What makes a commerce platform truly future-ready? Legacy suites can’t keep up. Frameworks require heavy lifting. The future belongs to platforms built for change — unified, composable and AI-ready. In this article, we explore what defines a modern commerce platform and how the commercetools Platform enables enterprise retailers to scale, adapt and lead in the era of agentic commerce.
What’s a digital commerce platform?
Gartner® defines digital commerce as “the technology that enables customers to purchase goods and services through an interactive and self-service or assisted experience. The platform provides necessary information for customers to make their buying decisions and uses rules and data to present fully priced orders for payment.”
In addition, a platform can provide out-of-the-box capabilities or APIs to support the following functionalities:
An interactive, self-service commerce experience with storefronts, product browsing, search, promotions, carts, checkout and customer accounts.
Supports full order pricing with product, customer and order discounts.
Includes business tools for merchandising, catalog and content management, user access, promotions and site configuration.
Offers API integration for customer, product, pricing and order data.
Provides frontend experience composition, personalization, testing and optimization.
Handles or integrates with product information, pricing and inventory systems.
Platforms vs. frameworks: What’s the difference?
Frameworks are reusable sets of tools, libraries and components that provide structure and coding conventions for building custom applications. They streamline development by handling repetitive tasks, like routing or session management, so developers can focus on creating tailored experiences. For example, Spring (Java) or Vue.js allow deep customization of eCommerce frontends.
However, frameworks require significant developer resources and digital maturity, as teams must build and integrate most features from scratch.
In contrast, eCommerce platforms offer a ready-made foundation with built-in features, APIs, and business tools, enabling faster deployment and easier scaling.
Ultimately, a platform provides the foundation upon which applications are built and run, encompassing both hardware and software, while a framework is a set of tools and libraries that developers use to structure and build applications.
The starting point of eCommerce 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. Popular since the 1990s, these platforms have offered a one-stop solution for businesses of all sizes, providing standardized commerce capabilities right out of the box. Companies just had to buy access to these platforms and enjoy 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 eCommerce platforms
Slowly but surely, the conventional approach to eCommerce platforms started to evolve. Companies that run commerce on a legacy platform find it challenging to tailor experiences outside the standardized features provided and are therefore limited to differentiating experiences.
Companies get stuck with outdated capabilities because making changes is too time-consuming and risky. This leads to an inability to innovate, a slow time to market and missed opportunities. It’s estimated that 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 inflexibility, 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 in any way 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, it’s expected that enterprises 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 of commerce is more than composable
As commerce continues to evolve, businesses need more than modular architecture: They need a platform built to unify digital and physical experiences, support enterprise scale and harness the power of AI. Composability is “just” the foundation.
In more detail, a future-ready commerce platform must enable 4 pillars:
Unified commerce: Delivering consistent, connected experiences across storefronts, mobile apps, marketplaces, AI agents for eCommerce and physical locations. It requires a platform with built-in global routing, localization and compliance to scale internationally without complexity. Whether B2C, B2B, D2C or hybrid models, a single platform approach enables omnichannel agility while maintaining operational control and consistency across regions.
Agentic commerce: AI is also reshaping commerce at its core. With native support for agentic workflows and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), modern platforms must be AI-ready, built AI automation for eCommerce, personalization and real-time decision-making. Open access to data and secure, prompt-safe APIs ensure trust and flexibility, while integrated AI capabilities (not bolted-on solutions) allow you to govern and scale intelligent experiences across your entire stack.
Enterprise-scale commerce: More than flexibility, a future-ready platform can scale seamlessly across brands, countries, channels and business models, all while maintaining high performance, reliability and robust security at every level, from regional regulations to enterprise-wide policies.
Adaptable and growth-centric: To keep pace with rapidly changing markets, businesses need a platform built for adaptability and accelerated growth without the delays and risks of replatforming.
Future-ready commerce with the commercetools Platform
The commercetools Platform unifies commerce across all channels, enabling both business and technical teams to deliver intelligent, agentic experiences at scale across any business model and industry.
Free from the limits of legacy or closed systems, the commercetools Platform offers the flexibility to innovate without constraint. Built on a composable, modular core, commercetools provides a true AI-powered commerce platform: Open, adaptable and designed to seamlessly integrate the latest advancements in AI. This future-ready architecture gives companies the agility to move fast, adapt continuously and lead in a rapidly changing, digital-first world.
The commercetools Platform is the behind-the-scenes foundation and infrastructure for:
The experience 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 component-based applications to address eCommerce needs. commercetools Composable Commerce for B2C and B2B products address specific eCommerce requirements; those are extensible per customer needs. Additionally, custom-built or third-party applications can be used. Moreover, businesses can unify physical and digital commerce with commercetools InStore.
The ecosystem layer (integrations): With the Solution Hub, Payment Hub and AI Hub, businesses can seamlessly plug and play best-of-breed solutions through a wide range of integration options — including support for AI agents in eCommerce, AI workflows and third-party analytics.
Embrace the only future-proof platform for composable commerce
Cloud-native infrastructure: The flexibility and scalability powered by cloud providers like Google Cloud and AWS.
Extensibility and orchestration: The ability to expand out-of-the-box features to continually meet customer needs and drive innovation.
AI readiness: With native support for agentic workflows and Model Context Protocol (MCP), commercetools enables intelligent automation, personalization, and decision-making, securely and at scale.
Flexible data model: Tweak the data model according to your needs. Product types and variants can be assigned to multiple categories and custom product attributes, which can be configured using many different data types, are not limited.
Tech-agnostic developer tools: Leverage a versatile, easy-to-use toolkit including demo implementations, SDKs and industry-leading documentation.
Robust security: State-of-the-art cloud functionality, multi-tenancy, and infrastructure run in certified data centers at several locations in Europe, the US, and APAC. commercetools is also compliant with ISO/IEC 27001, TISAX®, GDPR, and HIPAA, among others.
Resiliency: Container orchestration, backup restores, load balancing and high availability features deliver consistent service availability and seamless performance even under demanding conditions.
Logging and monitoring: Gain full visibility and control with detailed audit logs, real-time monitoring and granular user activity tracking.
Connect integration framework: Use commercetools Connect to build, deploy and manage pre-built and custom low-code connectors, for faster time to market, improved productivity and platform stability.
The benefits you get with the commercetools Platform
When exploring the commerce technology that best fits your business needs, considerwhat the commercetools Platform helps you achieve the top 9 benefits:
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. 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 compliance to regulations and compliance. The commercetools Platform provides best-in-class security and protection tools, reducing risk, building trust and ensuring your business runs commerce with confidence.
Smarter commerce with agentic AI: Deliver AI-driven personalization in eCommerce using built-in workflows that enhance product discovery, targeting and real-time offer optimization. commercetools’ AI-native architecture empowers your business to stay ahead with intelligent, adaptive experiences across the entire customer journey.
Adapt at speed to market change: Enter new markets, launch new channels or pivot business strategies in weeks, not months. commercetools’ modular, versionless architecture gives you the agility to respond rapidly to shifting customer expectations, competitive pressures, or emerging opportunities.
More agility, better operations: The flexible, composable architecture simplifies internal workflows, speeds up development and eliminates bottlenecks, so you can innovate faster and operate more efficiently across departments.
Lower total cost of ownership: Say goodbye to bundled lock-ins and hidden costs. With flexible pricing, modular services, and no need for replatforming, commercetools helps you reduce overhead while maximizing value and ROI at every stage of growth.
Unlock new revenue opportunities: Accelerate innovation, test new business models and scale successful initiatives quickly. Whether it’s launching new products, expanding globally or experimenting with emerging technologies, commercetools helps you turn ideas into revenue faster than ever.
Discover the only future-proof commerce platform
Choosing the right technology isn’t just about frameworks vs. platforms — it’s about unlocking the flexibility, scalability and intelligence your business needs to grow. While frameworks offer control and customization, only a modern commerce platform like commercetools delivers the enterprise-grade foundation to unify experiences, scale globally and innovate with agentic AI at the core. That’s why our customers choose commercetools — and succeed.
Dasha leads Product Marketing at commercetools. Software engineer by profession but a creative at heart, she found her happy place in marketing. With 15 years of experience in tech, she concurs that “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Loves problem-solving, big libraries and 80s music.
With over a decade of experience in identity, commerce, and platform strategy, Saurabh Saxena is a seasoned product marketing leader passionate about building future-ready digital ecosystems. At commercetools, he is driving innovation at the intersection of composable commerce and platforms.