Headless commerce is increasing in popularity given the flexibility that is provided for companies and developers in order to support robust ecommerce capabilities with maximum flexibility. This post covers a number of popular tools that ecommerce stores who are interested in headless commerce can deploy to accomplish their ecommerce goals.

What is Headless Commerce?

Headless commerce decouples the front end and the back end of an ecommerce application, allowing brands and developers the flexibility on the front end by utilizing robust API of a headless service while still being able to take advantage of powerful administration and management tools on the back end. The end goal is to ensure that companies have the flexibility they need to provide the best customer experience and accomplish the desired business goals.

What are Headless Ecommerce Tools?

There are several ecommerce platforms that advertise themselves under “Headless Commerce” and provide the necessary tools, API, and supporting documentation that gives developers what they need in order to create a robust ecommerce front end.   Several of the most popular are these…

• Shopify’s Plus
• Bigcommerce
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud
• Kibo Commerce
• Magento Commerce
• SAP Commerce Cloud

These platforms give a great foundation for giving companies a powerful ecommerce engine in the back-end while allowing them flexibility on the presentation layer as they integrate those ecommerce capabilities into their online store, social experiences, mobile applications, customer contact experiences, etc.   Although these platforms provide very robust capabilities, they don’t cover every capability that ecommerce merchants would like to cover in their customer experience, so it’s necessary to identify other headless ecommerce tools and services that provide robust API capabilities to fill in the gaps.

Recommended Headless Ecommerce Tools & Services

Below is a list of some essential ecommerce tools and services that have a robust set of developer tools and API in order to compliment your headless commerce experiences.

Shipstation

Shipstation is shipping software for ecommerce fulfillment.  Shipstation’s API and development tools allows ecommerce developers to manage orders, shipments, stores, warehouses, carriers and a number of other elements related to your Shipstation account.  create shipping orders, check on shipping rates, as well as a number of other capablities that are powered through their powerful shipping engine.

Answerbase

Answerbase’s customers include the likes of Pillsbury and Betty Crocker, providing headless ecommerce product question and answer community capabilities to power functionality.  This enables you to power Q&A engagement on your product pages similar to what you see supported on Amazon’s product pages, where customers can ask questions about the product they’re viewing and and then receive answers from your company or other verified purchasers.   It includes a robust set of content and community features to ensure that your visitors can get all of the product information they’re looking for from the most relevant source to drive conversions.

Pimcore

Pimcore is a decoupled, API-driven product information management solution that can handle complicated product and pricing structures and support multiple front-end apps.   It’s ability to manage multiple catalogs, currencies, catalogs, product views and price lists gives developers and marketers what they need from a PIM solution.

We’ll continue compiling the list of these services as we become aware of services and partners that have created a robust foundation for companies and their developers to work with, as we look to enable merchants who adopt headless commerce the best headless ecommerce tools on the market.