Summit Printing: from static site to custom e-commerce in days
Summit Printing needed more than a redesign — they needed a custom job-ticketing workflow baked into the admin. Open Sky Commerce made both possible without rebuilding from scratch.
Days
From idea to live store
$0/mo
Platform fees
4
Payment processors included
100%
Code ownership
Before & After
The old site was a static brochure — no cart, no account, no search. The new site is a full-stack Next.js storefront with a custom admin built in.
- ✗No online ordering or cart
- ✗No customer accounts or order history
- ✗No file upload integrated with job workflow
- ✗Paying ongoing platform fees with zero ownership
- ✓Full product catalog with categories, search, and cart
- ✓Customer accounts with order history and file uploads
- ✓Custom job-ticketing dashboard built directly into the admin
- ✓Self-hosted — no platform fees, full code ownership
We built SummitPrinting.com on Open Sky Commerce and it completely changed how fast we were able to go from idea to live store. Instead of spending weeks wiring together auth, checkout, and admin from scratch — or paying ongoing platform fees to Shopify or BigCommerce — we had a production-ready foundation in a very short time. The real win was flexibility: because we own the code, we were able to build a custom job ticketing dashboard directly into the admin that would have been impossible on any hosted platform. This codebase pays for itself on the first project.
Paul Bartlett
Co-founder, Summit Printing
The custom job-ticketing dashboard
Printing shops have a workflow that generic e-commerce platforms don't support out of the box: customers upload print-ready files, jobs move through internal production stages, and order status needs to reflect where a job is in the press queue — not just “shipped” or “delivered.”
Because Summit Printing owns the source code, the dev team extended the admin panel directly — adding a job-ticketing view with file attachments, status transitions, and internal notes without touching any third-party plugin marketplace or waiting for a platform to support the use case.
That kind of extension is impossible on Shopify, BigCommerce, or any hosted platform where the admin is a locked SaaS product. It's the difference between renting a platform and owning your stack.
File upload per order
Customers attach print-ready files at checkout; files are stored in S3-compatible storage and linked to the order record.
Job status workflow
Orders move through custom production stages — Received, Prepress, Press, Finishing, Ready — visible in the admin and to the customer.
Internal notes per job
Staff add production notes directly to the order in the admin, keeping the job context in one place.
Old stack vs new stack
| Capability | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Online store | None | Full Next.js storefront |
| Product catalog | Static HTML pages | Database-backed with search |
| Checkout & payment | Phone/email orders only | Stripe, Authorize.net, Clover, Square |
| Customer accounts | None | Auth + order history |
| File uploads | Email attachments | Per-order upload stored in S3 |
| Job tracking | Internal spreadsheet | Custom admin dashboard |
| Platform fees | Third-party platform monthly bill | $0/month — self-hosted |
| Code ownership | None | Full source code |
Build your next client project on Open Sky Commerce
One codebase. One-time license. Deploy it, extend it, own it.