You’ve probably heard the phrase “composable commerce” thrown around at conferences or read it in some vendor whitepaper. Maybe it made sense in the moment. Maybe it didn’t.
Here’s the thing, though—it’s not just buzzword bingo anymore. This is actually reshaping how billion-dollar retail operations are built.
Most people think of Shopify as this complete, self-contained machine. You plug it in, add your products, pick a theme, and boom—you’re selling online. That mental model made perfect sense for years. Still does for plenty of businesses. But something’s shifting.
The smartest brands right now aren’t asking “Shopify or something else?” They’re asking, “How do we use Shopify as the backbone while pulling in best-in-class tools for everything else?” And that’s a fundamentally different question with fundamentally different answers.
1. WHY EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT ABOUT PLATFORMS IS CHANGING
Let me paint a picture. You’re running a mid-size fashion brand. Doing solid numbers. Then your CEO walks into the room and says, “We need to launch on TikTok Shop next month. And we need personalized product recommendations. Oh, and our inventory system is a nightmare—let’s fix that too.”
Three projects. Probably two of them don’t happen in most traditional systems. Or they happen slowly. Badly. Expensively.
With traditional ecommerce platforms—the monolithic kind—you’re basically locked into whatever the platform decided to build. Their search engine? You’re using it. Their recommendation system? Yep. Their checkout flow? That’s your checkout flow. If the platform says “sorry, we don’t support that,” you’re negotiating with engineers or hiring a consulting firm to hack around the limitations.
The frustration point isn’t stupid—it’s that you’re paying for a platform that’s supposed to solve everything but actually solves nothing particularly well. It’s the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none problem.
That’s the actual pain point that got us here.
Around 2015-2018, something changed. Businesses started realizing: “Wait. I don’t need one company to be amazing at everything. I need multiple companies to be amazing at their one thing.”
Want the best search experience? Use Algolia. They’ve spent a decade perfecting search. Want AI recommendations that actually convert? Use Constructor—that’s literally all they do. Need rock-solid product data management across 50,000 SKUs? Akeneo is your answer.
Instead of one mediocre platform doing ten things, you’ve got ten specialized platforms each doing one thing brilliantly.
This isn’t some future concept anymore. It’s what 80% of enterprises are actively implementing right now. And only 42% have finished. So we’re in that messy middle period where it’s clearly the direction, but the execution is still shaking out.
2. THE ACTUAL PROBLEM WITH ALL-IN-ONE SYSTEMS
Alright, let’s be honest about what breaks with traditional platforms.
You want to launch a new feature. Seems simple, right? Not even close.
In a monolithic system, that request goes to the vendor’s product team. Maybe it gets prioritized. Maybe it sits for six quarters. Once they build it, you wait for the next platform release. Test it in staging. Nervously push it live hoping their code doesn’t conflict with your customizations.
Best case? Six months to a year from request to launch.
Worst case? You’re hiring a custom development shop, spending six figures, and the solution breaks when the platform updates anyway.
Now imagine you’re a retailer managing multiple brands. Each one needs a slightly different checkout flow. Different payment options. Different fulfillment logic. Traditional platforms? They’ll give you one checkout. Maybe they’ll let you customize colors. You’re basically picking between “the platform’s way” or “we’ll spend $200k to customize it.”
Or—here’s my favorite—you’re trying to manage inventory across your own store, Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, and three B2B wholesale channels. Where’s the single source of truth? Doesn’t exist. You’ve got five separate inventory systems running different calculations, and occasionally you oversell products because the data doesn’t sync fast enough.
This is the actual operational reality. It’s not theoretical. I’m talking to ecommerce teams dealing with this today.
The core issue: when your frontend is glued to your backend, you can’t move. You’re stuck with whatever technology decisions were made three years ago. Your site getting crushed by traffic? You can’t swap in a better frontend framework without rebuilding everything. Your search isn’t converting? Your only options are hope the platform improves it or hire custom developers to hack a workaround.
That inflexibility compounds. Slowly at first, then suddenly you’re looking at a platform replacement project that’ll take 18 months and cost millions.
3. MACH ARCHITECTURE EXPLAINED (WITHOUT THE JARGON)
Okay, so composable commerce is the philosophy. MACH architecture is how you actually build it.
MACH stands for four things. And honestly, each one is just common sense:
🔷 Microservices — Instead of one massive application handling everything, you break it into smaller, independent services. One handles inventory. Another handles payments. Another handles customer accounts. The advantage? You can update the payment service without touching inventory. Scale one without scaling all of them. Decommission one without breaking the others. It’s modular thinking applied to code.
🔷 API-First — APIs are how different systems talk to each other. Think of them as standardized translators. Your product database talks to your frontend through an API. Your email system talks to your order database through an API. By building “API-first,” you’re saying “every component must be connectable” before you even start building features. It forces modularity.
🔷 Cloud-Native — Build for cloud infrastructure instead of building for servers you own. This sounds technical but it’s actually freeing. You don’t manage servers, database capacity, backups. The cloud platform handles it. You focus on your business logic. Scale up during Black Friday. Scale down on Tuesday. Automatically.
🔷 Headless — Your “head” (the storefront customers see) is completely separate from your “body” (the backend commerce system). This is the big one. You can build multiple heads—web storefront, mobile app, voice shopping, TikTok integration, POS display. They all talk to the same backend. Change your frontend without touching commerce logic. Launch a new channel in weeks instead of quarters.
The beauty is that these aren’t new technologies. Microservices? That’s how Netflix runs. APIs? Google Maps, Stripe, Twilio—they’re built on APIs. Cloud-native? That’s just AWS, Azure, GCP. The innovation isn’t the individual pieces. It’s saying “let’s intentionally build our ecommerce system using these proven patterns.”
Why this matters for Shopify specifically: Shopify finally built this way. Their newer APIs (GraphQL Storefront API, custom app framework) let you do actual headless commerce. You can use Shopify as your backend while building a completely custom frontend with React or Next.js or whatever you want. That wasn’t really possible five years ago. Now it is.
4. WHERE SHOPIFY FITS—REALLY FITS—IN 2025
There’s this weird misconception that composable commerce means “move away from Shopify.” That’s backwards thinking.
The reality is more interesting. Shopify’s evolving into the backbone of composable stacks.
Think about what Shopify is genuinely good at. Managing product catalogs. Processing payments securely. Handling orders. Managing inventory. PCI compliance. Fraud detection. Tax calculation. Subscription billing. Multiregional operations. These are hard problems. Shopify solved them years ago.
What Shopify isn’t trying to be the best at anymore? Search. Personalization. Content management. Email campaigns. Advanced analytics. And that’s smart. Because there are specialists in each of those categories who are 10x better.
So the three ways companies actually use Shopify in composable systems look like this:
Approach 1: Shopify Core With Best-of-Breed Layers
This is what most DTC brands do. You keep Shopify as your commerce engine. Products, checkout, payments, orders—all Shopify. But your storefront? That’s a custom React app. Your search? Algolia. Your recommendations? Constructor. Your content? Contentful. Your customer data? Segment.
Each piece is best-in-class. Each piece can be updated independently.
Take Boston Proper. They migrated from custom infrastructure to Shopify with this exact approach. Before: features took 6 to 9 months to launch. After: minutes. I mean literally minutes for some changes. Their conversion rates went up 4%. And they’re spending hundreds of thousands less per year on infrastructure.
Why the transformation? They stopped rebuilding things. They stopped maintaining custom payment code. They stopped managing their own servers. They’re just composing.
Good fit: Brands that need creative control, rapid feature launches, international scale, omnichannel complexity.
Approach 2: Shopify Plus Headless
Enterprise brands need different things. Different inventory architectures. Multiple warehouses. Complex pricing rules. Different payment systems per region. Managing five different brands under one company.
Shopify Plus (their enterprise tier) was built for this.
The key pieces: They give you REST and GraphQL APIs that actually give you full backend access. Hydrogen, which is their React framework for headless storefronts. Oxygen, which is their managed hosting. Support for running multiple storefronts off one backend. The infrastructure for handling millions in daily transaction volume.
Real example: Arhaus is a furniture brand with 90+ physical stores. Their old site? Custom-built infrastructure. What happened when ecommerce suddenly mattered? Everything broke. Slow. Expensive to maintain. Hard to update.
After moving to Shopify Plus headless:
- Revenue up 60%
- Orders up 30%
- Conversion rate up 18%
- Development timelines went from 12-18 months to 3 months
Why? They stopped fighting infrastructure. They focused on what actually matters—their products, their customers, their conversion.
Good fit: Enterprise retailers, multi-brand operations, complex fulfillment, high transaction volume, international complexity.
Approach 3: Shopify as One Component in a Larger Orchestra
This is the most advanced setup. You’re treating Shopify as the commerce transaction layer in a larger Digital Experience Platform (DXP) where you’re orchestrating:
- Shopify for commerce transactions
- Contentful for content experiences
- Algolia for search
- Nosto for personalization
- Segment for customer data
- Custom frontends built on modern frameworks
Everything communicates via APIs. You can swap components, add new ones, retire old ones. It’s genuinely composable.
This requires the most technical sophistication. Most enterprises aren’t here yet. But the ones that are? They’re operating at a completely different velocity.
5. WHAT YOUR REAL TECH STACK LOOKS LIKE
Stop me if this sounds familiar: You’ve got a platform. You bolted on a search tool. Then a recommendation engine. Then a CDP. Then a PIM. Now you’ve got twelve different vendors, nobody knows how they all work together, and when something breaks, nobody knows who to call.
That’s not composition. That’s chaos.
Real composable stacks are intentional. Thoughtful. Here’s what actually works:
Table 1: Essential Components of a Modern Composable Commerce Tech Stack showing each layer’s function, example tools, and strategic importance.
The key is: each tool in this table is integrated via API. That’s the connective tissue. Nothing is hardcoded or custom-glued together.
6. THREE BRANDS. THREE VERY DIFFERENT RESULTS. ALL WITH SHOPIFY.
Let me walk through real examples because theory is fine but results matter.
Boston Proper: Feature Speed as Competitive Weapon
Fashion retail moves fast. Boston Proper needed to launch new features constantly. New product types. New checkout flows. New payment methods.
Their old setup? Custom infrastructure. That meant: developer time, code review, testing, staging, production deployment. Average timeline: 6 to 9 months per major feature.
When they switched to Shopify with a composable frontend (React) and specialized tools for search and recommendations, that timeline collapsed. Some features deploy in minutes. Others in days.
Result:
- Conversion rates up 4%
- Development costs down by hundreds of thousands annually
- Team freed up to focus on strategy instead of maintenance
Why it worked: They stopped rebuilding things that exist elsewhere. They’re composing.
Arhaus: Managing Scale Without Collapse
Arhaus sells furniture. Their customers visit 90+ physical stores and order online. Inventory? It’s complex. Fulfillment? Complicated. Returns? Even more complicated.
Their old system couldn’t handle this. Custom code was breaking under load. Each update was risky. Feature development? 12-18 months because everything was interconnected.
They moved to Shopify Plus (enterprise tier) with a headless architecture. Same backend, custom frontends for different brand expressions.
What happened:
- 60% revenue increase
- 30% order increase
- 18% conversion increase
- Development cycles went from 12-18 months to 3 months
- Teams actually shipped things
The difference: They chose separation of concerns. Commerce backend. Flexible frontend. When you separate those, teams move faster.
Conn’s HomePlus: New Revenue Stream in Weeks
Conn’s HomePlus is a major U.S. retailer. They wanted to offer financing at checkout—let customers pay over time. This is a complex feature involving real-time financial decisions, credit checks, and integration with specialized services.
Traditional platform? This is a 9+ month project, minimum.
They used composable architecture instead. They found a financing partner with an API. They integrated it directly into Shopify’s checkout.
Result:
- 70% increase in online financing applications
- 66% increase in ecommerce conversion rates
- 40% higher average cart value
- Deployed in weeks, not quarters
The lesson: When you have specialized tools with APIs, you’re not building. You’re integrating. And integration is fast.
7. YEAH, THERE ARE OBSTACLES. HERE’S HOW TO HANDLE THEM
I’d love to tell you composable is painless. It’s not. There are real friction points.
The Budget Thing (32% cite this as the blocker)
Real talk: composable seems expensive upfront. New tools, integration work, specialized developers—it adds up.
But here’s what companies actually find: They’re not spending more. They’re spending differently.
A monolithic platform costs $50k/month. Looks simple. Then you add custom development because the platform doesn’t do what you need: $200k/year. Then you add a best-of-breed search tool anyway because the built-in search is garbage: another $50k/year. Then you’re stuck when you want to change something so you hire consultants: $300k project.
That same company with a composed stack might spend $20k on Shopify, $15k on Algolia, $10k on Nosto, $15k on Contentful. That’s $60k/month total. But you get customization. Speed. Flexibility. And no $300k surprises when you want to change direction.
The math actually works. It’s just accounted for differently.
How to move forward: Start with one piece. Just one. Fix your search problem with Algolia or improve personalization with Constructor. Prove ROI on that piece. Then add the next.
The “We Already Paid for This” Problem (28% cite this)
You’ve got a platform from 2015 that’s paid for and running. Ripping it out sounds insane.
Composable architecture actually handles this beautifully because you’re not doing a rip-and-replace. You’re doing a gradual migration.
Keep your legacy system running. Build the new composable stack alongside it. Test it. Let it handle 5% of traffic. Then 10%. Then 50%. By the time the legacy system is decommissioned, it’s been proven reliable.
This takes longer than a big bang replacement but with zero business risk. Your current revenue-generating system never stops working.
Real example: A B2B industrial supplier was running legacy ERP from 2005 and monolithic ecommerce from 2008. They built a modern composable layer on top. Connected them via APIs. Now customers get modern UX while backend uses proven systems.
The Skills Gap (20% cite this)
“We don’t have GraphQL developers. We don’t know cloud infrastructure.”
Fair concern. But here’s reality: Most developers already know this stuff now. GraphQL is standard. Cloud deployment is standard. DevOps is a solved problem.
Plus, most best-of-breed tools have pre-built connectors. You’re often not building integrations from scratch. You’re configuring existing ones.
And many composable platforms have low-code/no-code options. You don’t need a team of specialist developers. You need smart people who can think modularly.
How to handle: Train existing teams. Hire newer developers who grew up with this architecture. Partner with a systems integrator for initial setup, then hand off to internal teams for maintenance.
Integration Complexity (15% cite this)
“What if the tools don’t work together?”
This is actually where the biggest mindset shift happens. Modern tools expect to be integrated. They have documented APIs. Most have pre-built connectors to popular platforms.
Integration that would take 3 months with monolithic systems takes 3 weeks with composable APIs.
The real protection: Work with someone experienced in composable architecture for initial implementation. Get the connectors right. Make the architecture clean. Then day-to-day maintenance is straightforward.
8. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU NEXT QUARTER
Alright, let me cut through all this.
The global composable commerce market is growing at 22.4% annually. It’ll be a $39 billion market by 2033. But honestly, the market size isn’t what matters. What matters is competitive position.
Your competitors are moving toward this. Some already have. If you’re still operating a monolithic system, you’re getting slower while they’re getting faster.
This isn’t fear-mongering. It’s just the direction things are moving.
Regionally: North America has 47% of market share. Asia Pacific is the growth story at 19.5% CAGR. So growth is happening globally, but it’s accelerating faster in some regions.
On the social commerce side: Social commerce is growing from $1.69 trillion (2024) to $6.2 trillion (2030). That’s almost 4x in six years. And you know what? The only way to launch on TikTok Shop, then Instagram Shops, then whatever comes next is having a composable architecture. You can’t rebuild your entire system each time.
Omnichannel retailers are seeing real numbers:
- 10% AOV increase
- 30% LTV increase
These aren’t small movements. And they only happen when you can operate across channels coherently. That requires composability.
Here’s my honest take: The question isn’t whether to go composable. That’s decided. The question is timeline. Are you moving now? Next year? Three years from now?
The brands moving now have an 18-month advantage over everyone else. That compounds.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY SAYING
On Strategy Shift
“Five years ago, the question was ‘monolithic or best-of-breed?’ Now nobody asks that. They ask ‘how do we compose this stack?’ It’s not even a debate anymore. The competitive winners all think this way.”
— Senior Director of Commerce, Fortune 500 Retailer
On Velocity
“I’ve worked in ecommerce for 15 years. I’ve never seen a team move as fast as we do now with composable. It’s not because we’re smarter. It’s because we’re not rebuilding the same things over and over. We’re composing.”
— VP of Digital Operations, Fashion Retail
HERE’S WHAT YOU ACTUALLY DO NEXT
Stop thinking about “replacing Shopify” or “choosing between platforms.” That’s 2015 thinking.
Instead, think about Shopify’s actual role. Is it your commerce backbone? Yes, probably. That’s what Shopify excels at. Is it your entire infrastructure? No. Can’t be. Because commerce is only part of what matters.
You need search. Specialized. Best-in-class. You need personalization. You need content management. You need customer data infrastructure. You need analytics that actually drive decisions.
Shopify handles the commerce part brilliantly. Everything else? Compose it.
The brands operating at velocity in 2025 aren’t trying to get everything from one vendor. They’re orchestrating a symphony of specialized tools, with Shopify as the backbone handling transactions, payments, and orders.
That’s not the future. That’s happening now. The only question is whether you’re building it or watching competitors build it.
Ready to evolve beyond the Shopify monolith and build a truly composable stack?
Pooja Upadhyay
Director Of People Operations & Client Relations
SOURCE URLs:
https://dataintelo.com/composable-commerce-market-report
https://precedenceresearch.com/composable-applications-market
https://contentful.com/resources/mach-architecture-2024
https://consumergoods.com/retail-industry-mach-adoption
