Key takeaways:
Introduction
Even today, digital storefronts experience slowdowns or crashes during seasonal peaks like Black Friday or Valentine’s Day. Despite the surge in eCommerce traffic year on year, many brands still haven’t moved their eCommerce stack to the cloud.
Holding onto on-premise or hybrid IT can feel safer, but does it really deliver the performance, flexibility or security modern commerce demands?
Here’s why cloud-native SaaS platforms like commercetools are transforming eCommerce for brands like L.L.Bean, ARK Bokhandel, Interflora UK, PLUS Supermarkets, Viewrail and The Vitamin Shoppe.
Perk #1 — Say goodbye to downtime, say hello to performance with scalability
Website crashes during peak traffic are costly. Every second of downtime can mean lost revenue, abandoned carts and frustrated customers. For on-prem IT, scaling to handle spikes often takes months of planning, purchasing additional servers and extra hosting fees.
Cloud-native platforms solve this with auto-scaling, dynamically adjusting capacity as demand fluctuates. During a Black Friday rush or a flash sale, your infrastructure automatically adapts to traffic surges. Your website stays fast, pages load instantly, and shoppers complete transactions without disruption.
Brands also benefit from elastic computing resources, meaning you’re never locked into outdated hardware or limited by server capacity.
Perk #2 — Protect data and comply with regulations with top-notch security
Security isn’t just about protecting your systems from hackers — it’s also about compliance with global regulations like GDPR, CCPA and more. Moving to cloud-native commerce means your platform is built with these regulations in mind from day one.
For example, commercetools operates in certified data centers across Europe, the US and APAC, hosted on Google Cloud and AWS. These providers meet rigorous standards, including ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 9001 and SOC II. Data traffic is encrypted with state-of-the-art ciphers, secured via HTTPS and TLS 1.2, and distributed across multiple geographic locations to prevent data loss.
Importantly, the cloud traffic is protected by pre-configured WAF rules from our cloud service providers and the traffic to commercetools is encrypted by state-of-the-art ciphers only. Plus, all communications are available only via HTTPS and are secured with TLS 1.2.
In addition, we use geographically separate environments to ensure protection against data loss and 99.99% uptime for our systems. All of these ironclad measures ensure maximum security and data protection across our network, platform and operations.
Perk #3 — Distributed and reliable infrastructure for maximum uptime
Cloud providers, such as Google Cloud and AWS, operate multiple availability zones across regions, meaning your systems aren’t dependent on a single data center. If one zone experiences a power outage, network disruption or natural disaster, traffic is automatically rerouted to healthy zones, keeping your site online.
This distributed infrastructure also allows instant backups and disaster recovery, reducing recovery time from hours or days to minutes. Cloud-native infrastructure also integrates with monitoring and alerting tools, giving your team real-time visibility into system performance, enabling proactive responses to potential issues — often before they affect customers.
Perk #4 — Free up your team to innovate faster
On-prem environments tie tech teams to server maintenance, bug fixes and disaster recovery. This slows feature development, making it harder to compete in fast-moving markets.
With cloud-native commerce, your team focuses on building new experiences rather than fighting fires. API-first architectures let teams experiment with modular components, such as new payment methods, loyalty programs or AI-driven recommendations, without overhauling the entire system. Continuous deployment ensures these features reach customers faster, keeping your store competitive and relevant.
Perk #5 — Reduce total costs of ownership (TCO)
Cloud-native SaaS transforms IT spending from fixed capital costs to flexible operational expenses. Instead of purchasing, maintaining and upgrading hardware, your business pays only for the resources you consume.
In addition, thanks to multi-tenancy and versionless infrastructure, hardware and software are always up to date, helping you achieve lower costs through economies of scale and ditching expensive yearly licensing fees and integration costs.
Moreover, reducing technical debt — the hidden cost of maintaining legacy systems — frees resources and prevents unexpected downtime costs. Cloud-native commerce is not just cheaper in the short term; it lowers long-term IT risk and operational overhead.
Perk #6 — Maximize ROI with improved customer experiences
The ultimate goal of cloud-native commerce is higher conversion rates and better ROI. A performant, always-available storefront drives sales, while continuous feature delivery keeps customers engaged. Shoppers enjoy fast-loading pages, smooth checkouts and relevant recommendations, which increase basket sizes and repeat purchases.
By removing infrastructure bottlenecks, brands can focus on optimizing customer journeys, running A/B tests and rapidly iterating on features — all of which directly impact revenue growth and ROI.
What leading brands achieved with cloud‑native commerce
One of the strongest validations of moving your eCommerce stack to the cloud is how real brands have transformed their digital businesses in outcomes that matter: Performance, reliability, agility and revenue growth. Read the following snapshots of how = cloud‑native commerce has delivered for some standout companies.
L.L.Bean, the iconic outdoor retailer, transitioned from a legacy commerce stack to a modern, cloud‑native SaaS platform to support its massive online business.
The migration unified carts, orders and catalog services into a scalable foundation that can handle peak demand without disruption. During the first Cyber Monday on commercetools, the platform delivered 100 % uptime, even under heavy load.
Norway’s largest bookstore chain, ARK Bokhandel, modernized its eCommerce with a cloud‑native platform, eliminating site instability and creating a more agile development environment.
After moving off an aging legacy system, ARK saw a 15 % increase in conversion rate and a 25 % jump in revenue within a month. What’s more, the retailer now deploys changes 800+ times per year, focusing on innovation rather than firefighting technical debt.
Interflora UK replatformed three webshops onto a cloud‑native architecture, replacing costly and rigid legacy infrastructure. The result? A 20 % reduction in annual hosting costs, dramatic performance improvements and zero downtime across Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, and other seasonal peaks.
The flexible cloud foundation also enabled faster campaign launches and greater agility for their internal teams.
The Vitamin Shoppe: Seamless autoscaling for stronger revenue Growth
The Vitamin Shoppe’s move to a cloud-native, composable architecture has produced tangible business results and fostered a culture of agility across the organization.
With the platform’s robust performance, the company now experiences minimal downtime and can effortlessly handle peak holiday traffic through seamless autoscaling. Improvements across key operations — especially in the cart and checkout processes — have directly supported increased customer engagement and overall business growth.
Making the switch to cloud-native SaaS
Cloud-native SaaS platforms like commercetools provide scalable, secure and flexible infrastructure that adapts as your business grows. Every component of your eCommerce stack can be continuously updated and optimized to meet evolving customer expectations.
Brands can handle sudden sales surges and market shifts worldwide without compromising performance, reliability or security. Cloud-native commerce is no longer just an advantage; it’s the foundation for modern, resilient and profitable eCommerce.
Move your eCommerce tech stack to the cloud with commercetools and the cloud provider of your choice. Get in touch with us to get started.
Manuela leads content strategy at commercetools. With over 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS, she writes about all things commerce by day and turns to fiction by night. She loves long walks, traveling, and, unsurprisingly, reading books.
