Shopify has a 'lite' plan that enables merchants to take payments and manage stores from the backend, without serving a front end store. This is a great option to consider for utilizing the backend features of Shopify, while serving products to customers in a headless commerce manner, by bringing the transaction to the best place for the specific audience.

The Shopify Lite plan includes the ability to accept payments by embedding a 'buy button' nearly anywhere. Merchants are also able to send invoices directly to the customer. Since the button can be embedded anywhere, it's also possible to serve a buy / add to cart button via a GatsbyJS site.

As I've mentioned in the past, jamstack frameworks like GatsbyJS deliver a faster, more secure site to customers and can drastically improve load times. Products are pulled from the Shpoify backed via a private app at the time the site is built, then checkout is handled by Shopify.

On ecommloop, we use Gatsby, along with Shopify Lite to power the 'ecommerce solutions' portion of our site. This allows us to get the best of Gatsby & Shopify, plus reduces monthly costs when not utilizing the front-end Shopify features.