Horizon and Story Theme: two different approaches
Horizon is Shopify’s new official base. Built on nested theme blocks, it is flexible in the editor and maintained by Shopify itself. But it is a base: Shopify deliberately leaves everything sales-related to apps. No countdown, no free shipping bar, no bundles, no wishlist, and reviews that go through an app.
Story Theme starts from a simple observation: a store that sells needs the same tools, whatever its niche. Bundles, upsells, reviews, countdowns, free gifts, order tracking… Rather than leaving them to apps, we wrote them into the theme, and we keep adding more with every update. You build your store with the mouse, in the Shopify editor, with 45 sections and 109 blocks designed to convert.
Features: 15 out of 15 against 4 out of 15 for Horizon
Of the fifteen sales features we checked, Horizon includes 4. For 10 others you need an app, and 1 could not be confirmed on the publisher's pages. Story Theme includes all fifteen, without installing anything.
And those fifteen are only a sample: Story Theme has 211 features documented one by one, from bundles with variants to the before / after slider, from product stories to the free gift bar. Each one is designed for a precise step of the buying journey, from the home page to the cart.
Conversion and speed: fewer apps, fewer scripts
Every app added to fill a gap in Horizon loads its own script on every page. A reviews app, a bundles module, a countdown: three more scripts, three third-party servers to wait for, and as many tenths of a second lost at the moment the visitor decides to stay or leave.
In Story Theme, these features are written into the theme itself. Nothing to load from a third-party server, code loaded only when the section is displayed, images automatically served in the right format and size. And a mobile version designed first, because that is where most of your sales happen.
Getting started, support and updates
For Horizon, support comes down to this: general Shopify support. As for updates: frequent, free (4.2.0 on 18/09/2026).
With Story Theme, the team that builds the theme supports you, with no time limit. The documentation covers every section, videos walk through building a complete store, and updates are included in the subscription: a new version installs from your member area with its update tool, and the roadmap is public.
More than a theme: the whole ecosystem around it
Choosing Horizon means choosing a theme. Choosing Story Theme also gives you everything around it: Story Studio, the AI workspace that generates your ad creatives, store copy and product images from your catalogue; an automatic weekly analysis of your store (SEO, image weight, installed theme); Optimage to lighten your images and Colorify to check your contrasts.
The theme is translated into 31 languages and compatible with Shopify Markets: selling internationally does not mean starting over.
Real cost: Horizon or Story Theme over a year
Horizon: free. Add around €1,860 a year in apps to fill the missing features, not counting the time spent installing, configuring and making them work together.
Story Theme: €168 a year for one store (€14 a month billed yearly), €336 for three stores, and unlimited stores on the Business plan, built for agencies. Updates, support and every feature are included, with no commitment and a seven-day free trial to judge for yourself.
