Is the "Backend" for new Headless Shopify the same as for traditional Shopify "Backend" ?

[elicommerce2018]

I intend to develop in Headless Shopify platform and would greatly appreciate if I could get answers to the following questions.  Please answer as many questions as you are comfortable with.

1.  Is the "Backend" for the new Headless Shopify the same as the traditional Shopify "Backend"?  If not, where on the partner.shopify we would create that backend?

2.  Does the new Headless Shopify have to built in Shopify+ platform or the Classic Shopify environment can be used?

3.  Likewise, does Hydrogen and Oxygen work only on Shopify+ or it can be used to develop Frontend for Classic Shopify sites as well?

4.  If the the answer to the above question is "No", what CMS tools are recommended to be used as instead?

[Weaverse]

Hi @elicommerce2018,

I wanted to share some details with you about the new Headless Shopify and how it differs from traditional Shopify.

1. The "Backend" for the new Headless Shopify is essentially the same as the traditional Shopify "Backend". However, if you want to deploy the Hydrogen storefront to Oxygen, you will need to use the Basic to Plus plan. If you have a development store, you can use the "Headless" app on the Shopify app store to retrieve the Storefront API token and develop the Hydrogen store.

2. You can develop a Headless Storefront with any Shopify plan. However, to deploy the store to Oxygen, you will need at least a Shopify Basic plan.

3. You don't need a Shopify Plus plan to develop Hydrogen. The only difference between Plus and Basic is that with the Shopify Plus plan, you can deploy and publish up to 25 Hydrogen stores, while Basic is limited to one Hydrogen store.

4. It's important to note that the backend for a Headless Shopify store is the same as traditional Shopify, except for the Theme Customizer which only works with Liquid. However, we have created a Theme Customizer for Hydrogen called "Weaverse" which can be easily installed via the Shopify Apps Store. Highly recommended to try it out!

[PaulNewton]

Use the proper forum to increase chances of relevant people even know your post exists:

https://community.shopify.com/c/hydrogen-headless-and-storefront/bd-p/custom-storefronts

Minimize the asks in one go for better depth in answers, these behaviors apply to most forums.

1. The admin is the same managed by shopify
2. No use your own hosting, the admin  managed by shopify
3. hydrogen is a framework, oxygen is shopify's version of hosting for hydrogen,
4. regardless of yes or no's "what cms to use" is a very broad question that should be researched on it's own

Read the .dev docs more thoroughly

https://shopify.dev/docs/custom-storefronts/headless 

https://shopify.dev/docs/custom-storefronts/hydrogen/getting-started 

https://shopify.dev/docs/custom-storefronts/hydrogen/deployments/self-hosting