Compare E-Commerce models.
Our scoring process is applied and objectively evaluated according to strengths and weaknesses.
Compare vendors based on the five dimensions of the Composable Agility Score. Freely choose the solutions you want to compare to get an easy overview of their capabilities. You can adjust your selection at any time or click on any solution to read a more detailed explanation of their CA Score.
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How easy is it to quickly and scalably build the individual solutions you need for your business using the application? See also: Best of Breed versus Best of Suite.
How well can a cloud application be broken down into its individual parts and used? The best solutions can be combined based on specific customer requirements.
How well can this application be connected and controlled via standardized applications? A functional API interface is able to interact with any other software.
How natively can this application be operated in the cloud (updates, backup, porting)? An ideal cloud solution is available everywhere, accessible at any time, highly secure, flexible and agile.
How independent can the application be from the end user’s interface (desktop, mobile, on the go…)? A functional solution is able to operate with any frontend.
BigCommerce is an Open SaaS e-commerce platform for B2B and B2C retailers. Founded in 2009 in Sydney, Australia, BigCommerce is currently headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA. As of August 2020, BigCommerce is a NASDAQ-listed company. BigCommerce offers four pricing plans; Standard, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. In order to fully assess its capabilities, this evaluation is based on their Enterprise plan.
Salesforce offers companies feature-packed solutions with a focus on powerful AI. While they offer a comprehensive e-commerce solution with their Commerce Cloud, they still have some catching up to do when it comes to some of the interfaces. For example, microservices are being introduced, but are not yet ubiquitous.
When Shopify first launched, it was the first e-commerce solution designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Since then, it has become one of the largest e-commerce platforms overall and has expanded to offer an enterprise solution known as Shopify Plus. Shopify Plus serves companies with high sales volumes and a need for more customization and multi-channel sales. Although the company is a market leader and certainly an e-commerce giant, it does have some weaknesses — in particular, the absence of microservices and the relative lack of customization options.
Spryker offers a fully modular digital commerce platform for B2B and B2C, as well as Enterprise Marketplace capabilities. Spryker was founded in 2014 in Berlin, Germany, and raised over $130 million in a Series C funding, led by Silicon Valley-based TCV in December 2020. According to Gartner®, Spryker is the fastest growing vendor in the 2021 Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce.
7.0
5.8Composability
8Head-
less
less
8.7Cloud
Native
Native
7API
5.3Modu-
larity
larity
6.1
5.8Composability
6.5Head-
less
less
7Cloud
Native
Native
7.3API
3.9Modu-
larity
larity
5.8
5.9Composability
7.8Head-
less
less
6.8Cloud
Native
Native
5.9API
2.6Modu-
larity
larity
8.6
9.1Composability
8.7Head-
less
less
8.7Cloud
Native
Native
8.9API
7.7Modu-
larity
larity
Modularity
5.3
3.9
2.6
7.7
BigCommerce began operations as a monolithic platform, although in recent years it has focused more on a modular system/microservices. As BigCommerce is a SaaS platform, customers do not consume or interact with microservices directly. Instead, these are utilized behind the scenes for easier customer implementation.
The Salesforce Solution is not based on a modular system/microservices. It’s a monolith that is making an effort to modernize its offerings—which doesn’t change the origins and nature of its core architecture.
Shopify is based on a monolithic SaaS system. Both Shopify and for Shopify Plus therefore do not offer a modular system/microservices. As a result, the platform received a microservice subscore of 2.6. Monitoring is also limited, with reports and dashboards focusing mainly on marketing and sales KPIs. Overall, Shopify’s monolithic approach results in limited flexibility and customizability.
Spryker’s architecture is based on a modular system/microservices, even though the products they offer focus on capabilities which are essentially bundles of microservices. Based on Gartner’s Packaged Business Capability (PBC) paradigm, this approach results in a less granular segmentation than microservices would offer, but reduces complexity and makes the deployment simpler. Services can be deployed independently and customized if needed.
API
7
7.3
5.9
8.9
APIs via BigCommerce cover most use cases, but don’t offer full customizability. There are some areas where BigCommerce does not offer API coverage; however, because it is an Open SaaS platform, API coverage is fairly extensive.
With Salesforce, pre-configured API connections to 3rd party apps (e.g. ERP systems, inventory systems, accounting systems etc.) are not available. Due to their acquisition of the API platform Mulesoft and their very own tech infrastructure, Salesforce offers several APIs. Most are REST standard.
Meanwhile, there are a variety of APIs for different purposes, including: Storefront, Admin and Partner. Although primarily focused on the frontend, the APIs are well documented and conform to modern standards (all APIs are available in GraphQL, only the Admin API supports REST). However, configurability or extensibility is very limited, resulting in a sub-score of 5.9.
Spryker is an API first solution with an exceptionally high coverage of functions via APIs. The Spryker “GLUE API” adheres to all modern quality and security standards, and supports versioning as well as different output types. High-code customizations and low-code configuration are available.
Cloud Native
8.7
7
6.8
8.7
Being an Open Saas platform, BigCommerce scores highest for being cloud native.
Salesforce offers a cloud-native solution. It mainly uses AWS and offers a very solid infrastructure. Updates can be done seamlessly for end-users, although there can be issues with elasticity, e.g. scalability.
Shopify is a pure cloud SaaS with multi-tenant operation. It is based on two different services, one on the Google Cloud Platform, the other on Amazon Web Services. However, customers do not benefit from the full range of capabilities offered by cloud-native solutions. While Shopify uses it for its SaaS stack, it is not available for custom projects.
Spryker started as a purely on-premise solution, but shifted entirely to a cloud-native approach. The Spryker Cloud Commerce OS is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution mainly deployed on AWS, but Azure and Google Cloud Platform are possible as well. Updates are automated for continuous deployment.
Composability
5.8
5.8
5.9
9.1
Although some aspects of the BigCommerce platform lend themselves well to scalability, composability is not something that was originally built into BigCommerce’s offering.
For functionality beyond standard integrations, additional coding is required. All customizations must be done in collaboration with existing features e.g. those delivered by salesforce.
Shopify’s biggest advantage in terms of compatibility is that it can connect with other third-party solutions, such as payment service providers (PSPs) or product information management (PIM). However, external PSPs may incur additional fees and are only possible with low-code solutions. The frontend can be customized to some extent, but to add backend functionality, store operators must use integrations from the Shopify app store.
The Spryker Cloud Commerce OS is a modular system following the best of breed approach with a decent-sized and rapidly growing ecosystem of partners. On a business level, Spryker’s App Composition Platform is particularly powerful, enabling one-click integration of technology partners. On a technical level, Spryker provides a considerable number of Software Development Kits (SDK) as building blocks to simplify the development of new integrations, as well as high-, low- and no-code customizations.
Headless
8
6.5
7.8
8.7
BigCommerce scores well for Headless overall, with its presentation layer decoupled from the front-end commerce engine. Partly because it has incorporated so many APIs, BigCommerce can be seen as a truly headless solution.
Salesforce is not headless; backend and frontend are not decoupled. Therefore, it allows you to work with a page designer solution, which is designed to give merchants more control over templates and content. It comes with a powerful AI-powered personalization feature and, thanks to the acquisition of the PWA service Mobify, it also delivers an out-of-the-box PWA platform. Salesforce does expose APIs and offers a headless CMS, but that didn’t change the underlying architecture of the core platform. It is still not microservice-based.
Shopify Plus, the enterprise solution, offers a decoupled headless solution that enables multi-channel and omnichannel sales. In the process, there are predefined front-ends and a large number of third-party integrations. However, the end-to-end customer experience cannot be fully customized. Overall, Shopify receives a score of 7.8 for the headless features.
Spryker is a truly headless solution and optimized to be used in multi- and omnichannel setups. It provides a strong out-of-the-box frontend that lacks some personalization capabilities in Spryker’s own CMS, but the flexibility in terms of customizations and third party integrations is very high.
Bottomline
7.0
6.1
5.8
8.6
As an Open SaaS platform, BigCommerce scores highest for being cloud native. This means that customers benefit from automatic and seamless updates. However, BigCommerce scores lowest for microservices. Although microservices are available, neither developers nor users can interact with them directly. BigCommerce also does not score highly in composability, since it was originally created as a monolithic platform. Although they are adding additional microservices to their offering and their headless options offer a certain level of decoupling and flexibility, improvements in this area will help to create a modern, flexible e-commerce experience.
Salesforce offers a robust solution with some unique functionality like powerful AI. Due to the many acquisitions, it feels a bit patched together — they mean that ecommerce is not Salesforce’s main area of focus. Salesforce is known as a global company and benefits from other Salesforce acquisitions and products. As one of the largest known monoliths, Salesforce is trying to modernize step by step especially with regards to microservices.
With a SaaS approach and some APIs, it’s easy for customers to build their business through Shopify. While the platform offers more customization and multi-channel options, it is still based on a monolithic architecture. In particular, the limitations caused by the limited API layer (especially on the backend) and the lack of microservices mean that customers with more complex requirements may not be able to build the solutions they need.
Spryker is a leader in the Cloud Agility Score with a special focus on composability via its App Composition Platform and the use of Packaged Business Capabilities. The latter feature makes microservices Spryker’s lowest subscore—at an overall very high level. The Spryker Cloud Commerce OS is headless throughout, offers nearly comprehensive high-quality API coverage, and is deployed natively on leading cloud hosting providers.
FAQ
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a NASDAQ-listed e-commerce platform provided as software-as-a-service for retailers. The company’s platform includes online store creation, search engine optimization, hosting, marketing, and security for businesses of all sizes.
Who uses BigCommerce?
Tens of thousands of B2B and B2C companies across 150 countries and numerous industries use BigCommerce to create beautiful, engaging online stores, including Ben & Jerry’s, Molton Brown, S.C. Johnson, Skullcandy, Sony, Vodafone and Woolrich.
Is BigCommerce good for e-commerce?
BigCommerce is a renowned e-commerce builder, providing high scalability for online stores. It has more built-in sales tools than most of its competitors, and combines these features with SEO and multi-channel integration.
What code does BigCommerce use?
BigCommerce uses programming languages like PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby. BigCommerces default presentation framework is SCSS Framework Citadel, which is built on top of Foundation v5. 5.3 (Foundation v6. x not currently supported).
Is Big Commerce free?
BigCommerce free plan can be selected for a period of one month from the date of activation (the “Offer”). The free Offer period applies only to base monthly subscription fees and does not apply to other services or products. After one month you need to upgrade to a subscription plan.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud computing software as a service (SaaS) company that specializes in customer relationship management (CRM). The software has become the number one for customer success and helps businesses track customer activity, market to customers and many more services.
What does Salesforce do/offer?
Salesforce lets you efficiently unify different principal functions of your business so you can achieve customer success. You can sell, provide service, market, collaborate, know your customers, and build apps on a single platform.
How does Salesforce architecture work?
Salesforce has a multilayer architecture; it contains a series of layers situated on top of each other. In the multilayer Salesforce architecture, the users are at the topmost layer.
Does Salesforce store data in a cloud?
Salesforce is a cloud platform and hence all the data stored in Salesforce is stored in cloud. Like Google, AWS and Microsoft, Salesforce has multiple data centers across the globe where this data is actually stored. All of these data is stored at multiple locations for easy accessibility and backup purpose which means that each record that is created in Salesforce is stored at muliple data centers across the globe.
Is Salesforce free?
Salesforce does not offer a free version of their software, so users have to choose between the different pricing plans.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a subscription-based software that allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products. Shopify store owners can also sell at physical locations with Shopify POS.
What exactly does Shopify do/offer?
Shopify is a wholesome commerce platform that lets you start, grow, and manage an online business. Shopify store owners can also sell in physical locations using Shopify POS, our point-of-sale app and accompanying hardware. If you’re a Shopify merchant with both an online and physical presence, your inventory and stock get synced so you can manage your store(s) from one account, on any device.
Does Shopify allow hosting?
With Shopify, web hosting is included. All Shopify plans include web hosting as a part of the package.
Does Shopify let you use your own domain?
In order to use Shopify, you’ll need to purchase or own a domain name and set up web hosting. You can either register your domain name through Shopify or purchase it from another provider. Hosting can be provided by Shopify or another provider.
Is Shopify free?
Shopify is not free to use. But you can get started with Shopify on their 14-day free trial. During the trial, you can build your store and make it available to the public. After That you can choose between four different subscription plans.
What is Spryker?
Spryker is a commerce platform with a full suite of e-commerce tools which enables companies to create sophisticated, transactional business models in B2B, Enterprise Marketplaces, Unified Commerce and B2C.
What does Spryker do/offer?
The Spryker Cloud Commerce OS is a composable platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution with headless & API-based architecture. Enterprises from all industries can use Spryker to innovate and differentiate their digital commerce business.
Is Spryker headless?
Spryker ‘s architecture is headless, the business logic and backend are decoupled from the customer-facing frontend. Spryker enables headless commerce solutions and is optimized to be used in multi- and omnichannel setups.
What is Spryker Marketplace?
Spryker’s commerce platform provides B2B, B2C, D2C, and Marketplace capabilities in one stack. That means that Spryker customers can build their own marketplaces in the Spryker Cloud Commerce OS.
Is Spryker free?
Spryker is no open source solution and does not offer the option of a free trial.
