Jacob Ringbo
Principal
Commercetools has undergone tremendous development in recent years. With its composable commerce concept, cloud-native infrastructure, and headless architecture, it has grown to become one of the most attractive platforms on the market.
Commercetools is just one of many commerce systems and if you are looking at choosing a new system, it can be difficult to differentiate them. Most have many of the same features and each one tells everyone that they are better than the others. Therefore, I would like to delve into one of the commerce systems that I perceive to be among the best and explain why Commercetools differs from the others.
Commercetools was born as a headless and cloud commerce system. Thus, the entire Commercetools build is focused on the fact that it acts as headless and therefore it works better in many situations, since the headless functions have not been added later.
When it comes to headless commerce, it is important to understand that there are different degrees of headless. With headless commerce, it is not either or. How it is headless is significant. Also, of significance is how well you do it and also how good the APIs and architecture are. In this regard, Commercetools is significantly better than its competitors.
Although Commercetools is designed as a headless system, it also offers a front end, so it is possible to build your webshop very quickly. The freedom and flexibility to choose a technology for its front end costs money and is a lot of work. But, if that is not your need or if you just want a quick setup, then Commercetools' frontend is a great solution. For example, the freedom of choice can be useful for small businesses and provides shorter time-to-market.
Composable commerce is the new big buzzword within enterprise companies, or companies that are experiencing tremendous growth. One of Commercetools' key features is precisely that, composable commerce.
Composable commerce is an approach that allows an e-commerce system to be built using modular components. In other words, you can combine independent modules or “building blocks”, thus achieving great flexibility and adaptability. These modules can be, for example, a product catalogue, shopping cart, delivery services or storage services. They are integrated through microservices to create a tailored solution to suit your specific needs.
Because the modules are not an integral part of the commerce solution, it is possible to upgrade or replace individual modules without affecting the entire system. It is on this point, among other things, that Commercetools excels.
Forrester and Gartner are two prominent market research firms specialising in technology analysis. They provide an objective assessment of technology trends, evaluation of software providers and strategic advice. Their in-depth analyses and reports, such as Gartner's Magic Quadrant, help navigate the software landscape, make informed buying decisions, and leverage technology to achieve diverse business goals.
Commercetools was featured in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for the first time in 2018 and was already positioned as a “niche” player on the market. Just two years later in 2020, Commercetools was advancing as a “leader”, and from the latest analysis in 2022 they have been advancing into the top three. It is an extremely rapid development and it's always a good idea to keep an eye on a system that is capable of evolving so quickly.
This impressive development is largely due to Commercetools' headless architecture, which sets it apart from competitors.
There are several advantages to Commercetools that make it more attractive than many other e-commerce systems, with one of the most important being your time-to-market. Commercetools' API-first approach makes it possible to change and expand your webshop much faster than traditional systems.
In addition, Commercetools' modular design and scalability is something many companies find attractive. In other words, your business can start small but easily scale as your business grows. Due to the modular design, you can just switch out the modules that need to be updated. This applies both to design in the front end and in the underlying architecture.
Commercetools' headless architecture enables it to deliver a tailored customer experience which can be a key factor in the competitive market. The platform is extremely good when your business is complex and you would like a tailored solution. Commercetools has the APIs to easily and efficiently make these changes on an ongoing basis.
Many of Commercetools' competitors also promise a headless cloud solution, but few deliver it as well as Commercetools. In particular, the modular design shows its great value in the long-term. These are the few commerce systems that handle growth from small to large business as well as Commercetools.
Essentially, Commercetools is an excellent choice for any business looking for a modern, flexible, and robust e-commerce platform. Its unique “composable commerce” concept, robust cloud-native infrastructure and headless architecture make it one of the most attractive e-commerce systems on the market today. I would recommend anyone to consider Commercetools as a potential solution.