How we build composable ecommerce experiences with commercetools.

commercetools is a headless, API-first commerce platform for enterprise retail and B2B. It was founded in Germany in 2006, is headquartered in Munich and was a founding member of the MACH Alliance. Its platform, now called Sphere, provides catalog, pricing, promotions, carts, orders and inventory as APIs that any front end can use.

Shopify Plus gives you a working store, checkout and app ecosystem, and you work within its data model. commercetools gives you commerce services and expects you to build the storefront and assemble the rest of the stack. You get far more control over catalog, pricing and B2B rules in return for more build work and more ownership.

It is one of its main use cases. commercetools supports business accounts, buyer roles and permissions, and pricing by customer, channel, market and contract. Manufacturers and distributors with negotiated pricing and approval workflows are where it tends to earn its cost.

Yes, either in house or through a long term agency relationship. The storefront and integrations are software your team builds and maintains, even when you start from commercetools Frontend. If that capacity is not available, a SaaS platform is the safer choice.

Longer than a SaaS replatform. Our scoped composable builds typically run four to eight months, and a full replacement across every layer runs longer. Data modelling and integrations set the pace more than the platform does.