We are in the middle of a massive shift from legacy, monolithic eCommerce platforms to headless solutions based on microservices. This huge shift is due to remarkable changes in the technological landscape. We have access to better, faster, and more flexible solutions.
On the other hand, many known business challenges remain unchanged. Technical teams struggle with outdated, legacy technologies and don’t know where to start the change process.
There are few platforms with a headless approach but we see that one of them stands out clearly.
Why commercetools?
Instead of writing the advantages of commercetools over other platforms, we decided to ask our commercetools team what working with the tool is like from their perspective, and why commercetools is a future-proof choice that supports business scaling.
Marta Ciesielska | Product Owner
For me, commercetools gives massive freedom of choice. Not just in terms of individual businesses being able to choose what is essential for their specific business, but also when you look at all dependencies that your ecommerce has. It allows you to connect with what you are currently using, no matter in what language your app is or what CMS you use. The API-first approach allows flexibility that is much needed in the current times. You can build your frontend in whatever technology your team is already accustomed with, and the same goes for any extensions. This way of connecting with local partners (e.g. for payment processing) is easier than with other solutions.
Bartosz Picho | Solution Architect
The existing monolithic, all-in-one platforms that are well-known to us—such as Magento, SAP Hybris, or Oro Commerce—have many hidden pitfalls that appear as time passes. They slow down the development of your business. Commercetools, on the other hand, takes a composable commerce approach that changes everything. Your eCommerce team start working with the best tools that allow them to achieve great results, and CTO’s and the engineering team can unleash their talents instead of bothering with difficult and expensive upgrades, core bugs, huge complexity, and legacy code. They can deliver more business value, at higher quality, in a shorter time, and with great satisfaction.
Damian Kłaptocz | Business Analyst
commercetools is an answer to most common problems in today’s eCommerce. Firstly, its API first approach results in creating microservices, services and integrations with third-party solutions that makes the solution scalable, as well as easier and cheaper to maintain. Many companies have come to a point where it is very expensive to add new features to their monolithic architecture or even update the software they are using. With commercetools, you can maintain and update each element of the architecture without the risk of influencing another part. You also don’t need to care about commercetools updates itself as it has a SaaS core. No matter how quickly you grow, cloud hosted solutions allow you to be ever-ready for the traffic you’ll get. And that means no more Black Friday maintenance issues!
Why commercetools is loved by development teams
When building eCommerce, it is important to think not only about end user experiences but about the experiences of your dev team. The best developers have the choice of workplaces and, thus, by choosing modern, composable technology, you attract the most talented people to your team.
Experienced developers love commercetools because it moves away from a monolithic core that is difficult to maintain. It is a stable and truly API-first system that lets tech teams build in whichever language they prefer. It offers total auto-scalability in the cloud and supports serverless builds, so developers can focus on business logic instead of setup and maintenance. However, perhaps the most compelling feature is that the core is consistently protected, meaning that there is no need to worry about modules that often have a destructive influence and destabilize the platform.
In short, commercetools offers fulfilling developer experiences and lets tech teams get the best out of their skills, instead of wasting time and energy on chores. Read more about commercetools extensibility features.
The Chief Product Officer’s perspective
We spoke to Kelly Goetsh, CPO of commercetools, in a recent interview, and discussed the most common eCommerce business problems and tried to find the best solutions to fix them.
He points out that commercetools actually invented headless commerce in 2013 and their multi-tenant architecture is constantly pushing new updates to production. It guarantees backward compatibility and the platform is fully SaaS, so there’s no need to install or run software but everyone’s running the exact same version. And there’s more – read the full interview why to choose commercetools over Oracle ATG, SAP Hybris, or Magento.
Market leader
For a wider perspective, it is worth noting that Gartner rates commercetools as a “Leader” in both the B2C commerce in The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q2 2020 report and the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce.
The future of eCommerce platforms
Perhaps the most valid argument that commercetools is forging the future for other eCommerce platforms is the rating from companies like Garther coupled with the fact that it is truly setting out on the composable commerce path. While the rest of the industry is just settling into the headless commerce solutions, commercetools have already asked “what comes next?” and have been able to build a leading platform in technology that is still classed as being quite conceptual. In short, they’ve already successfully taken the next step.
Divante is proud to be an official partner of commercetools. Visit our commercetools services page to find out more about what we can build for your business.
Published November 25, 2020
