Introduction
If you are considering using Jamstack for eCommerce, it’s worth taking a look at eCommerce platforms you can use.
As the number of such solutions grows, we decided to help you with making a final decision by handpicking the best Jamstack eCommerce platforms out there.
These are:
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In this article, we cover:
- Reasons to use Jamstack for eCommerce
- Popular Jamstack eCommerce platforms
- Their pros and cons
- Their main features
- Real-life examples
In the end, we compare these six eCommerce platforms for Jamstack in an easy-to-read table format.
Let’s start with fundamentals – why should you consider using Jamstack to build an online store in the first place?
PS If you want to learn more about Jamstack, you can read our comprehensive guide on What is Jamstack?
You can also watch our interview with Colby Fayock, one of the top Jamstack experts.
Why use Jamstack for eCommerce?
Jamstack itself offers many benefits for companies that want to build their online presence. Requirements of both clients and Google are getting bigger and the idea behind Jamstack is to help businesses meet these requirements.
Jamstack means:
- Fast page load speed
- Rich user experience
- SEO efficiency
- Going omnichannel
- Being future-proof
- High security
However, these benefits apply to all kinds of businesses and websites, but there are some that are intended for eCommerce businesses.
So why use Jamstack for eCommerce?
- To sell anywhere
- Improve time to market
- Get unlimited experience possibilities
- Lower the development cost (in comparison to the traditional approach)
- Get a much better developer experience for your tech team
Choosing Jamstack for eCommerce is called headless eCommerce. And there are some eCommerce platforms that allow for unlocking the full potential of going headless.
Headless eCommerce platforms and their benefits
Headless is quite a new concept of separating the front-end layer from the backend layer, but syncing them with each other at the same time through API (Application Programming Interface).
It’s the main difference between headless eCommerce vs traditional eCommerce.
As content and design are separated from the logic and functional layer, online store owners don’t have to worry about breaking basic store functionalities (like payments or databases) while creating out-of-the-box customer experiences.
Thanks to headless eCommerce, you can efficiently manage the content and distribute it to any channel. That’s not possible in the case of traditional eCommerce. In short, it gives you full flexibility and control of content, user interface, page templates and custom code.
Going headless also means that you can create and design custom customer touchpoints like forms, product pages, checkout pages or anything else that customers interact with.
Benefits
| Easiness of making changes, testing new solutions and functionalities, and optimising the store. |
| Headless approach can be applied to any online store (if there is API available), regardless of its content heaviness, a number of products or other factors. |
| Making changes (like fixing performance issues or implementing new features) is faster than in the case of traditional eCommerce because of the openness of headless architecture. |
| Minimal risk of breaking down store during technical changes. |
| Possibility to integrate with eCommerce platforms (eg. Shopify, Saleor) through API without the need of building an online store from scratch. |
| Total flexibility of designing an interface that translates into a better user experience. |
As there are many eCommerce platforms that can be used in the Jamstack approach, we handpicked just a few of them. These are platforms that we use in our daily work:
- BigCommerce
- Crystallize
- Magento (Adobe Commerce)
- Saleor
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
Let’s take a look at each one of them.
Still hesitating which one to choose?
Our Top Jamstack eCommerce Platforms
Here’s a handpicked list of our favourite eCommerce platforms that work perfectly, and are able to deliver superb results together with the Jamstack approach.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a SaaS eCommerce platform that aims to help merchants regardless of their growth stage. It’s easy to set up and start selling, even for people without coding experience or even web design skills.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Built-in product review functionality | Abandoned cart functionality is quite expensive |
| Free 15-day trial | Annual online sales limits |
| GDPR compliance | API support is available only on the enterprise plan |
| Many features are available at entry-level plan | No RSS feed support |
| Multi-currency and multi-language | No shipping discounts |
| No additional transaction fees | |
| Third-party real-time shipping calculations | |
| Unlimited number of staff accounts |
Main features
| B2B | Bulk pricing; Price lists; Quote management |
| Core features | Customer groups; Refunds and returns; Analytics and reporting; Automated tax calculations |
| Cross-channel commerce | Integrations with marketplaces like eBay; Integrations with social media platforms like Facebook; Switching between storefronts with one login |
| Storefront conversion | Coupons and discounts; payments through digital wallets; Fast page load speed; Advanced search |
| Storefront design | Visual page builder; Checkout, mobile and theme customisation; WordPress integration |
Pricing
| Standard | Plus | Pro | Enterprise | |
| Price/mo | $29.95/mo | $79.95/mo | $299.95/mo | Custom pricing |
| Annual sales limit | $50,000 | $180,000 | $400,000 | Negotiable |
If you exceed the annual sales limit on the Standard and Plus plans, you need to upgrade your plan.
You can check the detailed pricing on BigCommerce’s website.
When to use BigCommerce?
Although BigCommerce is a great choice for all kinds of online stores, it offers additional solutions for the following industries:
- Apparel & Fashion
- Automotive
- CBD
- Food & Beverage
- Health & Beauty
- Manufacturing
Examples of BigCommerce stores
Black Diamond Equipment is an online store with climbing, skiing and trail running gear.
Model Train Stuff is an online store with model trains, train sets and model accessories.
Crystallize
Crystallize is a modern headless eCommerce platform for selling digital and physical products in any language. It combines Product Information Management (PIM) and rich content management. Essentially, it is an eCommerce platform with CMS and a search engine in one.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Customization and frontend freedom (use favourite tech stack) | Best fit for bigger projects, not simple ones that require a fast start by choosing a template and importing a catalogue of products |
| High level of automation thanks to webhooks | Less popular in comparison to BigCommerce or Shopify |
| Management of stock information for physical products | Requires development even though it offers open-source boilerplates (templates) |
| Multichannel | Slow time to market |
| Multi-currency | |
| Open Slack community | |
| Possibility to sell both digital and physical products | |
| Possibility to offer subscription plans to customers | |
| Superfast GraphQL API that allows querying exactly for the data you need |
Main features
- Custom price variants
- Custom product variants
- Fulfilment pipelines
- Highly scalable
- Multi-currency reporting
- Multiple stock locations
- Multiple users per account and multiple accounts per user
- Order management
- Structured content
Pricing
| Particle | Atom | Crystal |
| Free | $299/month | Custom |
| Community support | Support from Engineering in Slack | Dedicated support team on Slack |
You can check the detailed pricing on Crystallize’s website.
When to use Crystallize?
Crystallize is a great and very flexible tool. It allows teams to have a central place to handle their products and content data that is available in production instantly, via the headless GraphQL API. It would be a perfect case for a business that shares information across multiple channels (multiple web fronts, apps, etc.).
Since it is so flexible, it also fits business models that have specific requirements or are restricted by other platforms. The last big pain-point of businesses is performance, and that does not cover only data streams out of Crystallize but is also a big factor when securing sensitive information like checkout processes.
Examples of Crystallize stores
Bertel O. Steen is an official Mercedes Benz retailer in Norway.
Loql is a UK startup empowering local restaurants.
Magento (Adobe Commerce)
Magento is an eCommerce platform dedicated to bigger players with many rich features, headless architecture and various third-party integrations.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Cloud delivery (access to the latest software version, infrastructure improvements and functionality) | Not beginner-friendly (steep learning curve) |
| Customer segmentation and personalisation | Not easy to implement |
| ERP integration | Slow time to market |
| Free version (called Community version) | Quite costly at some points |
| Integrated B2B functionality | |
| Optimised performance (AWS-based environment) | |
| Possibility to sell and distribute on Amazon directly from your store | |
| Product recommendations functionality |
Main features
- AI-powered advanced live search
- Amazon Sales Channel extension
- Integration with ShopRunner (two-day deliveries)
- Multi-cloud support (Amazon Web Services or Azure)
- Order management
- Possibility to build PWA (Progressive Web App) on top of Magento (Adobe Commerce)
- Product recommendations functionality
- Revenue-based funding thanks to Wayflyer
- Visual page builder
Pricing
As pricing is not available publicly, you need to contact sales first.
When to use Magento (Adobe Commerce)?
Magento is a good option for mid-market businesses with a growing tendency and is a truly great choice for big enterprise businesses that demand high customizability.
Examples of Magento stores
EGLO is an online store with contemporary lighting solutions for every area.
HÖGL is an online store with high-quality, stylish women’s shoes.
Saleor
Saleor is a headless eCommerce platform empowering online store owners to deliver blazingly fast, dynamic and personalised shopping experiences.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Global taxes are covered | A small number of developers |
| Multi-device accessibility | Not many third-party integrations |
| Multi-language and translations module | Relatively immature platform |
| Multi-warehouse inventory | |
| No front-end limitations | |
| Product SEO optimisation | |
| SDK (connecting to API is easy) | |
| Unlimited product attributes | |
| Upselling with machine learning |
Main features
- CSV import and export
- Flexible product types
- Google Analytics integration
- Localised data
- Product bundles and collections
- Refunds and returns
- Reminders about abandoned carts
- Tracking sales history and metrics
- Quick product search
Pricing
There are two options:
- Open-source – it is and will be free forever to host on your servers
- Cloud – monthly pricing that depends on the number of monthly orders
Let’s check the pricing for 1,500-2,500 monthly orders on three plans (Startup, Pro, Enterprise).
| Startup | Pro | Enterprise |
| $695/mo | $1,795/mo | $6,795/mo |
| 1,500 orders/mo | 2,500 orders/mo | 2,500 orders/mo |
You can check the detailed pricing on Saleor’s website.
When to use Saleor?
Saleor is a great choice regardless of whether you are a small, midsize or enterprise-level retailer with a physical or digital inventory.
Note that Saleor was built with headless commerce in mind.
You can also read more about Saleor here.
Examples of Saleor stores
A-dam is a clothing brand focused on high-quality basics.
Pfeffer & Frost is an emerging food-centered eCommerce company.
Shopify
Shopify is probably the most popular, and the first direction for any new web shop nowadays. It is a SaaS eCommerce platform, similar to BigCommerce, that’s widely popular worldwide.
You can choose it regardless of the stage you are at because Shopify offers solutions for beginner stores and well-established ones.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Abandoned cart functionality is available on all plans | Being GDPR compliant requires an additional app |
| Android and iOS apps to help you with store management | Built-in email marketing functionality is pretty basic |
| Built-in email marketing tool | Multi-currency selling is only possible when using Shopify Payments |
| Free 14-day trial | Product reviews functionality requires installing an app |
| Great for dropshipping | Professional reporting is available only on more expensive plans |
| Many third-party apps to choose from | Some of the key functionalities also require installing a third-party app |
| Multi-currency | Using third-party solutions won’t help you with avoiding transaction fees |
| Multi-language versions | |
| US, Canadian and EU taxes are calculated automatically |
Main features
| Storefront | Web-based website builder; Full access to HTML and CSS; Built-in mobile shopping cart |
| Shopping cart | Flexible shipping rates; Credit card payments; Automatic taxes |
| Store management | Customer profiles; Dropshipping-ready; Automated e-mail templates; Mobile order fulfilment |
| Marketing & SEO | Social media integration; Possibility to buy products without leaving Facebook; Gift cards; Generated sitemap.xml |
| Products | Product variations; Video and 3D support; Subscriptions; SEO product tags |
| Web hosting | SSL certificate; Unlimited bandwidth; Instant upgrades |
| Analytics | Actionable dashboard; Product and traffic/referral reports; Google Analytics integration |
| Mobile app | Order fulfillment; Data synchronization; Mobile dashboard; Inventory management |
| 24/7 support | Dedicated support team; Shopify Help Center; Discussion forums |
Pricing
| Shopify Lite | Basic Shopify | Shopify | Advanced Shopify | Shopify Plus |
| $9/mo | $29/mo | $79/mo | $299/mo | Custom pricing |
You can check the detailed pricing on Shopify’s website.
When to use Shopify?
Shopify is an excellent choice for shops of all sizes and industries, regardless of whether you are just starting out (consider Shopify Lite then) or have a well-established online store that needs some improvements.
We can also learn about using Shopify as a headless only.
Examples of Shopify stores
Grovemade is an online store that offers office accessories and helps with modern desk organisation.
Pop Chart is an online store with infographic posters about everything pop culture.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin that enables you to transform WordPress websites into eCommerce platforms.
It does not only integrate seamlessly with WordPress but also with Jamstack. In other words, if you already have a WooCommerce store, you can go headless.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Basic features are available for free | Advanced customization requires technical skills |
| Beginner-friendly | Costs can quickly add up |
| Easy and quick setup | Performance and speed get worse after installing too many plugins |
| Great flexibility (suited for all kinds of webshops) | Some plugins and extensions require a one-time or monthly payment |
| It’s easy to find skilled developers | |
| Large community | |
| Many free and premium themes | |
| Many free and premium plugins and extensions | |
| Open-source | |
| Self-hosted (so you own it) |
Main features
- Automated tax calculations
- Endless product variations
- Flexible and secure payments
- Free and paid extensions (available on the official WooCommerce marketplace)
- In-home label printing
- Integration with Google Analytics and Google Shopping
- Live shipping rates from leading carriers
- Mobile app for iOS and Android
- Order management
- Subscription options
Pricing
WooCommerce is a free open-source plugin however there are many WooCommerce extensions available, and some of them aren’t free.
When to use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce can be used regardless of the industry or number of products. Although it’s easy to set up a simple online store, adding more advanced features in the future will require installing extensions or the developer’s help so for some it may be deciding factor to use some other platform.
Examples of WooCommerce stores
Certified Comic Shop is an online store with comics.
Shop Catalog is an online store offering creative works from people behind Thought Catalog.
Head-to-head comparison of Jamstack eCommerce platforms
Now, after finding out about the pros, cons, and features of each eCommerce platform, let’s compare them against each other considering different aspects.
We created the following comparison from the perspective of building a simple online store, not some big eCommerce site.
| Easy to setup | Easy to customize | Speed and performance | SEO | Dev cost | Monthly cost | |
| BigCommerce | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟢 |
| Crystallize | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟡 |
| Magento | 🔴 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟢 | 🔴 | 🔴 |
| Saleor | 🟡 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟢 |
| Shopify | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟢 |
| WooCommerce | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
Conclusion
In most cases, all platforms offer similar basic features that provide a lot of value for eCommerce brands. However, there are specific differences between these platforms that may become crucial for a specific business type and particular requirements.
If that’s the case, a free consultation with a dedicated Jamstack agency – like Pagepro – may help you with making a final choice.
Further readings
If you want to learn more about Jamstack or headless eCommerce in general, we recommend reading the following articles:
- What is Jamstack?
- Headless eCommerce vs Traditional eCommerce
- How can Jamstack help you increase conversion rate?
- Why use Jamstack for eCommerce in 2021?
Still hesitating which one to choose?
