Hyperli’s Shopify E-Commerce Platform and Custom Partner Portal

Hyperli had outgrown their custom-built platform. Realm came in without a fixed solution in mind, ran the analysis, and built not just a Shopify store, but the entire vendor ecosystem behind it.

The result

Moved from a custom-built platform to Shopify, with a portal where vendors submit deals that go live once approved.

E-Commerce Retail

Built with

01Client context

A solid business model. A technology stack that kept getting in the way.

Hyperli is a South African e-commerce platform built around a simple idea: give consumers access to discounted experiences, dining, travel, beauty and shopping deals for limited periods. The business had grown steadily, and the team was ready to move to a platform that could grow with it.

Their existing custom-built solution had served its purpose, but the business had outgrown it. Making changes required developers with deep familiarity with the back-end, which slowed the pace of iteration. Hyperli wanted a platform that was easier to maintain, faster to build on, and better equipped to support the vendor and customer experience they had in mind.

“The existing solution was expensive and difficult to maintain. Adding new features required specialised developers familiar with their back-end, making innovation costly and time-consuming.”

Hyperli came to Realm with a clear sense of what they needed to achieve, but without a fixed platform in mind. They wanted guidance on the right technology choice, and a partner who could see the migration through from recommendation to go-live.

02The situation

Three compounding problems made a straightforward migration anything but.

This was not simply a case of moving content from one platform to another. Hyperli’s business model created structural complexity that a standard Shopify implementation could not address on its own. Realm had to solve three distinct problems simultaneously.

Platform selection without a brief. Hyperli knew they needed to move but had no fixed platform in mind. Realm had to run a technology-agnostic gap analysis comparing Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce before any build work could begin.
A vendor ecosystem that did not exist yet. Hyperli’s deals were uploaded by third-party vendors through a partner portal. No suitable off-the-shelf portal existed for this workflow. It had to be designed and built from scratch, and integrated FreshSales CRM and Shopify simultaneously.
Data migration with no clean source. Years of transactional data, customer profiles, voucher records and product history sat in a legacy system with quality issues. Migrating it accurately, without breaking the live business during the transition, required significant data cleansing work before a single record could move.

The platform also had to support Hyperli’s 90/10 split between voucher-based experience sales and physical product drop-shipping, two very different fulfilment models that needed to work within the same Shopify environment. Any solution also had to preserve Hyperli’s integration with the Vodapay app, which gave them a channel inside a major South African payments platform.

03The approach

Not just a platform switch, but a rebuild of the client’s operating system.

Realm began with a platform-agnostic gap analysis rather than jumping to a build. After evaluating Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce against Hyperli’s specific requirements – managed hosting, ease of maintenance, scalability, plugin ecosystem and total cost of ownership – Shopify emerged as the clear fit. The decision was made on practical grounds, not familiarity.

The Shopify store

Realm designed a clean, performance-focused storefront built around how Hyperli’s customers actually browse and buy. The site features intuitive navigation, location-based browsing, category filtering and a product page format suited to the deal and voucher model. It handles both experience vouchers and physical drop-ship products within a single, consistent catalogue structure.

Payment infrastructure was configured to support Peach Payments, SnapScan, PayFlex and Instant EFT. Marketing integrations included Klaviyo for email automation and abandoned cart recovery, Reviews.io for product ratings, and Facebook and Instagram for social commerce channels. Operational tools included Bob Go for physical product fulfilment, Freshdesk for customer service ticketing, Freshchat for live chat, and Mechanic for back-end automation.

Voucher generation and partner payments

Voucher delivery and partner payouts are fully automated through the platform. Once a purchase is made, the customer receives their voucher without manual intervention. Partner payments are calculated and processed through the portal, removing the need for manual reconciliation.

A vendor workflow with no off-the-shelf answer

Hyperli’s deal catalogue is not managed by an internal team, it is populated by hundreds of third-party vendors. Realm built a custom Partner Portal that sat between FreshSales CRM and Shopify: vendors submitted deals through the portal, the portal synced with FreshSales for the approval process, and approved deals flowed directly into Shopify as live products. Data moved in one direction only, from FreshSales through the portal to Shopify, which kept the system predictable and auditable.

04The outcome

A platform Hyperli could actually operate, and build on.

The new site went live following an extended user acceptance testing period. For the first time, Hyperli’s team could manage their catalogue, update content and onboard new vendors without specialist developer involvement. The platform was stable from launch.

What changed for our client

Vendors can self-serve deal submissions through the Partner Portal, with an automated approval and publish workflow replacing a manual process.
Voucher generation, delivery and redemption tracking are fully automated end-to-end.
Partner payments are calculated directly from cost price data held in the portal, removing manual reconciliation.
The marketing stack is fully integrated, giving the team tools that were not possible on the previous platform.
The Hyperli team can manage collections, navigation, featured content and promotions directly through the Shopify admin without developer involvement.
The client reported improved website performance, higher engagement and increased sales following launch.

Realm has continued to work with Hyperli since go-live, supporting ongoing maintenance and building out new features as the platform evolves.

05What this shows about how we work

The platform is rarely the problem. The ecosystem around it usually is.

The brief was a migration. The real work was everything built around it: a technology stack that matched how Hyperli’s business actually operated, with the structural problems identified before a line of code was written.

The platform recommendation came after analysis, not before. The Partner Portal was scoped as a core deliverable, not an afterthought. The data migration was treated as a project phase in its own right. Each of those decisions reflected the same principle: the brief describes what the client wants, not necessarily what they need.

Analysis before recommendation

Realm ran a technology-agnostic evaluation across Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce before recommending a platform. Our Shopify recommendation was grounded in Hyperli’s specific operating model.
Custom build where off-the-shelf falls short

The Partner Portal was not in any app store. Recognising that and scoping a custom integration, rather than forcing an inadequate plugin into the workflow, was the decision that made the rest of the project viable.
Data as a project phase

Migrating data without first cleansing it would have produced a broken catalogue on a new platform. Treating the migration as a structured phase, with quality work done before the move, is what allowed the go-live to hold.