Composable commerce 101: building for the future

The era of composable commerce is here. But what does it mean for you, your business, and your customers?

Composable commerce represents a fundamental shift in how organizations build their technology stacks, moving from monolithic platforms to flexible, modular architectures. Understanding composable commerce—including how composable commerce vs headless ecommerce differs—is crucial when planning your digital transformation, and implementation of your PIM solution for ecommerce. It’s causing such a stir that Gartner predicts non-composable SaaS applications could be “legacy” tech by the end of 2024.  

This comprehensive guide explains what composable commerce is, examines headless vs composable commerce approaches, and reveals why composable PIM solutions form the foundation of successful composable commerce implementations. Whether you’re evaluating composable commerce for the first time or comparing composable commerce vs headless ecommerce strategies, this resource provides the insights you need.

Composable commerce vs headless ecommerce: key differences explained

Many businesses confuse composable commerce vs headless ecommerce, treating them as interchangeable concepts. While related, understanding the distinction between headless vs composable commerce is essential for making informed technology decisions.

Headless Ecommerce:

• Separates frontend presentation from backend commerce functionality
• Focuses primarily on decoupling the user interface from commerce logic
• Typically still relies on a core commerce platform
• Offers frontend flexibility but may limit backend customization

Composable Commerce:

• Encompasses headless architecture as one component
• Provides full modularity across all commerce capabilities
• Enables replacing any component without affecting others
• Offers complete flexibility in both frontend and backend systems
• Includes composable PIM as a core modular component

Headless commerce vs composable commerce: Which approach is right for you?

While headless ecommerce solves frontend flexibility challenges, composable commerce addresses end-to-end architectural needs. For businesses requiring comprehensive flexibility, composable commerce—including composable PIM for product data management—offers superior long-term value.

The composable commerce vs headless ecommerce decision ultimately depends on your organization’s complexity, growth plans, and technical requirements. For example, are you evaluating ecommerce AI tools to improve automation and personalization? A composable architecture may simplify integration and orchestration. If you have a diverse product catalog, then your choice of PIM system within their composable commerce architecture can be important.

What is a commerce platform? 

Gartner defines commerce platforms as tools that allow businesses to “build systems that sell, service, market and buy products to customers and businesses through the Web and channel partners”. For many years, the default option has been a monolithic, full-stack system. This type of system is self-contained and offers a range of front-end and back-end services.  

Traditional commerce platforms range from DIY e-commerce platforms geared towards small retailers to sophisticated ecosystems designed for multinational corporations. By offering lots of services wrapped up in one platform, they appeal to businesses that lack the budget or technical understanding for something more complex.  

However, while these monolithic systems have led the charge of the e-commerce boom over the last few decades, they’re quickly becoming outdated. Demands on commerce are growing by the day. More and more users are finding that traditional commerce platforms just can’t cut it anymore. 

The problem with traditional commerce platforms 

Whether it’s the pandemic, global conflict, or even a blocked shipping channel, there have been several unexpected yet highly significant disruptions to supply chains in recent years, affecting product, material, and process availability. These issues have laid bare the shortcomings of these traditional, monolithic commerce platforms. 

The often tightly coupled nature of these platforms’ back and frontends has made it unnecessarily hard to make changes to reflect product availability without disrupting the customer experience. These platforms are also not typically cloud-native, meaning it’s harder to scale your services or products in line with demand. 

Additionally, shopping habits have irreversibly changed. Research from McKinsey found that customers engage with an average of three to five channels at every stage of their purchase journey. Companies that can offer a consistent and frictionless omnichannel experience are more likely to convert interest into income. Working habits are also different now. For your teams, siloed monolithic systems that rely on physical servers may no longer be fit for a hybrid or remote workforce.  

These issues have paved the way for a new composable approach to commerce. One that allows everything from CMS systems to data management tools to integrate into one interconnected ecosystem that can better meet the demands of modern commerce.  

How composable commerce works: architecture & technology

It’s important to recognize that composable commerce goes beyond traditional platform approaches. While many ask about composable commerce vs headless ecommerce, the reality is that composable commerce encompasses headless architecture as one component of a broader modular strategy.

Composable commerce is a more innovative approach to building your digital commerce stack. Instead of being locked into a one-size-fits-all platform, a composable approach lets you combine best-in-class, modular solutions into a unified system. The result? Flexibility, faster time to market, and technology that scales as your business does.

The adoption of composable commerce isn’t just growing, either. It’s already mainstream. 92% of US brands have implemented some form of composable commerce, and 21% more plan to follow within the year.

The four basic principles of composable architecture 

Composable architecture, also referred to as MACH architecture, has four elements that set it apart from monolithic systems.  

• Microservices: Composable architecture can be adjusted to suit whatever the business needs. This can be through single or packaged solutions from a range of providers. By adopting a composable commerce approach, merchants and businesses can leverage individual components to create a more efficient and tailored e-commerce platform.
• API-first: Designed to work with APIs, composable solutions let businesses pick and choose microservices and PBC from a range of multiple vendors that meet your exact needs. 
• Cloud-native: Composable solutions are inherently fast, flexible, and scalable – without being tied to physical servers. 
• Headless Commerce: Companies can improve, adapt, and extend applications without interrupting the customer experience. This is because backend development is decoupled from the presentation layer. 

The advantages of composable architecture in commerce

Monolithic full-stack applications are rarely ideal for individual businesses. They can be a recipe for siloed workflows, lost data, and a disjointed customer experience. Composable commerce, meanwhile, offers almost endless customization possibilities.  

Composable systems give companies the option to build a system using third-party software components that meet their exact specifications. Your business could introduce anything from a more intuitive digital cart and checkout user experience to a comprehensive product information and order management system.  

It’s hardly surprising, then, that businesses are embracing composable commerce. By 2025, Gartner predicts that ‘composability’ will be a main objective in over 50% of digital spending decisions. Industry body MACH Alliance has even called composable systems “recession-resilient IT”. This is because they allow businesses to quickly scale operations up or back to meet customer demand. 

“By 2026, Gartner predicts that the speed of digital innovation will improve by 60%, relative to 2022, for businesses that have established mechanisms to reuse composable digital commerce modules.” 

Key benefits of composability you can measure

• Innovation and agility: Launch new capabilities in weeks. Pilot fast. Keep what performs. Swap out what stalls momentum without a replatform. Teams stay empowered to respond to the market.
• Customer experience: Headless presentation with best-in-class services. Faster pages. Sharper merchandising. Consistent journeys across channels. You design experiences that convert. The platform stops dictating your limits.
• Privacy and security: Choose vendors that lead on compliance and update cadence. Patch faster. Reduce legacy exposure. Strengthen governance as requirements evolve.
• Automation and integration: Product data, search, pricing, and fulfillment finally move in sync. Connect your composable platform so work flows, not stalls.

According to the MACH 2025 research:

• 9 out of 10 organizations report that composable met or exceeded ROI expectations.
• 87% have adopted MACH technologies across their stack.
• 91% of IT leaders plan to expand MACH adoption despite market conditions.
• Reported gains: improved customer experience (55%), greater automation (54%), higher organizational agility (50%).

Leveraging a composable and integrated ecosystem 

The beauty of composable commerce is that the capabilities that make it a true technology powerhouse also improve business operations. By avoiding vendor lock-in, companies can focus their investment on the services needed to compete without wasting money on any unwanted applications.  

With composable commerce, brands can purchase stand-alone capabilities and scale on demand, lowering the overall cost of doing business. Gartner estimates these architectures could halve the cost of managing SaaS operations by 2024. 

Composable commerce also helps companies meet their customers where they are. The headless nature of composable commerce systems allows for continuous experimentation to better optimize the buying experience for customers. And with retailers increasingly concerned about rising customer acquisition costs, it’s more important than ever to deliver a consistently excellent customer experience throughout the entire journey.