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10 Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms In 2023

The Best Headless Ecommerce Platform List

Here’s a shortlist of the best headless ecommerce platforms:

  1. 1. Lightspeed eCom — Best headless ecommerce platform for small to mid-sized businesses
  2. 2. BigCommerce — Best headless eCommerce platform for teams that desire open source customization functionality
  3. 3. Shopify — Best headless eCommerce platform with always-on availability
  4. 4. OroCommerce — Best headless eCommerce platform for wholesalers
  5. 5. Commercetools — Best headless eCommerce platform with a point of sale functionality
  6. 6. Contentful — Best headless eCommerce platform for agile workflows
  7. 7. Nacelle — Best for mid-market or enterprise merchandisers looking to grow
  8. 8. Kentico Kontent — Best headless eCommerce platform with intuitive authoring experience
  9. 9. Salsita Software — Best full-service software development agency to build a headless eCommerce platform
  10. 10. The.com — Best headless eCommerce platform for high speed

In this ultimate guide, I will list the 10 best headless ecommerce tools (and some bonuses) that will help you grow your online store and make it future-proof for future technologies.

Headless ecommerce is becoming a buzzword in the ecommerce industry. Having said that, there is a lot of confusion related to the term. And NO—it’s not the headless horseman’s side hustle hat shop (I’ll see myself out).

Customers are consuming content through multiple touchpoints. From mobile to IoT to progressive web apps (PWA), people are moving away from traditional web platforms. As a result, traditional ecommerce stores and business owners are falling short when it comes to delivering content on these platforms and matching the growing needs of the consumer.

While traditional ecommerce platforms are delivering content the old way, Jeff Bezos is laughing his way to the bank with features like smart voice assistants, Amazon Dash, and in-store interfaces. Customers are becoming used to these modern technologies and shunning the old approach.

The consensus is clear: If an ecommerce business expects to survive and thrive, they have to adapt to these modern technologies.

But implementing this technology often requires big dev and IT teams full of experienced developers. This can be very expensive for most ecommerce businesses. So how do everyday online stores and ecommerce systems adapt to deliver these omnichannel experiences without robbing a bank?

The answer lies in headless content management and headless ecommerce platforms. Based on that, I have created the definitive list of the best headless ecommerce platforms. The list features pocket-friendly headless ecommerce solutions that deliver every advantage associated with a headless approach.

To help you further, I have mentioned every headless ecommerce platform's core functionalities and listed the criteria for its selection.

Headless Ecommerce Platforms: Comparison Criteria

What do I look for when I select the best headless eCommerce platforms? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria: 

  1. User Interface (UI): Is it clean and attractive? Is the user experience clutter-free? Is the dashboard easy to use?
  2. Usability: Is it easy to learn and master? Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training? Headless eCommerce can get a bit technical and jarring. Is there a good support system to mitigate that? 
  3. Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations?
  4. Value for $: How appropriate is the price for the features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent, and flexible?

Headless Ecommerce Platforms: Key Features

API First Approach

Does the tool have an API-first approach? 

With an API-first approach, the design and development of the Application Programming Interface (API) come before the implementation. This is different from the traditional approach, based on code. In the code-first approach, any change requires a lot of rework, time-consuming delays, and endless work for your development team. The costs quickly add up.

In the API-first approach, the team starts by creating the application interface, which they then rely on to develop the rest of the application. By adding new features as an independent service accessed by API, the rest of the application can come together along with any future applications.

In a cloud-based infrastructure, an API-first approach can help you manage the complex nature of working in the cloud.

Omnichannel Experience

Does the product truly deliver an omnichannel experience? Can your content be delivered and shared via channels like mobile, IoT, and other modern technologies? 

Customization

What is the level of customization that can be achieved with the headless solution? Can you customize the platform according to your brand’s design language and tonality?

Support

What is the level and mode of support available? Is it available 24/7? Are there user guides and knowledge bases available? Is there a helpful community to support users?

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Overview Of The 10 Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms

Here’s a brief description of each of the headless eCommerce platforms on my list showing what it does best, plus screenshots to showcase some of the features.

1

Lightspeed eCom

Best headless ecommerce platform for small to mid-sized businesses

Lightspeed Ecommerce is a cloud-based, headless ecommerce platform that helps businesses create and manage their online stores. You can optimize your ecommerce operations with features like product management, order fulfillment, and customer relationship management.

Lightspeed Ecommerce has an awesome drag-and-drop website builder that’s easy enough that non-technical users can design and customize their online stores. The tool also has advanced inventory management features, including product variants and bundling, allowing you to really customize how your products are purchased. 

Lightspeed's multi-channel capabilities allow businesses to sell their products across multiple channels, including social media and marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, making it easier to reach a wider audience. The platform integrates with popular payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, shipping and logistics services like ShipStation and FedEx, and accounting apps like QuickBooks and Xero.

Pricing starts at $14.08/month, and a freemium plan is available.



Freemium plan available

From $14.08/month

2

BigCommerce

Best headless eCommerce platform for teams that desire open source customization functionality

BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform allowing businesses to create custom-made digital storefronts. It provides users powerful tools for managing customer relationships, order management, product catalogs, pricing, and promotions.

The platform's built-in content management system makes it easy for users to create and publish content on their digital storefronts. With headless commerce, businesses can quickly launch new products, add new features, and optimize their sites in real-time without worrying about technical issues or coding knowledge requirements. Its digital experience platforms allow merchants to increase customer engagement with dynamic, personalized experiences regardless of their device or channel.

The platform has an open API and several available SDKs for developers to quickly and easily spin up projects, making it an ideal choice for businesses looking to launch an integrated eCommerce experience. The platform’s front-end frameworks allow users to create and customize the customer-facing part of their online store. The user-friendly drag-and-drop editor makes it simple for users to customize their eCommerce storefronts.

Features such as intelligent storefront search, A/B testing capabilities, machine learning-driven recommendations, real-time analytics, and tracking help facilitate optimization across all channels.

15-day free trial

From $29.95/month

3

Shopify

Best headless eCommerce platform with always-on availability

Shopify Plus’ headless eCommerce lets you separate your front-end design from back-end infrastructure, which enables you to publish to any channel and make any device a platform for your brand.

The headless commerce functionality provides total creative control across all touchpoints to deliver a cohesive customer experience. You can use your business software and content management systems to engage customers through custom storefronts like kiosks, wearables, vending machines, and billboards. It can also help you speed up your site performance with a web app that reacts like a native mobile app.

Apart from that, you can integrate all the systems involved in your business like ERP, PIM, CRM, CMS, and design frameworks.The Shopify Plus SaaS is known for its stability. The user-friendly dashboard comes with a streamlined content management system. In terms of inventory management, it includes inventory tracking, exporting/importing inventory via CSV files, adjusting inventory, and other crucial tasks.

The analytics track conversions, average order value, store visits, and other data.The product integrates smoothly with all the major marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. It also works seamlessly with apps like Stocky, Apple Business Chat, Oberlo, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Wave, Airtable, Slack, and 3k other vital business growth apps.Support is available via chat and email.

There is an extensive knowledge base that will solve basic queries, as well as an active community forum.

Shopify costs from $29/month when paying monthly, with 2.9% + $0.30/transaction. Shopify offers a 3-day free trial from their website. If you shop around, you can find affiliates who offer 14-day free trials.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 4583

14-day free trial

From $39/month

4

OroCommerce

Best headless eCommerce platform for wholesalers

OroCommerce comes from the same leadership team that built Magento and focuses on solutions for the B2B industry. Having said that, the platform can be customized to fit any B2B, B2B2C, B2B2B, and B2C eCommerce need.

OroCommerce’s inventory management features let you conduct multi-website and multi-warehouse management. You can personalize catalogs and adjust pricing as well.

OroCommerce lets you take your brand to the web and mobile with a platform that supports both headless eCommerce and traditional eCommerce.

It operates on an open-source philosophy and has a vibrant community that is constantly supporting each other. With OroCommerce, you can keep your eCommerce and ERP in sync.

It integrates with CRM apps (such as Salesforce) and ERP apps (such as SAP) seamlessly. Pricing is available upon request.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4 3

Free demo

Pricing upon request

5

Commercetools

Best headless eCommerce platform with a point of sale functionality

Commercetools is an omnichannel eCommerce platform that leverages headless eCommerce technology to create the foundation for evolutionary eCommerce architecture. It offers a point of sale functionality via cloud deployment.Its cutting-edge API approach powers retailers to create brand awareness by creating engaging customer experiences across multiple channels and also future-proof for emerging channels.

Commercetools manages the data flow and user interaction between front-end client and back-end ERP systems. With its fully-enabled API platform, you can do without SQL or any other customization. The APIs cover all the necessary functionalities.

Overall, the solution contains all the important functions needed to run an eCommerce business, with the capabilities to constantly evolve and add new features. In terms of inventory management, Commercetools has features for tracking inventory, adjusting inventory, returns management, and multi-store management.

Commercetools smoothly integrates with Contentstack, Cybersource, and Frontastic. It also works out of the box with DXPs and front-end CMS systems like Bloomreach and Adobe Experience Cloud.Support is available 24/7 via a live chat feature.

You can also write to them via email. Commercetools pricing is available upon request.

Pricing Upon Request

6

Contentful

Best headless eCommerce platform for agile workflows

Contentful is a next-generation content-focused platform that works with a decoupled infrastructure and agile workflows meant to reduce time to market. It enables teams to unify content in a single hub and structure it for any digital channel.

Using open APIs and strong integration capabilities, it can structure the content for multiple platforms and channels.It has an intuitive user interface and support for multiple spaces. This can be helpful for organizations that need separate projects for development, staging, or production.

It also provides organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors like a WYSIWYG editor, raw text areas, and form fields. Contentful integrates with apps like Dropbox, Jira, Google Analytics, Commercetools, and other similar business tools.

Support is available via a ticketing system. There is also extensive documentation, user guides, and a supportive community to help you find your way.

Contentful pricing starts at $489 per month with a free forever plan.

Free trial

From $489 per month

7

Nacelle

Best for mid-market or enterprise merchandisers looking to grow

Nacelle is a headless data orchestration platform that simplifies, harmonizes, and optimizes distributed backend systems, lowering the time to value for going headless. With Nacelle, merchants can rapidly optimize site performance and future-proof their commerce stack, gaining higher conversion rates, faster speed, GMV, AOV, and lowering the total cost of ownership.

Nacelle is best for mid-market or enterprise merchandisers who are looking to gain a competitive advantage and are educated on and pursuing the headless journey. They can help with solving for composable complexity for ecommerce companies who don’t yet have the infrastructure and expertise to do so.

They can help future-proof the digital stack by connecting and orchestrating data for best-of-breed tech solutions. Key features include progressive web applications for a faster site, seamless connection to all commerce systems, comprehensive data orchestration tools, a single and unified API, and event-driven data ingestion.

It works with your current tech stack⁠—no migration required.Nacelle integrates with all popular commerce platforms, like Shopify, Adobe, BigCommerce, or Salesforce.

Pricing is available upon request. They offer a free demo.

Free demo

Pricing Upon Request

8

Kentico Kontent

Best headless eCommerce platform with intuitive authoring experience

Kentico Kontent is a headless CMS that allows you the flexibility to add modern applications that differentiate you from the competition and scale your profit. As a web content management system, it uses ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL servers to create websites, online stores, and web 2.0 community sites.

Visual Studio and Microsoft MVC are the go-to development environments for the app.It uses a cloud-native content management system to create content from anywhere with no maintenance requirement or downtime.

The product allows you to collaborate across your business with features like inline suggestions, tasks, and reviews. All these features help in maximizing your team’s expertise.Kentico Kontent does provide inventory management, but there are not any unique features to write about.

Kentico Kontent works out of the box with HubSpot, Magento, Shopify, Slatwall Commerce, and more.

Support is available 24/7 via phone and email.

There is also a ticketing system to raise your queries. Pricing is available upon request.

Pricing Upon Request

9

Salsita Software

Best full-service software development agency to build a headless eCommerce platform

The Prague-based agency has 10+ years of experience building sophisticated, modern web applications and mobile apps. It takes a UX-first approach that prioritizes product quality while reducing development time and costs.

It focuses on building platforms that deliver fast load times, complete front-end customization, personalized customer experience, higher flexibility, along a truly omnichannel experience.

All this helps you save a lot of costs and future-proof your platform. Salsita Software has support via phone, email, and a ticketing system.

Pricing is available based on your custom requirements.

10

The.com

Best headless eCommerce platform for high speed

The.com’s site editor loads in front of the actual site, so it takes WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) to an entirely new level. This makes it super comfortable for you to customize the look and feel of the site.

With its serverless hosting, The.com enables you to design and customize your site without any boundaries, all the while keeping your site fast and secure. The.com works out of the box with apps like Shopify, making it a go-to option for fast-loading eCommerce sites.

It also has integrations with Mailchimp, Typeform, Formstack, and other business apps.

Pricing starts at $36 per month for a single site. Support is available via email.

From $36 per month for a single site

The 10 Best Headless Ecommerce Platforms Summary

Tool Free Option Price
1
Lightspeed eCom

Best headless ecommerce platform for small to mid-sized businesses

Freemium plan available

From $14.08/month Visit Website
2
BigCommerce

Best headless eCommerce platform for teams that desire open source customization functionality

15-day free trial

From $29.95/month Visit Website
3
Shopify

Best headless eCommerce platform with always-on availability

14-day free trial

From $39/month Visit Website
4
OroCommerce

Best headless eCommerce platform for wholesalers

Free demo

Pricing upon request Visit Website
5
Commercetools

Best headless eCommerce platform with a point of sale functionality

Not available

Pricing Upon Request Visit Website
6
Contentful

Best headless eCommerce platform for agile workflows

Free trial

From $489 per month Visit Website
7
Nacelle

Best for mid-market or enterprise merchandisers looking to grow

Free demo

Pricing Upon Request Visit Website
8
Kentico Kontent

Best headless eCommerce platform with intuitive authoring experience

Not available

Pricing Upon Request Visit Website
9
Salsita Software

Best full-service software development agency to build a headless eCommerce platform

Not available

Visit Website
10
The.com

Best headless eCommerce platform for high speed

Not available

From $36 per month for a single site Visit Website

Need expert help selecting the right eCommerce Solutions Software?

We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company, and you can access exclusive software discounts!

Other Headless Ecommerce Platform Options

Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list.

  1. Core DNA - Best headless eCommerce platform for customizable templated workflows
  2. FenixCommerce - The best intelligent delivery platform for eCommerce retailers looking to do real-time order routing
  3. Digital River - Best headless eCommerce platform with multi-channel delivery 
  4. Shogun - Best drag and drop website builder for online stores on Shopify and BigCommerce
  5. Elastic Path - Best Java eCommerce platform for enterprises
  6. Slatwall Commerce - Best flexible eCommerce platform for enterprises
  7. Adobe Experience Manager - Best headless CMS for getting detailed customer analytics

Headless Ecommerce Platforms: Software FAQs

To make this go-to list of the best headless eCommerce platforms even more comprehensive, I wanted to cover some of the most frequently asked questions on the topic.

Here they are:

What Do You Think About These Headless Ecommerce Platforms For Small Businesses?

These are my top picks for headless ecommerce platforms.

What do you think about this list? Which headless eCommerce platform best fits your business needs? Any tool that’s missing from the list? Let me know in the comments.

As always, please share this article with your network. Who knows who you might be helping and what opportunities it might lead towards!

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By Francois Marchand

Francois Marchand is The Ecomm Manager's content strategist and editor. He is passionate about helping and educating business leaders, ecommerce professionals, and digital marketers grow their skill sets to stay ahead of the competition. Francois holds a BA Specialization in Communication Studies & Journalism from Concordia University (Montreal, QC) and 20+ years of experience in ecommerce, marketing, traditional and digital media, and public relations, including The Vancouver Sun, National Post, CBC/Radio-Canada, Unbounce, and Vancouver Film School. He also hosts The Ecomm Manager Podcast, discussing ecommerce best practices, customer experience, branding, inventory management, shipping and delivery, and analytics with expert guests.

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