10 Best Jamstack-ready eCommerce platforms

By Ikius Team

February 2nd, 2024

*Updated in February, 2024

eCommerce is more popular than ever. But, to stay afloat, merchants must create eye-catching sites that can quickly change and support different experiences.

But, legacy eCommerce solutions often limit merchants' creative control, making it hard to grow, adapt, and add functionalities. In contrast, Jamstack, a modern web architecture that decouples the web experience layer from data and business logic, improving flexibility, scalability, performance, and maintainability for eCommerce, makes it easy.

By embracing composability and modern tool stacks, merchants can curate unique, blazingly fast storefronts that attract consumers.

This post will discuss why Jamstack is a better option than legacy solutions. We'll also go over the best Jamstack eCommerce solutions to use.

In this post:

A brief history of eCommerce

While in the works since 1979, eCommerce rose in popularity in the mid-90s with giants like Amazon and Alibaba. It provided convenience to consumers by allowing them to shop on their own time and discover products quickly.

Today, eCommerce is in its heyday. Social media, new distribution channels, and connected devices let merchants reach consumers faster than ever. The pandemic just furthered this. UNCTAD found that eCommerce rose 19% during the pandemic to nearly $26.7 trillion internationally. This means the market is growing rapidly.

But that also means an increasing need for more supplies, tons of items being shipped daily, and lots of competition. Today's merchants need to stay ahead to survive, and a legacy solution like Shopify's WooCommerce might not be enough to keep you afloat.

The problem with legacy eCommerce solutions

In the 90s, businesses had to focus excessively on maintaining online stores.

Legacy solutions fixed this. They coupled the frontend and backend functionalities into one package. It resulted in the first technology to curate the presentation layer (frontend) while managing shipping, inventory, etc. (backend). Finally, businesses could spend less on maintaining sites.

However, legacy solutions also created monolithic sites that were hard to scale, quickly bogged down, and had security issues. Any of these will be a significant roadblock in the current eCommerce market.

Forward-thinking brands should keep in mind that legacy solutions, like WooCommerce, present:

• Rigidity: Traditional eCommerce confines developers to a box of predetermined options. The frontend is pre-defined by engineers, causing websites to look the same. It, as you imagine, makes it hard for your online store to stand out.

• Not being able to keep up: Legacy solutions helped give structure to sites, but they can't always handle traffic spikes. Plus, with rigidity, launching new experiences becomes a cumbersome ordeal. A redesign could cause the whole project to be rebuilt.

• More potential to being attacked: Being monolithic, legacy eCommerce platforms expose more areas for potential cyberattacks. You don't want your reputation or customers' data threatened as competition and traffic rise.

• Limited omnichannel experiences: Managing content across channels with legacy solutions is hard. Many users nowadays find online stores through their phones and smart devices, and without support for mobile and IoT devices, storefronts built on legacy platforms are missing out.

Jamstack to the rescue

Enter Jamstack: a modern, headless web architecture that fixes legacy platforms' issues and more.

Jamstack architecture advocates for a headless, composable approach. Headless decouples the frontend from that backend, meaning you aren't confined to a box like legacy solutions. Instead, you have creative control over the frontend and can choose any tools or the JavaScript framework you prefer to complete.

Jamstack is an acronym that stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. It is a modern web development architecture that prioritizes speed, performance, and security by leveraging pre-built static pages and decoupling the front-end from the back-end. This approach departs from traditional web development methods like monolithic or server-rendered solutions.

The core principles of Jamstack are:

• Pre-rendering: In a Jamstack architecture, web pages are generated at build time as static files. This pre-rendering ensures that users receive the content faster as there is no need to wait for server-side rendering.

• Decoupling: Jamstack separates the front-end and back-end, using APIs to communicate between the two. This decoupling allows developers to work on the front-end and back-end independently, making it easier to manage, update, and scale the application.

• Client-side rendering: JavaScript manages dynamic content and interactivity on the client side, reducing the need for server-side processing and rendering.

• Use of APIs: The Jamstack architecture relies heavily on APIs for retrieving and managing data from various services, such as a headless content management system (CMS), eCommerce platforms, or other third-party tools.

• Global deployment: Jamstack websites can be deployed globally using content delivery networks (CDNs), which cache the static files and serve them from the edge nodes closest to the users, improving performance and reducing latency.

That flexibility and freedom transfer to maintaining your eCommerce store. A Jamstack site leverages reusable APIs and GraphQL that help deliver your content from your headless CMS to your frontend to support your design so that you can scale up and down seamlessly.

As a result, you don't have to worry about rebuilding your entire storefront or being too rigid to scale your business.

As the market continues to grow and change, you want a solution that will grow and change with you. Traditional eCommerce platforms sound great on paper but won't help you stand out. In addition, they don't provide the amount of flexibility that Jamstack eCommerce solutions can.

Jamstack vs traditional commerce

Best 10 eCommerce solutions for Jamstack

Headless Shopify

Shopify was founded by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake in 2006. It offers an easy-to-use storefront API using GraphQL that can help you create almost every element for your store. While Shopify traditionally isn't headless, its API can support a Jamstack application by using Shopify Plus as a backend to create headless Shopify.

• Good for: Customizations, easy set-up, small businesses

• Price: Starts at $29/month, $79/month, and $299/month. Shopify Plus starts at $2,000/month

Snipcart

Charles Ouellet founded Snipcart in 2013. Snipcart is a shopping platform tool that leverages HTML and JS. With it, you can fully customize and manage shipping and inventory. It can also be integrated into any website.

• Good for: Customized shopping, easy management, shipping

• Price: Charges 2% of all transactions

Commerce Layer

Started in 2017 by Filippo Conforti and Massimo Scardellato, Commerce Layer is a headless commerce platform and order management system. It features customizations for almost every element of your site, especially global shopping. You can leverage APIs to add global shopping capabilities to any channel.

• Good for: Global shipping, mobile transactions, IoT

• Price: Free, $649/month, and custom

BigCommerce

Eddie Machalaani and Mitchell Harper began BigCommerce in 2009. As a SaaS platform, it offers an API-driven shopping experience through CMS, app, and DXP. The platform's presentation layer is decoupled from its eCommerce engine, letting developers run any number of stores across frontend solutions from one single hub.

• Good for: Omnichannel experiences, very large stores

• Price: $29.95/month , $79.95/month, and $299.95/month

Commerce.js

Commerce.js, founded by Andrew Underwood and Devan Koshal in 2016, is an API-driven infrastructure for developers. It boasts of helping any business, from startup to enterprise, build purchasing experiences across channels, including VR commerce.

Their managed backend provides enterprise-grade APIs to build carts, upsells, and more.

• Good for: Multiple channels, purchasing experiences, any business size

• Price: Free, $79/month, $349/month, and custom

Elastic Path

Harry Chemko began Elastic Path in 2000. Essentially, Elastic Path is a composable API first headless commerce system. It's focused on providing simple solutions to complex enterprise businesses. It boasts microservices and a product manager.

Saleor

Saleor is a platform for creating storefronts. Started in 2020 by Mirek Mencel and Patryk Zawadzki, it has an open-source cloud platform featuring all the core functionalities you need. It boasts a powerful product configuration tool and a focus on PWA. Their administration dashboard allows you to easily manage products, people, and functionalities.

• Good for: Management, cloud functionalities, PWA

• Price: Based on monthly orders; starts at free, $695/month, $1795/month, and $6795/month

Medusa

Medusa kicked off in 2021 by Sebastian Rindom, Oliver Juhl and Nicklas Gellner. Boasting as a Shopify alternative, it's a composable open-source eCommerce platform with endless customizations for merchants. You'll receive the building blocks to start creating experiences immediately out of the box.

Also, Medusa integrates seamlessly with Contentful content management system, a headless platform with rich features.

• Good for: Customizations, composable eCommerce, contentful CMS

• Price: Free, premium support version with tailored price

Crystalize

Bård and Aleksander Farstad founded Crystalize in 2017. Crystallize is a blazingly fast solution with low latency. In addition, it has a GraphQL-based Project Information Modeling (PIM), meaning you can deliver rich, custom made experiences with just one component.

They'll give you rich marketing content, transcoded images, and videos hosted on their CDN.

Vue Storefront

Vue Storefront was built by Bartłomiej Roszkowski, Filip Rakowski, Patrick Friday in 2017. It's an open source frontend framework written in vue.js that can be connected to any eCommerce platform.

It allows you to create seamless PWA experiences. Also, every component can be customized and replaced with your own material: images, icons, custom HTML markup, you name it!

Lastly, it scaffolds offline experiences.

• Good for: Mobile UX, PWA, offline elements

• Price: Price not Specified

The anatomy of a Jamstack eCommerce storefront

When implementing a Jamstack eCommerce solution, there are several technical components involved. Here's an overview of these components and their roles in the Jamstack ecosystem:

• Static Site Generators (SSGs): These tools convert content and templates into pre-rendered static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. SSGs are essential for creating the static web pages that make up a Jamstack site. Popular SSGs include Next.js, Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, and Eleventy.

• APIs: Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are crucial for connecting the static front-end of a Jamstack site with various back-end services and data sources. In a Jamstack eCommerce solution, APIs can be used to fetch product information, handle user authentication, manage shopping carts, and process payments. Some popular eCommerce APIs include Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Snipcart.

• Headless CMS: A headless Content Management System (CMS) is a back-end content repository that provides content via APIs and doesn't include a front-end presentation layer. This approach allows developers to manage content more flexibly, as they can choose any front-end framework to display the content. Examples of headless CMS options are Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, and Ghost.

• Front-end frameworks and libraries: These tools provide the structure and interactivity of the user interface. In a Jamstack eCommerce solution, front-end frameworks and libraries like React, Vue.js, or Angular can be used to build the user interface and handle client-side rendering.

• Continuous Deployment (CD): CD is automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes to production. Jamstack sites benefit from continuous deployment, as it simplifies the process of updating content and code. Platforms like Netlify, Vercel, and GitHub Pages provide continuous deployment services.

• Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN is a network of servers distributed across the globe that caches and serves static content to users from the nearest server, reducing latency and improving site performance. Jamstack sites often use CDNs to deliver their static assets, such as images, stylesheets, and scripts. Popular CDN providers include Cloudflare, Amazon CloudFront, and Akamai.

Benefits of the Jamstack architecture for eCommerce stores

Let's dig a bit more into the benefits of using Jamstack for eCommerce.

Unlimited options

Adding eCommerce functionality to a Jamstack site provides total control of both the backend and the presentation layer. As a result, your team has the freedom to curate unique, eye-catching designs that sets you apart from the crowd.

Even more, you can build your storefront in many different ways. You could build a static website using a static site generator or a progressive web app (PWA) using React or any frameworks your team prefers like Next.js or Gatsby. Developers can rely on third-party eCommerce backends and spend more time on the frontend. This helps lower web development time and cost.

Ensures safe transactions

Jamstack files have a layer of protection. First, they're not tied to one database or server, meaning they don't connect to sensitive information such as your customers' data and payment gateway. Also, Jamstack eCommerce stores use static files with fewer security holes.

This gives you the confidence to provide your customers with safe and secure transactions.

Future forward

Jamstack eCommerce websites are easy to maintain and scale.

You'll experience fewer tool updates, 500 errors, and more, causing low maintenance costs. Your team can focus on improving conversion rates over maintaining the store.

If your site's traffic peaks, a Jamstack website can handle it seamlessly. All content is on a content delivery network and pre-rendered; all content is close to the visitor. As a result, not only do pages load faster, but they can quickly scale depending on traffic.

Closing thoughts

Today's eCommerce market is rapidly growing. But, unlike the early days, it demands omnichannel abilities, tight security, and flexibility. Traditional solutions, like WooCommerce, cannot hold up.

Enter Jamstack. It helps you build flexible, blazingly fast sites; Jamstack eCommerce solutions further this by giving you tools to take your business to the next level. But, like anything, it does have downsides.

For example, building a Jamstack website requires specific technical knowledge, meaning it'll be challenging for non-technical users to build Jamstack sites. If you are looking to hire a developer, this will not be a problem for you.

However, if you're a small business that's just starting, start with a more traditional platform to test your market and build a customer base, as while Jamstack eCommerce solutions are low-cost in the long run, they require a budget upfront.

So, all things considered, before choosing Jamstack, make sure it's right for you.