Edge Prints

Why I built it

I started 3D printing as a hobby, then wanted to do more with the machines. Selling products online seemed like a good way to put them to use, so I built a store for it.

What I built

A fully functional e-commerce website for my 3D printing business, built almost entirely from scratch. It uses Next.js for the front end, Firebase as the backend, and PayFast to take payments.

• Customers can add products to their cart and check out, paying through PayFast.
• An admin panel lets me see incoming orders and fulfill them.

The key decision

The hardest call was choosing between a platform like Shopify and building the store myself with Next.js. I also had to decide which products to sell in the first place.

I went with Next.js because of the cost: there are no monthly platform fees, which matters for a small business that is just getting started. The trade-off is that I own more of the build and the upkeep myself.

What I’m proud of

I built a working online store almost from scratch, without a platform doing the heavy lifting. Even though I now know there are better ways to approach it, getting a real store live and taking payments taught me more than a template would have.

What I learned

Building the whole store from scratch taught me how much e-commerce involves beyond the pages themselves. It also showed me a better route for next time: a platform like Medusa, an open-source commerce backend, keeps the low cost and the Next.js front end but doesn’t make me build the store logic myself.