Large enterprises face a unique challenge: the need for both standardized efficiency and bespoke customization. They seek speed to market with future-proof technologies, while simultaneously demanding control over the customer journey through personalization and omnichannel experiences. This often translates to a preference for multi-vendor strategies to mitigate risk, while still desiring streamlined (or frictionless) integrations to avoid the complexities of managing numerous systems. Custom development is frequently seen as a necessity to achieve these enterprises’ specific goals, due to its ability to blend readily available technologies with bespoke solutions.
While Shopify's ability to handle enterprise-scale needs is well established, many large businesses remain hesitant to move away from their outdated legacy platforms due to fear of change and perceived complexity. However, Shopify stands at the forefront of composable commerce, enabling businesses to build modern, adaptable, and future-proof commerce solutions. Composable architectures offer greater flexibility, scalability, and speed through well-thought-out design and implementation decisions. This approach leverages microservices, APIs, cloud-native solutions, and decoupled architecture to create a stable, future-proof application stack. Developers can blend modularity and reusability to build stand-alone and combinable applications, allowing for tailored solutions while benefiting from the stability and scalability of a composable platform.
This is the first of a blog series in which we will elaborate on Shopify’s composable architecture optionalities and provide you with validated enterprise-grade reference architectures.
The enterprise imperative: embracing agility and flexibility
Enterprise businesses are managing complex operations, navigating diverse sales channels, and delivering personalized customer experiences in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. To thrive in this environment, they need to move beyond the limitations of traditional monolithic platforms and embrace a more modern and flexible approach.
This is where Shopify’s commitment to composable commerce comes into play. Shopify’s platform is a blend of microservices, applications, webhooks and connectors on a modular architecture that will have you further downfield when you start just by the nature of the building blocks we provide.
Let’s use Lego as an analogy. Shopify gives you a bunch of Lego sets to start. These sets provide you the core commerce capabilities, the plumbing required to set up your commerce foundation. But we also give you endless Lego blocks to build and extend the Lego sets available. These are in the form of the Shopify ecosystem of third-party (3P) applications, accelerators, and developer tooling that enable you to customize your preferred tech stack. While you get everything you need out of the box with Shopify, you don’t need to use everything—instead you can just configure a 3P or custom application to override the default functionalities of the system.
Shopify’s composable architecture allows businesses to pick best-of-breed components while relying on Shopify’s secure, stable infrastructure. For added agility, Shopify’s suite of partner apps, API libraries, and reusable components can accelerate a large-scale digital transformation program. Shopify offers unbridled flexibility to enterprises as they grow, scale and structure themselves. Each component can be updated or replaced independently, without impacting the overall functionality of the platform. This allows us to deliver continuous improvements and features with greater speed and efficiency.
Shopify's API-centric approach empowers businesses to seamlessly integrate with a wide range of third-party tools and services, such as SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Optimizely, Algolia, Klaviyo, Salsify, Yotpo, ReCharge, Manhattan, ShipStation, Stripe, Avalara, and many others. This open ecosystem fosters innovation by enabling businesses to customize their commerce experiences, leveraging best-of-breed solutions for specific functionalities. Because of our public APIs and open developer platform, Shopify allows you to deploy your own preferred microservice on top of Shopify when needed. This effectively replaces the prebuilt commerce logic Shopify provides to get you started and enables you to implement a purpose-built logic or services, and independently deploy different services when needed.
Whether in a bespoke mobile app, a social commerce platform, or a traditional online store, businesses can deliver a seamless experience with Shopify's robust headless or composable architecture.
Defining architecture for success: Tailoring solutions for specific needs
The true power of composable commerce lies in its ability to cater to the unique needs of each business. No longer confined to a one-size-fits-all solution, organizations can leverage a composable approach to tailor their technology stack to specific requirements and priorities. This granularity fosters greater autonomy and agility within individual teams while ensuring seamless integration within the broader enterprise ecosystem.
A generic, agnostic framework: The foundation for customization
The diagram below depicts a generic and agnostic view of a composable commerce architecture, demonstrating the common components and integrations found in enterprise commerce ecosystems. It emphasizes the ability of businesses to select the specific technologies and partners that best align with their individual needs and goals. Shopify realizes that while a commerce engine is a key component of your enterprise tech stack, it is not the only component. Our goal is to be trusted to run your core commerce with Shopify and make it easier for you to integrate with best-of-breed partners and custom-built microservices to achieve other aspects of your tech needs. Shopify’s commitment extends beyond core commerce. We are dedicated to empowering businesses with a thriving ecosystem of best-in-breed solutions that allow you to create truly unique commerce experiences.
To better understand how businesses integrate with Shopify, we have gathered examples from prominent customers showcasing their enterprise architectures. These examples reveal where Shopify fits within their existing systems, highlighting its integration with other critical components, and provide insights into how they envision Shopify evolving within their technology roadmap.
Example 1 - Multibillion-dollar global food and beverage company
Below is an example of how Shopify integrates into the tech stack of a multibillion-dollar food and beverage company. By effectively utilizing Shopify’s APIs the company has managed to streamline transaction processing and inventory management, ensuring real-time data synchronization with systems like SAP for customer authentication and order fulfillment. Shopify's webhooks and Functions APIs support event-driven architecture, enabling dynamic responses to customer interactions. Enhanced by analytics tools such as Google Suite and observability platforms like Grafana, this integration provides actionable insights into customer behavior. By connecting with mobile applications and third-party services through an integration layer, Shopify creates a cohesive ecosystem that drives efficiency and scalability for food and beverage companies.
Example 2 - $400 million consumer goods company
Here’s an illustration of how Shopify integrates into the tech stack of a consumer goods company. The platform’s core commerce features, including cart and checkout and order fulfillment, streamline transaction processes and inventory management, ensuring seamless operations. By leveraging Shopify’s Admin API, the company was able to connect custom applications and services for enhanced functionality. Integration with third-party solutions like Yotpo and Criteo allowed for advanced customer engagement and analytics, while PIPE17 facilitates data synchronization with systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365. This cohesive architecture supports real-time insights and efficient workflows, enabling consumer goods companies to respond swiftly to market demands and enhance customer experiences.
Example 3 - $100+ billion automotive brand
The diagram below showcases how Shopify can be integrated into the tech stack of a $100 billion automotive enterprise operating in various regions and locales. The platform's core commerce features, along with storefront theming, enable smooth cart, checkout, and payment processes, ensuring a streamlined customer experience across multiple regions. By integrating with existing CRM and CDP, the company can effectively manage customer profiles and event data, enhancing lifecycle marketing tailored to automotive consumers. Integration with third-party systems for tax calculation and fraud prevention further boosts operational efficiency. Additionally, a PIM system supports product enhancement and localization, while ERP integration optimizes accounting and inventory management. While relatively simple, this architecture has empowered the company to operate on a global scale while delivering personalized experiences that cater to diverse market needs at scale.
As is evident, these diagrams differ significantly from company to company, reflecting the unique technology foundations that align with their specific operating models and business needs. However, they share several commonalities:
- First, they recognize that the commerce capabilities provided by Shopify—designed to support both online and offline needs—are essential components of any future-focused technology architecture, offering a stable yet flexible foundation.
- Moreover, while Shopify delivers world-class capabilities, it’s clear that additional platforms and software are necessary to comprehensively manage an enterprise, encompassing everything from product development to customer service.
- Finally, composability is not merely an aspiration for CTOs: it represents a strategic approach to building robust, low-technical-debt, future-proof architectures. Having experienced the pitfalls of failed replatforming efforts—whether through microservices-oriented strategies or monolithic systems—technology leaders now appreciate the importance of selecting the right solutions at the appropriate level of abstraction for their organizations.
The conversation around composable architectures on Shopify goes much deeper than what we’ve covered in this initial article. Over the coming months, we’ll dive deep into how key applications are integrated into Shopify, the challenges they faced, and the benefits our customers have gained by having their entire commerce strategy unified by our platform.
