Gartner, Forrester and IDC MarketScape have recognized commercetools as a Leader

Gartner, Forrester and IDC MarketScape have recognized commercetools as a “Leader”

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools
Published 20 January 2021
Estimated reading time minutes

Aside from being hugely influential technology analyst firms, what do Gartner, Forrester and IDC MarketScape have in common? Well, in 2020 they all honored commercetools with a placement in the “Leaders Category” in their world-renowned industry reports.

Gartner, Forrester and IDC MarketScape have recognized commercetools as a Leader

2020 was the poster child year of ups and downs – with the downs seeming to often overtake the ups. So we at commercetools want to take this chance to celebrate one of our biggest ups of the year with you: commercetools has been named a “Leader” for the third time this year! This time, the designation was by the IDC MarketScape in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Headless Digital Commerce Applications 2020-2021 Vendor Assessment (doc # US45741620, December 2020).

This latest recognition joins commercetools’ two other distinctions as a “Leader” from Gartner’s “2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce” and Forrester’s “The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q2 2020.” Needless to say, this is a colossal achievement for us and almost unheard of in the industry. We’re a relatively young company, yet we have the passion, foresight and technological genius to keep us on par – and even above – industry giants with decades of experience behind them. But as you’ll see as you read on, what’s old isn’t necessarily better and what’s new can breathe fresh life into an industry. 

It’s an incredible honor to be recognized by three global analyst firms as a Leader in the commerce space. commercetools is a pioneer of MACH architecture, and we believe these recognitions are further validation of our approach to being the future of eCommerce.
Martin Lloyd

Marketing Manager UK & Northern Europe, commercetools

Achieving the proverbial ‘hat trick’ as a Leader by the three leading technology analyst firms is an incredible achievement, which has really boosted our expansion into the APAC region throughout 2020. This has given us the credentials to start conversations with a number of leading retailers and brands in the region.
Joshua Emblin

Territory Sales Director, APAC, commercetools

Champion of headless capabilities & strategies

The IDC MarketScape’s report focused on headless digital commerce and evaluated the top 11 vendors in this field, including commercetools, based on their performance for B2C use cases. Even being included in the report is a notable achievement, and being placed in the “Leaders Category” for our headless capabilities and strategies is even better (and a great honor!).

IDC MarketScape 2021
For any business of enterprise scale and complexity that has the ambition to gain the advantages that a ‘headless’ or ‘composable’ architecture provides, and want to know they are investing in true best-of-breed, MACH-compliant technology, then really there is only one answer: commercetools.
Matt Gould

Business Development Director, E2X

commercetools was recognized in the report for our core strengths of flexible modular architecture and performance; more specifically, the suite of over 300 APIs that customers can purchase on a need-by-need basis to build a commerce platform tailored to their needs; and our functionalities based on cloud-native, event-driven architecture that’s scalable and requires less hardware and flex based on load.

Ten years ago, we came up with the idea of an API-first cloud commerce platform, not knowing how much we would change the whole industry. This year, all leading analyst firms, Forrester, Gartner and IDC MarketScape, called commercetools a worldwide leader in headless digital commerce applications.
Dirk Hoerig

CEO and Co-Founder, commercetools

From a “Visionary” to a “Leader”

At commercetools, we’re visionaries at heart and always will be. However, the way Gartner uses the term in their “Magic Quadrant” is slightly different. There are four categories: Challengers, Niche Players, Visionaries and – at the top – Leaders, with each digital commerce business placed at various points in the quadrant based on their execution abilities and completeness of vision. In the beginning of 2018, being a young and fresh-faced start-up, commercetools was placed in the Visionary category. Just three short years later, we rocketed up to the “Leaders” section, illustrating that nothing can slow down our pace of innovation.

Gartner Magic Quadrant 2020
commercetools ranks first for the modular and interoperable use cases. It continues to have a very broad client base in terms of scale, industry vertical and diversity.
2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce

Additionally, in their report, Gartner grants commercetools with the number one ranking in flexibility in modularity, and highlights how we are consistently given an A+ by our customers for our impressive technical capabilities, as well as for fulfilling their expectations and requirements. We also scored highly across the board for our strengths in being cloud-native, having modern architecture and our industry breadth, including having the B2B capabilities to meet the complex needs of manufacturers and distributors.

[With commercetools,] our clients get the benefit of blistering cloud-native page speeds, zero upgrades, no more content freezes and a frontend UX design that is never constrained by page templates or backend issues.
John Pearson

Commercial Director, Profound

Waving in another accolade

In the report put out by leading global analyst firm Forrester, commercetools was placed in the “Leaders” category among the top B2C commerce suites. Like Gartner’s analysis, Forrester also places vendors in categories: Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders and Challengers. They evaluate B2C commerce suite providers and place them in the “Wave” based on their current offering and strategy scores.

Forrester Wave 2020
[commercetools] gives its customers a commerce platform for building visionary commerce experiences at a fraction of the cost and time it would take to build in-house.
The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q2 2020

Forrester gave commercetools the highest scores possible in five criteria, including: campaign management, promotions, platform architecture, product vision and roadmap and delivery model.

We believe in a best-of-breed tech strategy. Here, commercetools fits perfectly in the mix. Working with a microservice-based system architecture allows us to mature our clients’ tech stack at the same pace as their growing digital business, [meaning] lower development costs and a faster time to market.
Lars Andersen

CEO, Kruso

We’re not slowing down

Instead of resting on our laurels, being recognized as a “Leader” three times has set a fire under us to go even further. In 2021, we plan to double the size of our team to keep up with our rapid growth, including adding a second full-stack development team in the US. We will continue to make ample releases, move GraphQL (of which we have the highest coverage of any platform by far) out of its beta phase, and keep on investing in our B2B and B2C capabilities and the stability and security of our platform. What pushes us to go so far? It’s to meet our shared vision of becoming the #1 enterprise commerce platform on the planet that is accessible for everyone, everywhere.

Our clients are looking for a flexible architecture solution that is responsive to today’s dynamic conditions, supports engaging customer experiences and delivers employee enablement. commercetools is at the forefront of driving the modern architecture; using their highly scalable platform enables us to build and deliver a wide range of commerce experiences for our clients.
Matt Bradbeer

Director Client Partner, EPAM

commercetools’ growth has accelerated by leaps in bounds in just a short time. Just imagine where we’ll be this time next year. 

Interested to read exactly what these reports are saying? Click on the following links to download the excerpts: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Headless Digital Commerce Applications 2020-2021 Vendor Assessment, Gartner’s 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce and Forrester’s The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q2 2020.

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools

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