Commercetools

info

This page reflects our views and assessments. All information is sourced from publicly available information and does not represent the vendor’s official position.

Evaluation

⭐ Highlights

• Commercetools is an API-first platform and pioneer of composable commerce
• Commercetools covers all essential features for both B2C and B2B use cases
• It hides much of its complexity internally, making it relatively easy to use
• It doesn't enforce the use of a specific programming language
• Self-developed storefronts and middleware can be hosted by Commercetools, avoiding shared-responsibility situations

👍 When to use

• For enterprise customers with advanced yet standard e-commerce needs
• Shops that require unlimited scalability
• Companies with small IT teams (e.g., two frontend- and two backend engineers)

👎 When to avoid

• Most marketplace setups that require dedicated user interfaces for merchants
• Projects with unique requirements that require frequent or extensive custom code changes
• Companies that require an on-premise solution for compliance, data security, or other reasons
• Teams without API-first architecture experience (steep learning curve)
• Projects with tight budgets (costs can be high for large-scale operations)

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Functionality

B2C

Commercetools has a complete set of B2C features, but is missing a pre-integrated CMS.

🌐 Product management
🌐 Order management
🌐 Customer management
🌐 Shopping cart
🌐 Payment processing
🌐 Multi-store capabilities

B2B

Commercetools ships with advanced B2B functionality

🌐 Business units and organizations
🌐 Roles and permissions
🌐 Quotes
🌐 Approval rules
🌐 Product selections

Marketplace

Commercetools isn't prepared for marketplace scenarios.

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Development approach

Bird’s eye view

When building a project with Commercetools, the typical steps may include:

• Manual configuration of your shop in the Merchant Center
• Development of your Custom Storefront based either on their templates or from-scratch (see below)
• Optional: Creation of pages and content in their visual site builder, called Studio
• Integration with other systems via self-developed Custom Middleware

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Storefront approach

Projects may start building from scratch or use their frontend solution, which is an entire suite of tools, that consists of

• a Next.js based storefront, pre-integrated with Commercetools. There are templates for B2C 🌐 and B2B 🌐 scenarios.
• a hosting environment that is based on a Node.js environment (Extension runner) and a frontend delivery system (Frontend delivery) based on Netlify and GCP
• and a visual site builder for non-technical users called Studio 🌐

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Embedded SaaS Checkout

Projects can decide if they implement their checkout themselves or use Commercetools' one-page checkout that ships with a configurable user interface 🌐.

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Integration middleware

Typically, customers want to integrate their shop with other IT systems, such as ERP, warehouse-software or PIM.

Since Commercetools is a closed system, these integrations must be custom developed using various techniques, like their:

• REST and GraphQL APIs
• Import-API 🌐 for bulk imports
• Event system 🌐
• Pre-built integrations with common payment providers
• Integration capabilities with major search engines (Algolia, Elasticsearch)
• CDN connectivity options

Teams that are using Java, can use the official Java-SDK🌐.

💡 Commercetools API's are not versioned. Instead they are using an evergreen approach, where existing API endpoints never have backward-compatibility breaks.

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Merchant Center

Commercetools is managed through their admin UI, called Merchant Center. It's used for initial configuration and for managing entities such as orders, customers, and products:

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Merchant Center Extensions

You may want to add custom pages and logic to the Merchant Center, which is a SaaS application (so direct code modifications are not possible).

Commercetools uses a technique called Micro Frontend, allowing you to implement a small application that leverages their authentication and UI Kit for a consistent look and feel. This mini-app is then integrated into the Merchant Center, appearing as a seamless part of the interface.

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Hosting options

While Commercetools is fully managed by their team and built on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with a multi-tenant architecture, your custom storefront and middleware require a scalable, high-availability hosting solution. You can either use any cloud provider, such as Vercel, Netlify, or Heroku, or leverage their Connect solution, which offers a managed hosting environment 🌐

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Case Studies

All information is based on public sources and manually curated. Projects that are completely hidden from the public are excluded. Contact us to contribute contact@roq.tech

Company	Shop URL	Industry	Type
APG & Co	https://www.apgandco.com/	Fashion & Lifestyle	B2C
Audi	https://www.audi.de/de/brand/de/myaudi-informationen.html	Automotive	B2C
Bang & Olufsen	www.bang-olufsen.com	Consumer Electronics	B2C
Bikes.de	https://bikes.de	Retail	B2CMarketplace
BMW	In-car shop	Automotive	B2CB2B
Cargo Crew	https://www.cargocrew.com/	Wholesale	B2BMarketplace
Danone		Food & Grocery	B2CB2B
Express	https://www.express.com/	Retail (Fashion)	B2C
Just Eat Takeaway	https://www.thuisbezorgd.nl/	Food & Grocery	B2CB2B
Loomstate	https://loomstate.org	Fashion & Lifestyle	B2CB2B
Nieuwkoop Europe	https://www.nieuwkoop-europe.com	Wholesale	B2B
Normet	https://store.normet.com	Mining and Construction	B2B
Treedom	https://www.treedom.net	Retail	B2CB2B
Vision Healthcare	https://www.vitaminexpress.org/	Retail (Healthcare)	B2CB2B