Frameworks vs. platforms: Unveiling the differences for your digital commerce journey

Are you confused about the difference between a platform and a framework in digital commerce? You're not alone! These terms are often used interchangeably, which can make it tough to understand their distinct meanings.

In software development, a framework is a tool that developers use to build applications, while a platform provides the environment where those applications operate.

In this article, we'll explore the key differences between frameworks and platforms, and we'll highlight how the commercetools Platform is revolutionizing the future of enterprise commerce.

Business and technology leaders need to understand key terminologies — their differences and similarities — to shape their digital commerce strategy. Comprehending frameworks and platforms is at the heart of making informed decisions on whether to build or buy commerce solutions — or a mix of both. 

Let’s explore these technologies and what they mean for your business, touching base on how they’re evolving and the role the commercetools Platform plays in driving the future of commerce forward.

A framework is a basic structure or system that provides ready-made and reusable components or solutions to speed up the development process. Frameworks can include libraries, compilers, toolsets, SDKs and APIs. This predefined structure, coding conventions and a collection of functionalities simplify the development process while enabling programmers to create custom-built applications.

Like a standardized template, frameworks enable developers to avoid repetitive tasks for specific programming projects, removing unnecessary and uncreative busywork. For example, when using Spring (Java) or Symfony (PHP), programmers don’t need to think about persistence, routing and session management because standardized framework components do the work.

The ins and outs of frameworks in the digital commerce space

Using frameworks is the way to go when you want to achieve hyper-customized online stores. The fact that frameworks are highly customizable, giving developers the freedom to build an eCommerce site or application precisely to their specifications, is an enticing proposition. For instance, Vue.js is a great example of a framework for building and orchestrating your own frontend. 

While working with frameworks can yield excellent results, such as tailored and unique storefronts, it requires a high degree of digital maturity and extensive developer resources. Despite providing a standardized “blueprint” to cut down on repetitive tasks, working with a framework means developers must create eCommerce applications from the ground up, which has a significant impact on implementation time. 

However, as with everything in life, frameworks continue to evolve, with many now providing pre-built features to make them easier to use and faster to deploy. 

According to the research leader Gartner®, “A digital commerce platform is the core technology that enables customers to purchase goods and services through an interactive and usually self-service experience. The platform provides necessary information for customers to make buying decisions and uses rules and data to present fully priced orders for payment.”

In addition, a platform can “provide out-of-the-box capability to provide, or APIs to support, a self-service, interactive commerce experience that includes a storefront, product catalog navigation, product pages, shopping cart, check-out and customer account.” 

In short: A platform provides the underlying infrastructure (hardware and software) to build and run an application. 

The starting point of digital commerce platforms 

Traditionally, an eCommerce platform is an online ecosystem with an array of tools and services that allow merchants to create and run their own web shops. This model has been popular since the birth of digital commerce in the 1990s, providing businesses large and small with all things commerce. In a nutshell, companies just had to buy access to these platforms and enjoy all the standardized features from the get-go. 

These legacy all-in-one platforms (also known as eCommerce suites) provide a collection of applications by a single vendor and are offered as a pre-integrated, pre-packaged software stack. Often considered monolithic in nature, the components are bolted together with dependencies around data models, acquired databases, frontend/backend and more, which must be purchased, released and upgraded as a single, indivisible unit. 

The consequences of this monolithic setup are technical limitations (scalability, extensibility, performance) that prevent companies from updating/changing/adapting/launching features, capabilities and channels to meet evolving customer expectations. 

The evolution of digital commerce platforms 

Slowly but surely, the conventional approach to eCommerce platforms started to evolve. Companies that run commerce on a legacy platform find it difficult to tailor experiences outside of the standardized features provided and, therefore, are limited to differentiating experiences. 

Companies get stuck with outdated capabilities as performing changes is too time-consuming and risky, leading to an inability to innovate, slow time to market and missed opportunities. Commonly, 50% to 70% of the IT budget goes into maintenance and project costs usually triple the initial budget. 

That’s why the rigid, unwieldy platform/suites paradigm has shifted toward composable commerce. The component-based approach of composable empowers companies to provide best-in-class customer experiences, overcoming the challenges of lack of flexibility, poor scalability and high IT costs. Composable commerce has three core traits: 

• Flexible components: Combine best-of-breed “building blocks” like search, cart and checkout how you see fit to create unique customer experiences. 

• Cloud-native infrastructure: Achieve the highest scalability and availability during traffic peaks, as well as enable cost-effective updates and maintenance in the cloud instead of “on-premise” infrastructure. 

• Tech-agnostic approach: Scrap the need for specific programming languages and certifications to enable fast, cost-efficient rollouts and increased innovation.

For instance, Gartner predicts that more business leaders will adopt the composable model to embrace constant change as a tool for growth. In contrast to the limitations of legacy platforms or the high-effort projects of frameworks, the flexibility of composable commerce enables companies to customize their tech stacks with the building blocks they need, combining components from best-of-breed vendors like commercetools or in-house developed applications.

The future: commercetools Platform

commercetools offers enterprise-grade composable commerce for businesses to create the most modern commerce experiences that drive revenue, reduce costs and set new industry standards. commercetools Platform is the behind-the-scenes foundation and infrastructure for:

• The presentation layer (customer-facing): The presentation layer, also known as the frontend, is where your customers directly interact with your store. It includes all the elements the customer will see when they’re browsing or searching your site (or any other touchpoint) for something they want to buy. This can be powered by commercetools Frontend, third-party or in-house-built frontend products.

• The application layer (server-facing): The application layer, also known as the backend, provides the component-based applications to address eCommerce needs. commercetools Composable Commerce for B2C and B2B address specific eCommerce requirements; those are extensible per customer needs. Additionally, custom-built or third-party applications can be used.

When exploring the digital commerce technology that best fits your business needs, consider the value you get with composable commerce and how the commercetools Platform helps you achieve:

• Unified commerce made easy: Connect every customer touchpoint into a seamless shopping experience with our commerce operations managed on the backend. Accomplish one source of truth for better experiences and better results. 

• Catch every conversion with top performance and speed: Improving site speed by just 100ms delivers a 1% uplift in conversions, so enabling ultra-responsive sites, apps and experiences helps you provide frictionless experiences on every channel. 

• 24/7/365, always-on commerce: Unbeaten availability and reliability during sales surges and traffic spikes that can be automatically scaled on demand. Handling 100,000 orders per minute with no downtime and processing 10 billion requests per week, you can ignite massive sales without ever facing a crash or sluggish performance. 

• Security excellence: Outstanding commerce experiences give you the peace of mind of secure processing and adherence to regulations and compliance. The commercetools Platform provides best-in-class security and protection tools, reducing risk, building trust and ensuring that your business runs commerce with confidence. 

There are many ways to learn more about our commercetools Platform and how it can help your business. Download our new report, The State of eCommerce: Retplatforming and Migration Trends for 2024, and get details on the benefits of migrating to composable commerce.