Toppling the monolith

I recently wrote about the demise of Magento and alluded to a new approach to eCommerce that we are adopting at C3. Whilst the process of pivoting will take time, I can grant you a peek behind the curtain and reveal what's got us so excited and why. But first, I feel it's important to look at what's come before: the good, the bad, and... the rest.

I built my first Magento website in 2008, shortly after the platform’s inaugural release. It was not an easy process. There was no documentation or community to lean on: no Stack Overflow posts, no examples to follow, and nobody to ask how to do it right. In the following years, a burgeoning community was born, launching the platform into the stratosphere. The platform's popularity soared, and, for a time, its exponential rise was unstoppable. For merchants of all sizes, Magento was the go-to platform of choice; it was powerful, flexible, and packed with features.

Then came Magento 2.0 - a complete rewrite from the ground up. Aiming to extend and improve upon the first iteration dramatically, it had big aspirations and even bigger boots to fill. It was a travesty - bug-ridden, extremely complex, and so slooooow. Good grief, it was slow. While later versions eventually fixed most of the major issues, Magento 2 remained orders of magnitude more difficult to work with than its predecessor. As a result, development costs skyrocketed. While creating a well-performing Magento 1 site was relatively easy for most, holding a degree in Computer Science was a boon when working with the second coming and a must for getting the best out of it. However, despite its shortcomings and high barrier to entry, its broad feature set, unlimited potential for customisation, and the availability of a free, open-source version meant that it remained highly popular, if somewhat controversially so.

It helped that there were no real contenders. Shopify was still only servicing the DIY'ers and startups, and the other non-SaaS offerings were woefully lacking in features and abilities compared to the new orange powerhouse. So prolific was the brand that I built a business around it. My agency's website was all the marketing we needed - plus a negligible spend on PPC. The number of people searching for the term "Magento" remained consistent for years and supplied us with a steady stream of enquiries... oh, the golden years!

So what happened? Well, Magento couldn't monopolise forever. Its popularity eventually nosedived as new contenders in the digital commerce space emerged. Shopify levelled up with capabilities that made it relevant to more than just the sole trader; BigCommerce came on the scene with a compelling offering, sparking further competition, and others were to follow. At the same time, Magento became stale. I mentioned that it was over-engineered; this made it difficult and expensive to work with - not least for Magento themselves. For many years, it was stuck on an ageing tech stack, and to this day, its front end is based on technologies from over five years ago - a lifetime in the tech world. While other platforms were innovating rapidly, Magento continued to use the same old, tired approaches.

As a developer, I had a love-hate relationship with the platform, as did many others. There's no doubt there is genius in the codebase, but it failed spectacularly regarding its ease of use. Soon after the 2.0 release, it became known as the “career killer” in some developer circles. I know of cases where people were signed off work due to the stress of working with this complex beast - some never to return.

And yet Magento's inertia was such that agencies like mine carried on producing solutions. And there are some great examples out there (and I'm not only talking about those in the C3 portfolio!). For skilled and experienced agencies and individuals, crafting performant solutions that deliver considerable value remains possible; it's just not as easy as it should be.

Fast forward to 2024. The global economy is in the toilet, and businesses around the globe are looking to cut costs or, at the very least, have ever more focus on their spending. The rising cost of ownership for a Magento 2 site and the platform's inability to keep up with the competition has meant that interest in it has nosedived. Compounded by Adobe focusing all of its efforts on big enterprises, Magento merchants and agencies alike are left wondering what to do now - what's life like post-Magento? Some agencies have attached their cart to the Shopify horse, others to BigCommerce, or other similarly well-performing, monolithic, usually SaaS alternatives. But the question I have been obsessing over is: do they deliver enough? Is there an alternative to going all-in on another platform and its specific ecosystem? What happens if they suffer a fate similar to Magento’s? Surely, there’s a way to remove this dependency on the monolithic platform and better future-proof the merchant's solution? Can this be done whilst remaining highly competitive and ultimately relevant?

Yes. The answer - or at least the best answer in my not-so-humble opinion (and I'm not alone) - is Composable Commerce. And no, it's not another platform to throw your lot in with. It's a paradigm shift, an approach that puts the merchant in control by reducing dependencies on any one platform or provider. It offers choice, best-in-class services and experiences, and a strategy which protects the investment. It breaks the 3 to 5-year reboot cycle and provides the agility to make changes continually. Hallelujah, we have been saved!

Some merchants on Magento would do very well on Shopify, BigCommerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, Salesforce, or Shopware. But for those who embrace a new way of thinking, there is much more to gain from looking beyond these confines. A composable approach will often include one of these platforms but will not be limited by it and will not be wholly dependent on it. Instead, it will utilise its strengths and embrace the ecosystem of specialist services to significantly level up in critical areas.

This is not a wholly new concept. Many websites that use a monolithic application such as Magento, already use third-party services. Search is an excellent example of where Magento falls short. Well-established and highly regarded specialist search providers such as Klevu can be integrated, providing plugins for the major platforms. Composable Commerce takes this further, often by introducing a decoupled, or "headless", front-end; that is to say, one that exists as an entirely separate component. Imagine a world where you could swap out your eCommerce "backend" - or platform - but retain your front-end experience. Equally, imagine gaining the ability to swap out your search, customer personalisation, or rewards system without having to significantly reengineer the solution. If there's one thing we've learned over the last few tumultuous years, it's that the brands that adapt quickly are the ones that thrive.

At C3, our mission is to embrace this brave new world and to bring the immense value of Composable to our customers. We believe the future is bright, but it is not orange; think more of a technicolour Dreamcoat.