Why Companies Are Ditching SAP Commerce Cloud and Magento for commercetools
E-commerce is no longer a “set-it-and-forget-it” operation. Businesses today face constant pressure to scale, innovate, and deliver seamless experiences across multiple channels. Legacy platforms like SAP Commerce Cloud and Magento, while once reliable, are struggling to keep up. Their monolithic architecture, high maintenance costs, and lack of flexibility are holding businesses back in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
That’s where commercetools comes in. By embracing a headless, cloud-native approach powered by the MACH principles—Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless—commercetools is helping companies break free from outdated systems and unlock a future-ready e-commerce stack.
Let's dive right in.
Flexibility and Customization
commercetools is built on a composable architecture, allowing businesses to select and integrate best-of-breed solutions tailored to their unique needs. Unlike monolithic platforms such as SAP Commerce Cloud and Magento, which often impose rigid structures, commercetools empowers companies to design flexible and scalable systems.
Scalability and Performance
One of the key differentiators of commercetools is its cloud-native approach. Unlike SAP Commerce Cloud, which evolved from a legacy on-premise solution, commercetools was built for the cloud from the ground up.
| Feature | commercetools | SAP Commerce Cloud | Magento |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud-native architecture | Yes | Partially | No |
| Scalability | High | Moderate | Low |
| Customizability | High | Moderate | Low |
Advantages:
- Automatic scaling to handle traffic spikes.
- Reduced downtime due to robust, distributed infrastructure.
- Faster deployment of new features and updates.
Headless Commerce: Future-Proofing for the Digital Age
commercetools leads the charge in headless commerce by decoupling the front-end experience from the back-end systems. This enables unparalleled flexibility for businesses to innovate across customer touchpoints.
| Capability | commercetools | SAP Commerce Cloud | Magento |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headless capability | Full | Partial | Limited |
| Flexibility | High | Moderate | Low |
Why headless matters:
- Faster updates to front-end systems.
- Enhanced user experiences with personalized, device-specific designs.
Speed and Agility in Development
commercetools’ microservices-based architecture accelerates development by allowing teams to work on independent components without affecting the entire system.
How Adding Features Compares:
- commercetools: A business looking to add a personalized product recommendation feature can deploy it as a standalone microservice. This process takes just a few days, ensuring rapid delivery without impacting other system components.
- SAP Commerce Cloud: Due to its monolithic structure, adding such a feature requires extensive coordination between teams, along with prolonged testing and deployment phases, often stretching into weeks.
- Magento: While open-source flexibility is an advantage, technical debt and dependency conflicts can lead to delays and performance bottlenecks, making feature implementation cumbersome.
Better Total Cost of Ownership
While SAP Commerce Cloud and Magento can be powerful, they often come with hidden costs related to customization, maintenance, and hosting. commercetools minimizes these costs by allowing businesses to pay only for the services they need. Its cloud-native, versionless architecture eliminates infrastructure and maintenance costs, with maintenance, hosting, and updates included in the subscription, ensuring fewer surprise expenses.
Companies like Volkswagen Group and Audi have used commercetools to streamline operations, offering seamless digital purchasing and service capabilities.
In contrast, SAP Commerce Cloud often incurs higher TCO due to ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and customizations. Its reliance on Azure can also limit cloud flexibility, increasing long-term operational costs. For businesses requiring deep integration with other SAP systems, these costs might be justifiable, but for those seeking more adaptability, the expenses can accumulate significantly.
Key benefits at glance:
- Reduced maintenance costs due to cloud-native infrastructure.
- No costly upgrades or patches.
- Pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures cost efficiency.
- Versionless architecture simplifies operations and eliminates unexpected expenses.
Seamless Integration with Other Systems
commercetools excels in providing API-first flexibility, enabling effortless integration with a wide range of third-party systems, including CRMs, ERPs, and marketing platforms.
So, you’re not locked into a single ecosystem and can adapt quickly as your business evolves!
SAP Commerce Cloud integrates well with SAP ERP systems, offering stability and centralized control for businesses deeply invested in SAP’s ecosystem. However, this approach can limit flexibility and make it harder to adapt to changing needs or integrate with non-SAP tools.
In contrast, commercetools’ API-first flexibility allows seamless integration with diverse systems, enabling rapid adaptation and innovation. For businesses seeking agility, commercetools is the clear choice, while SAP Commerce Cloud suits those prioritizing consistency within an SAP
Innovation and Future-Proofing
commercetools leads the way in enabling businesses to stay ahead of the curve with its adherence to MACH principles—Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless.
Whether it’s integrating new payment methods, launching unique front-end experiences, or scaling globally, commercetools ensures businesses can adapt to shifting customer demands and market trends seamlessly.
On the other hand, platforms like SAP Commerce Cloud and Magento often require extensive system modifications or significant updates to implement new features or adapt to emerging trends. This process can be time-consuming and disruptive, slowing the pace of innovation. commercetools eliminates these challenges, offering a modern, flexible framework designed for businesses that prioritize agility, scalability, and long-term adaptability.
As e-commerce evolves, businesses need platforms that enable agility, scalability, and innovation. While SAP Commerce Cloud and Magento have been reliable, they may struggle to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced digital world.
Commercetools, with its MACH principles, offers the flexibility to adapt, innovate, and grow. It’s a modern solution designed to help businesses reduce complexities, integrate seamlessly, and stay competitive in the digital age.
