As Monolithic architecture solutions face flexibility, customization, and scalability challenges, businesses are increasingly exploring more adaptable architectures, like Headless Commerce.

Alongside this, the concept of ‘Composable Commerce’ has gained prominence as a robust model to cater to the evolving needs of businesses and the swiftly changing market.

So, what exactly it is, and how does it distinguish itself from Headless Commerce? Let’s investigate these aspects to comprehend why it might represent a revolutionary leap forward.

What is Composable Commerce?

The term ‘Composable Commerce’ was first coined by Gartner Research in June 2020, referring to building a flexible and customizable e-commerce system by integrating various components to build distinct ‘Packaged Business Capabilities’ (PBCs) solutions tailored to the deployment needs. These PBC solutions can connect through APIs.

The PBCs may include:

• Storefront
• Catalog
• Inventory
• Cart
• Checkout
• Payment

If we consider components as smaller and more intricate elements of the eCommerce system, PBCs represent the integration of each of these smaller components to craft a unique eCommerce solution tailored to each business. In this scenario, components are on an equal footing, and so are the PBCs.

Therefore, any modifications or expansions in any component or PBCs won’t impact the overall operation of the entire system.

To put it more simply, within the composable architecture, you build your eCommerce system much like assembling a Lego set. 

Here, each PBC corresponds to a specific Lego block with a designated function. These blocks can seamlessly combine and link through APIs, resulting in a flexible and personalized eCommerce experience that aligns with your initial needs and wants.

Hence, the eCommerce development model allows you to attain the utmost flexibility and optimization for your eCommerce system.

Pros of Composable Commerce

Some benefits to highlight when adopting Composable architecture:

• Flexibility

This eCommerce development model offers high flexibility. You can select to combine the most suitable components for your needs. This flexibility allows you to easily create an eCommerce system that adapts to market trends and ever-changing customer experience expectations.

• Customization & Scalability

The model can meet the highest demands for customization & scalability. You can freely customize each component based on your brand and what you want for customer experience. But you can also scale individual components to handle growing traffic and transaction volumes. 

This level of customization and scalability allows you to offer a distinctive shopping experience, boost competitiveness, and expand your operations without the need for a complete overhaul of the system architecture.

• Cost Optimization

Despite the initial setup costs, deploying Composable Commerce can help you save your development costs in the long run. Because you only need to pay for specific components they use and optimize your PBCs to avoid unnecessary expenses.

Most current Composable Commerce solutions offer discounts as more components are integrated, with Commerce Components by Shopify being a prominent example.

• Ease of Maintenance

Components in the Composable Commerce architecture are often separated and become independent of each other, making maintenance and updates for each component easier. This minimizes disruptions and the risk of system downtime during maintenance or upgrades.

Cons of Composable Commerce

• Complex Integration

Composable Commerce demands the integration of various components, and this process can be complicated and time-consuming. You’ll need to ensure that these independent components operate seamlessly and efficiently within the same system, requiring additional development and customization efforts.

• Integration Costs

At scale, the need for deploying a complex system may increase, and integrating multiple components may lead to high upfront and ongoing costs. So, it’s important to phase resources for continuous development, testing, and maintenance of this integrated operation.

• Planning Required

Implementing a Composable Commerce architecture requires meticulous planning from the number of components, choice of suppliers, and integrated solutions to issues related to maintaining and upgrading these components.

• High Technical Skills Required

Building and maintaining an eCommerce system following the Composable Commerce model demands a high level of knowledge and technical skills in various technologies and integrated solutions. You must invest in training your in-house teams or collaborate with highly specialized entities.

• Hard to Manage

Managing a Composable Commerce system can be a significant challenge, especially when you integrate components from multiple 3rd-party suppliers. While Composable Commerce provides flexibility in integration, it also implies that you have to manage relationships with various suppliers. 

When there is a need for expansion, you’ll work with these suppliers to ensure each component can scale concurrently and efficiently, avoiding any adverse impact on system development.

• Security & Compliance

Ensuring the security and following rules for many components at the same time can be tricky. Each supplier has their own security and rule needs. So, how can you follow all the rules from each supplier without messing up the way your Composable Commerce system works? – That’s the point!

What is the difference between Composable Commerce and Headless Commerce?

Both Composable and Headless Commerce architectures separate the frontend and backend, providing a higher level of flexibility and customization. These technology solutions are currently the focus of many large businesses worldwide.

So, what is the main difference between the two?

In the Headless architecture, the separation of the frontend and backend allows you to update and customize either the frontend or backend without affecting each other.

On the other hand, the modular nature of Composable architecture takes it a step further by decoupling all eCommerce components, enabling you to choose and set up perfect PBCs (Packaged Business Capabilities) for your needs.

The key feature of Composable architecture is that, while the frontend can connect to various components at the backend through APIs, these components are highly modular and independent. This means that changes to one component won’t affect other components or the frontend interface.

Should we deploy Headless Commerce or Composable Commerce?

When considering the prospects of eCommerce architectures, it is evident that both Composable and Headless Commerce offer superior customization and scalability, allowing you to break free from traditional constraints to adapt to market trends. However, the decision to implement a specific architecture will depend on your business needs, technical expertise, and the goals you want to achieve.

With SECOMM’s extensive expertise and deep experience in successfully deploying numerous Headless Commerce projects, we serve as a reliable partner to advise businesses looking to implement this architecture with innovative solutions.

Contact us or call directly on the hotline at 028 7108 9908 to take a leap forward with SECOMM and unlock the full potential of both Headless and Composable Commerce today!

Today, with the growing demand for flexible and scalable eCommerce system development, large-sized businesses turn their attention to solutions like Headless, Microservices, and Composable Commerce. The Composable approach will allow you to integrate independent components to tailor and enhance the eCommerce experience. 

Knowing this insight, Shopify has unveiled the Commerce Components solution, offering you — as a large-sized business — the most straightforward approach to deploying Composable Commerce. 

Learn more: What is Composable Commerce?

What are Commerce Components?

Commerce Components is an innovative tech stack designed for large businesses. Rather than introducing new features, the company has transformed its infrastructure into modular components that can be combined to build and customize adaptable eCommerce websites. This means you can select components based on your deployment needs and seamlessly integrate them into your existing tech stack using flexible and unlimited API connections, ensuring a smooth customer experience across all devices.

“We’ve always approached innovation by anticipating what retailers need and then providing those solutions,” said Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify. “Commerce Components opens our infrastructure so enterprise retailers don’t have to waste time, engineering power and money building critical foundations it has already perfected, and instead frees them up to customize, differentiate and scale”

Commerce Components by Category

The solution offers six main categories including over 30 components, allowing you to build a tailored solution that aligns with your needs.

• Storefront: Build custom storefronts using any framework, API, and hosting.
• Cart & Checkout: Optimize the shopping cart and checkout process using APIs and additional utilities.
• Core Commerce: Create products with various data models through APIs.
• Data & Compliance: Provide solutions for leveraging customer insights to boost sales while managing and securing customer privacy data.
• Shipping & Logistics: Offer OMS and IMS solutions to streamline logistics processes.
• Omnichannel: Manage and sell across multiple channels, from POS and eCommerce platforms to social media and chat applications.

What is the difference between Commerce Components and Shopify Plus?

Although both ‘Plus’ and Components are enterprise eCommerce solutions, they differ in several aspects:

• Operations: ‘Plus’ is an all-in-one eCommerce platform, providing numerous advanced features and seamless integrations with third parties. On the other hand, the new tech stack is a collection of components for you to integrate into your existing technology stack, aiming to create and deliver a customized and seamless experience for customers.
• License fee: While ‘Plus’ charges a platform fee starting at $2000 per month, along with transaction and credit card fees, Components charges based on the level of usage of the components, with fees decreasing as more components are utilized.
• Features: ‘Plus’ offers many features and regularly provides updates and feature enhancements, with the latest being Shopify Edition ’23. In contrast, Components, as a new tech stack, provides unlimited API connections, increased product attribute limits, integration with new third-party technology solutions, and enhanced transaction processing capability of up to 40,000 payments per minute per store.
• Customer support: ‘Plus’ businesses can seek guidance and support during deployment through the Merchant Success Program. Components, on the other hand, provides businesses with access to Shopify Professional Services.  

Benefits of using Commerce Components

• Flexible Modular Architecture

If you don’t prefer to deploy pre-packaged eCommerce platforms. Composable architecture is the ideal choice. It allows you to select and purchase components based on your needs, integrate them into your existing systems, and customize them. 

With its modular architecture, the tech stack provides unlimited API connections, meaning there is no limit to the number of components and add-ons that you can use to build your tech stack.

Moreover, since components are entirely independent, you can add, remove, and modify components without affecting the entire system.

• Cost Optimization

Commerce Components employs a pricing model structured around the level and quantity of components used. This means you only pay for the components you require. Furthermore, as you acquire and utilize more components, you’ll benefit from increasingly significant discounts.

Additionally, the annual payment structure of Components helps you facilitate precise cost predictions.

Brands using Commerce Components

Since its inception, the platform has proudly highlighted the trust and adoption of its solution by major global businesses. Notable among these are Glossier, JB Hi-Fi, Coty, Steve Madden, Spanx, and Staples.

Leading U.S. toy brand Mattel is one of the first enterprises to successfully implement this technology solution. Sven Gerjets, Mattel’s CTO, said in a statement.

“We first worked with Shopify on a project called Mattel Creations, a platform for creators to reimagine the most iconic toys in the world. Creations empowered Mattel to move quickly, meet our customers where they are, and most importantly leverage its infrastructure to scale globally. It was hugely successful, and we’re excited to transform our brand offerings using Commerce Components.”

The trust placed by Mattel and other industry leaders forms a solid basis for expecting the ongoing success of this new solution, extending its impact not only within the U.S. market but also on a global scale.

Final Thoughts

In the past, large businesses often favored open-source platforms like Magento or Salesforce due to their customizable and flexible expansion capabilities. However, in today’s landscape, SaaS platforms, particularly Shopify, offer innovative solutions for developing Composable or Headless Commerce.

In 2021, the company launched the Hydrogen + Oxygen solution to enhance Headless Commerce development. Continuing this trend into early 2023, they once again surprise the industry with Commerce Components, designed for deploying Composable Commerce.

This move highlights its commitment to anticipating and responding to customer needs, earning the trust of large enterprises in the face of competitive rivals.

Reach out or call the SECOMM hotline at 028 7108 9908 for a more in-depth understanding of Commerce Components by Shopify and to explore the implementation of Headless Commerce or Composable Commerce.

The eCommerce sector is experiencing rapid growth, with global retail sales reaching 5.7 trillion USD in 2022 and projected to hit 6.3 trillion USD in 2023, as reported by Insider Intelligence. This requires businesses to adopt more efficient and flexible eCommerce architectural solutions to meet customer demands for online shopping experiences. 

However, there is no one-size-fits-all eCommerce architectural solution. Each architecture comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, catering to different goals and requirements. Hence, businesses must discern between eCommerce architectures to choose the most fitting one for their business model. 

This article will introduce the four most common eCommerce architectures: Monolithic, Headless, Composable, and MACH. Also, it’ll compare and evaluate these architectures based on criteria such as cost, scalability, customization, security, and performance.

Monolithic Architecture

Monolithic architecture is a traditional and long-standing model in eCommerce development. In this approach, the entire eCommerce website is built as a unified application on a single source codebase.

This means that both the user interface (frontend) and business logic (backend) are combined and implemented within a comprehensive “all-in-one” system. So, modifications to specific eCommerce components may have repercussions on the overall functionality of the system.

Pros:

• Ease of Deployment: Utilizing the monolithic architecture simplifies the management of a single source codebase and a unified database system for the entire application. This streamlines the processes of deployment, updates, and application modifications.
• Performance: eCommerce components are tightly connected, so for a simple and uncomplicated system, the Monolithic architecture can provide high performance.

Cons: 

• Limited Scalability: The monolithic architecture, being a unified block, faces challenges in scalability and customization, especially as the system grows larger and more complex.
• Maintenance and Updates Difficulty: The tight integration of components within the system makes challenges in maintaining a website under a Monolithic architecture, making it both challenging and costly. Also, any modifications or updates to one component can impact others and the overall system’s functionality.
• Innovation Constraints: While traditional eCommerce architectures are considered stable and reliable, their limitations in scalability and customization make it difficult to keep up with the latest technological advancements.
• Increasing Costs: Initially, implementing a Monolithic system may not be overly complex or expensive. However, as businesses aim to scale, customize, or perform maintenance and updates, costs tend to escalate significantly.

The Monolithic architecture can be used in case your business is implementing a small-scale, straightforward eCommerce system, seeking a rapid market launch without immediate plans for significant future development. However, architectures like Headless or Composable would be more appropriate as the system grows and expands, requiring increased customization and scalability

Headless Architecture

The Headless architecture is a popular architectural solution in eCommerce, where the user interface (frontend) of the eCommerce website is decoupled from the operational system (backend). The Headless architecture is often called “API-first” because the frontend and backend communicate with each other through an API layer.

Many businesses opt for the Headless Commerce model to create and customize user interfaces (frontends) to provide customers with a rich and seamless shopping experience across various channels such as websites, mobile apps, IoT, and POS. These user interfaces can connect to a single backend system through an API layer, enabling businesses to engage in multi-channel commerce and rapidly expand internationally.

Pros:

• Flexibility: Businesses can utilize any technology and tools to develop the frontend, creating a unique and customized user interface and shopping experience without being restricted by predefined themes.
• Ease of Integration: Seamless connection and integration with third-party tools and services through APIs, eliminating the need to rewrite source code.
• High Performance: Since the frontend and backend operate independently, businesses can optimize performance for both, enhancing the overall performance and page loading speed of the eCommerce website.
• Scalability: Businesses can easily customize, add, or remove components of the frontend or backend flexibly without affecting the overall system’s operation. 

Cons:

• Complex Deployment: Because the frontend and backend are separated and developed independently, the deployment process is more time-consuming compared to Monolithic, and ensuring the interaction and efficient operation of both parts can be challenging.
• Specialized Expertise: Headless Commerce allows seamless integration with third-party technologies and systems, requiring technical skills and knowledge of APIs, as well as a certain understanding of different systems.
• High Costs: Utilizing various third-party services implies additional expenses, alongside costs for the development and maintenance of the system.

Deploying Headless Commerce may be suitable for businesses that require flexibility to create and customize multiple user interfaces for multi-channel sales purposes and expand their business globally. In particular, businesses that demand independent development of both frontend and backend, as well as the need for integration with various third-party systems, should prioritize the Headless architecture.

Composable Architecture

If the standout feature of the Headless architecture is the separation of frontend and backend, providing scalability and flexible customization, then the Composable architecture, also known as Module-driven architecture, takes it a step further by decoupling all eCommerce components such as Search, Payment, Cart, etc.

This allows businesses to select components and package them into Packaged Business Capabilities (PBC) to create a specialized and comprehensive eCommerce website solution.

Pros:

• High Flexibility: Implementing Composable Commerce allows businesses to integrate components that best suit their deployment needs. This enables businesses to stay abreast of the latest eCommerce development trends.
• High Customization and Scalability: Components are developed independently, and altering any component does not impact the others. Similarly, customizing and expanding components to meet business objectives can be done without the need to overhaul the entire system architecture.
• Ease of Maintenance: With components in the eCommerce system being separate and developed entirely independently, maintaining and updating each component individually becomes more straightforward, avoiding disruptions or temporary halts to the system’s operation.
• Vendor Independence: The flexibility to seamlessly integrate components from various providers has helped businesses deploying Composable Commerce avoid dependence on a specific service provider. This allows businesses to change providers for any component whenever needed, while also leveraging the latest and optimal technologies for their eCommerce system.

Cons: 

• High Costs: The cost of using each component varies, so the more components integrated, the higher the overall cost, not to mention maintenance costs for each component.
• High Expertise Requirements: Implementing Composable Commerce requires advanced technical skills and specific knowledge of the technologies in use to ensure a quick and effective deployment process.
• Complex Management: Utilizing numerous components means that a business has to work with multiple different providers, each with its own security protocols and compliance requirements. As the eCommerce system scales up, the business needs to collaborate with providers to ensure that each component is developed, expanded, and remains compatible, preventing any negative impacts on the system.

Composable architecture is suitable for cases where businesses undertake large projects, have high demands for flexibility and customization, need to integrate multiple services and third-party systems, as well as require complete independence between the components of the eCommerce system.

MACH Architecture

The MACH architecture is the most modern approach for building and developing highly flexible eCommerce websites. This architecture allows businesses to integrate leading technologies into a single system, incorporating Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless components.

• M (Microservices-based): Independent small applications are developed, deployed, and managed separately. These applications are designed to perform specific business functions.
• A (API-first): All components of the eCommerce system are connected through an Application Programming Interface (API), enabling different components to operate efficiently within the same system.
• C (Cloud-native): The development of the eCommerce system takes place in the cloud, providing a scalable infrastructure, and technology services are automatically updated by the provider.
• H (Headless): Implementing Headless allows the separation of the user interface (frontend) and the operational system (backend) for eCommerce website deployment. This enables the creation and customization of unique and seamless user experiences.

Pros: 

• High Flexibility: Businesses can choose and modify tools and services according to business needs, making it easy to customize and expand services when there is a need to scale the business.
• Easy Integration: APIs are at the core of the MACH architecture, facilitating easy connections with third-party services and applications.
• High Performance and Security: Because businesses can leverage state-of-the-art technologies, it ensures system operational performance, page loading speed, user experience, and high security.  

Cons: 

• High Complexity: The separation of many components and technologies makes the deployment of the MACH architecture complex. This requires high technical skills and experience to ensure an effective deployment, management, and operation of the system.
• High Costs: Integrating multiple technologies or incorporating various third-party services can result in higher expenses, such as integration fees, training fees, or hiring a deployment team, along with maintenance and update-related costs.

MACH architecture is suitable for businesses with ample budgets aiming to implement large projects based on the four MACH technologies and with high requirements for customization and scalability. It is also beneficial if they have in-house expertise or collaborate with highly specialized development teams.

Monolithic, Headless, Composable and MACH: Which is the right choice?

Above is a summary of the essence of the four eCommerce website deployment architectures: Monolithic, Headless, Composable, and MACH. While Monolithic may seem outdated and has many limitations, the Composable and MACH architectures are innovative, providing more optimal and flexible development solutions, but their deployment and operation processes are complex, requiring a highly skilled development team. Therefore, Headless becomes a valuable architectural solution compared to the other three choices for implementing eCommerce websites at the current time.

Headless Commerce is the most popular solution today, with a 25% increase in demand for Headless Commerce deployment in the past two years. Implementing Headless allows businesses to create a customized and multi-channel user experience by integrating with leading tools and technologies. To effectively develop Headless Commerce, businesses need to collaborate with a development team with high skills and expertise, as well as a well-thought-out strategy.

With extensive technical experience and high expertise in the e-commerce field, SECOMM has successfully consulted and implemented Headless Commerce for leading businesses such as Vinamilk, and Suzuverse, based on one of Shopify’s three solutions:

• Shopify Hydrogen + Oxygen: This superior solution includes the Hydrogen framework based on React and the Oxygen hosting, enabling businesses to quickly and effectively deploy an eCommerce website using the Headless architecture.
• Commerce Components: A breakthrough tech stack developed specifically for large enterprises implementing Headless Commerce or Composable Commerce. This solution allows businesses to integrate independent components to customize and enhance the eCommerce experience.

Contact SECOMM or call directly on the hotline (02871089908) to explore how we can support businesses in maximizing the potential of Headless Commerce and enhancing competitiveness in the eCommerce market.