedded storefront, analytics and growth team.
Shopify Plus · Shopify Hydrogen on Remix / React Router · Oxygen edge hosting · Storefront API and Customer Account API · Shopify Markets · Shopify web pixels and ad pixels, implemented in code · Amplitude for funnels, retention and session replay · Mux for video
A Shopify Hydrogen storefront 21phi designed and built for Kayusha, a premium pet-carrier brand: quiet typography, large imagery, colorway swatches, filters and a short path to checkout.
Shopify, running products, inventory, orders and checkout · Shopify Hydrogen on Remix / React Router · Oxygen edge hosting, deployed from Git · Storefront API, Shopify's GraphQL API that a headless storefront uses to read products, collections, carts and customer data · Shopify checkout, kept hosted by Shopify · Shopify CDN for product imagery
Éva Blanc is a 21phi concept store: a fictional premium skincare brand whose identity, 3D product renders, editorial brand story and Shopify Hydrogen storefront were all made in-house.
Shopify Hydrogen on React Router · Oxygen edge hosting · Storefront API for products, collections and carts · Shopify-hosted checkout and customer accounts · 3D rendering for product and texture imagery · Figma for design and hand-off
Shopify Hydrogen is Shopify's React-based framework for building headless storefronts on top of Shopify's Storefront API; current versions are built on React Router (formerly Remix). A Hydrogen storefront replaces the Liquid theme as the front end while Shopify keeps running products, orders, customers and checkout.
Headless Shopify is not the same as headless checkout. In a headless Shopify storefront the front end is decoupled from Shopify's back office and talks to Shopify through APIs, but checkout stays Shopify-hosted. It can be branded and extended through checkout extensibility and Shopify Functions, within the limits Shopify sets. 21phi explains those limits before a build starts.
21phi is a Shopify Hydrogen agency with a small senior team of developers and experts, based in Toronto and working with brands across North America. Clients hire these Shopify Hydrogen experts for a dedicated build and keep the same people afterwards as their embedded storefront, analytics and growth team on a monthly retainer, scoped individually. No bench, no hand-off.
A Hydrogen storefront needs no separate hosting. Hydrogen storefronts deploy to Shopify Oxygen, Shopify's global edge hosting for Hydrogen, which is included with Shopify plans and deploys from Git. There is no separate hosting vendor or CDN to manage. 21phi sets up the environments, a staging deployment and a preview link for every change before it reaches production.
Yes, 21phi works with Shopify Plus. 21phi is a Shopify Partner with Shopify Plus experience and builds Hydrogen storefronts on Shopify Plus, the enterprise plan with higher limits, checkout extensibility, Shopify Functions and Markets. Plus features are used where they pay off: checkout extensibility within Shopify's limits, per-country pricing through Markets, custom cart and discount logic through Shopify Functions.
21phi builds and runs Shopify Plus storefronts on Hydrogen, then stays embedded with your team as the people who close every request, from checkout logic to a broken app.
21phi plans and runs Shopify migrations, from a Liquid theme to Hydrogen, from Shopify to Shopify Plus, or from another platform onto Shopify, and stays on as the team that runs the store afterwards.
The real work starts after launch.
