Composable commerce is a way of building an online store from separate services that talk to each other through APIs: one for the storefront, one for cart and checkout, one for the product catalog or PIM, one for search, one for content (the CMS) and one for orders and fulfilment (the OMS). Each piece can come from a different vendor and be replaced without rebuilding the rest. The opposite is a single platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce running all of those jobs in one product, which is what most stores use and what most stores should keep using.
commercetools, one of the vendors that sells it, describes composable commerce as building commerce platforms from "independent, best-of-breed components" (commercetools). Shopify's own definition is close: composable commerce lets a business "assemble independently replaceable services" (Shopify). The rest of this guide covers how it differs from headless, what MACH means, which parts make up a stack, what it costs to run, and where the line sits between worth it and overkill.
Composable vs headless vs monolithic
The three terms describe how much of the store is split apart.
| Architecture | What is separate | Example | Who keeps it running |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monolithic | Nothing. Storefront, checkout, catalog and admin are one product | Shopify with a Liquid theme | Mostly the platform vendor |
| Headless | The storefront only. One commerce engine behind it, reached through its API | Shopify Hydrogen on the Storefront API | You run the front end; the vendor runs the engine |
| Composable | Several services, each chosen separately and joined by APIs | commercetools for commerce, a headless CMS for content, Algolia for search | You run the joins between every service |
Shopify describes a monolith as one that "operates off of a single codebase", where front-end and back-end changes are tied together, and headless as decoupling "the front-end experience from the back-end operations" (Shopify). Headless is one step: you replace the storefront and keep everything else. Composable takes the same idea to the other parts of the store, so the catalog, search, content and order management can each be a different product.
Composable commerce vs headless in one sentence
Every composable store is headless, because the front end is separate from the services behind it. Most headless stores are not composable, because they keep a single commerce platform behind the new front end. A headless Shopify build with Hydrogen is headless; adding a separate CMS, search service and order system around it starts to make it composable.
What MACH means
MACH is the label vendors in this space use. The MACH Alliance was founded on 23 June 2020 by commercetools, Contentstack, EPAM Systems and Valtech, and its launch release says the name "stands for Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless" (commercetools press release).
- Microservices based: each business function is its own service that can be built and deployed on its own.
- API-first: every function is reachable through an API.
- Cloud-native SaaS: the vendor hosts, scales and updates it.
- Headless: the front end is separate from the back end.
The Alliance's site now frames this as three principles. Composable means "capabilities you can assemble, replace, and evolve independently", and connected means "designed to be optimized in an ecosystem" (MACH Alliance). The Alliance is an industry body whose members sell these products, so read its material as a vendor position. MACH architecture describes how software is built; it does not tell you whether your store needs it.
The parts of a composable stack
These are the usual components, with examples named only where we read the vendor's own description.
| Part | Its job | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Storefront | The pages shoppers see, built in a web framework | Shopify Hydrogen, hosted on Oxygen; BigCommerce Catalyst, built on Next.js |
| Commerce engine | Catalog, prices, cart, checkout, orders | commercetools; Shopify through its Storefront API; BigCommerce through its GraphQL Storefront API |
| Content (CMS) | Editorial pages, landing pages, rich product content | Contentful |
| Search | Product search and filtering | Algolia |
| PIM and OMS | Product data and order routing when they outgrow the engine | commercetools lists catalog, inventory and order management among its modular capabilities |
Hydrogen is "Shopify's headless toolkit": it handles the Shopify-specific parts such as the cart and the Storefront API client, while a framework handles routing and rendering (Shopify docs). Shopify's Storefront API "scales with buyer traffic", and requests from real shoppers have no fixed per-minute limit (Storefront API). Catalyst is BigCommerce's "composable, fully customizable headless ecommerce storefront framework", released under the MIT licence, and can be deployed to Vercel or any host that supports Next.js (BigCommerce docs). Contentful describes itself as a composable content platform with a headless CMS at its core (Contentful).
What composable commerce really costs
The licences are the part you can see. Prices below were checked on 23 October 2026.
- Commerce engine. commercetools does not publish prices. Its pricing page says pricing is order-based rather than a share of sales, and asks you to contact sales (commercetools pricing). For comparison, Shopify Advanced is $299 a month billed yearly, or $3,588 a year, for the whole platform (Shopify pricing).
- Search. Algolia's Grow plan includes 10,000 search requests a month, then charges $0.50 per extra 1,000, and $0.40 per extra 1,000 records above 100,000 (Algolia pricing). On our arithmetic, a store running 1,000,000 searches a month would pay about $495 a month for search requests on that plan.
- Hosting the storefront. On Shopify, Oxygen hosting for Hydrogen storefronts is included at no extra charge on supported paid plans, subject to runtime and usage limits (Shopify). Elsewhere you pay a host such as Vercel.
- Content. A headless CMS is another subscription. Contentful's pricing page blocked our requests, so we have left its prices out.
The team is the bigger number
On a single platform, the vendor maintains the checkout, the admin and the storefront framework. On a composable stack, your team maintains the front end, the integrations between services and the monitoring that tells you when one breaks. Shopify's own article says headless storefronts suit "established internal technology and product teams", and gives rough thresholds of a budget of $1 million or more and a timeline of six months or longer for headless, against under $1 million and under six months for a Liquid theme (Shopify). It also warns that merchants must "dedicate more resources to maintain a headless infrastructure".
Here is what that looks like as a running cost, on our arithmetic. Two engineers keeping a headless storefront and its integrations moving, priced on our own embedded pods at $3,000–$7,500 per engineer per month, cost $72,000 to $180,000 a year. An in-house team costs more once salaries and recruiting are counted. Either way it is many times the $3,588 a year Shopify Advanced charges for a platform someone else maintains.
When it pays off, and when it is overkill
The extra running cost has to come back as margin. Assume a 40% contribution margin on extra sales (an assumption; use your own). A team cost of $72,000 a year then needs $180,000 of extra sales every year to break even, and a team cost of $180,000 needs $450,000.
- At $2 million a year in online revenue, that is a sustained lift of 9% to 22.5% from the architecture alone.
- At $5 million, it is 3.6% to 9%.
- At $20 million, it is 0.9% to 2.3%.
A front end rarely produces a lift of several per cent a year on its own. So our rule of thumb from this arithmetic is plain: below about $5 million a year in online revenue, stay on a single platform unless a hard requirement forces you off it. Above that, composable can pay, when there is a specific thing the platform cannot do.
Signs it pays off
- You run several brands, regions or channels from one catalog, and the platform's multi-store tools have run out.
- The checkout, pricing or product model needs logic the platform does not expose, even on its top plan. On Shopify that means things Shopify Plus cannot do with checkout extensions and Functions.
- Content is a large part of how you sell, and editors need a real CMS beside the catalog.
- You already employ engineers who will own the front end and the integrations for years.
Signs it is overkill
- The reason is speed or design. A well-built theme on Shopify or BigCommerce can be fast and look like anything you need.
- Nobody on staff will own the integrations after launch.
- The plan depends on a launch date inside six months.
- Most of the wish list is available as an app or a plan upgrade.
A decision table
| Your situation | Stay on one platform | Go headless | Go composable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under about $5M online revenue, no in-house engineers | Yes | No | No |
| Theme limits on design or speed, platform otherwise fine | Yes, rebuild the theme first | Only if the theme cannot get there | No |
| Content-heavy brand, one catalog | Often, with the platform's CMS features | Yes, with a headless CMS beside it | Rarely needed |
| Several brands or regions, shared catalog | If the platform's multi-store tools fit | Sometimes | Often |
| Checkout or pricing logic the platform cannot express | No | Not enough on its own | Yes |
| Engineers in-house who will own it for years | Possible | Yes | Yes |
The middle path most stores should look at first
If the storefront is the only part that is holding you back, go headless on the platform you have. On Shopify, that means Hydrogen on the Storefront API, hosted on Oxygen; on BigCommerce, it means Catalyst on the GraphQL Storefront API. You keep the vendor's checkout, admin, payments and app ecosystem, and you only own the front end. It is the cheapest way to test whether a custom front end earns its keep before you split anything else apart.
How Gigabit helps
We are a Shopify Partner and build on Shopify and BigCommerce. Most of the time our advice is to stay on the platform and fix the theme, the apps or the plan. When a store does need more, we build it:
- Store builds start at $9,000 fixed. Shopify Plus, headless, B2B, multi-storefront and Adobe Commerce builds are quoted higher, as a fixed price after scoping, and headless Hydrogen or Catalyst storefronts fall in that group.
- Integrations between the store and the ERP, CMS, search or order system: one scoped integration is $8,000 fixed over 3 weeks.
- Migrations between platforms start at $7,000 fixed, with every old URL redirected.
- Ongoing engineering for a headless or composable stack is an embedded pod at $3,000–$7,500 per engineer per month, working in your repo and on your release process.
If you are weighing a move, start by listing what your current platform cannot do and what each item is worth. If you are on Shopify, check first whether Shopify Plus covers the list. That is cheaper than any composable build.
