Introduction

An ecommerce stack is a collation of frameworks and applications needed to create and maintain an online ecommerce store. It can consist of the backend server, the storefront, or CMS platform, among other components.

Commercial tools can be used to add several unique features to an ecommerce stack after it has been created. Open source tools, however, offer more range and flexibility at little to no cost.

This article lists five open source ecommerce solutions and tools you can use for your ecommerce stack.

Why Should You Use Open Source Tools?

Customizability and Extensibility

Open source tools help developers customize their technology stack according to the specific needs of their online stores. The source code of the application can be tweaked accordingly without having to request access or licensing.

Active Collaboration and Community

Collaboration forms the basis of open source platforms. Open source projects allow anyone to access their codebase, enabling developers to review, suggest improvements, and share technological knowledge.

This collective effort results in the production of a better software. The software or tool is heavily tested by a large community, and bugs are reported and resolved quickly.

Latest Tool Updates

One perk of open source tools is the consistent release of new features and updates. As the community helps the development of the tool, features, and bug fixes are handled quickly and released more often.

5 Open Source Tools for Ecommerce Stacks

The tools discussed below are open source solutions for ecommerce websites.

Medusa

Medusa is an open source ecommerce platform built for online businesses. It is written in JavaScript and Typescript, and runs on a node environment.

Businesses looking for a flexible and extensible platform can use Medusa. Its architecture and abstraction layers allows customizing any component of the platform. You can also integrate any third-party tools, from payment providers to CMS platforms.

Medusa's ecommerce and developer features include:

• It allows users to manage products with customization settings and sort them into collections.
• It provides essential ecommerce features related to shopping cart, checkout, order management, and more.
• Users can configure and manage multiple regions and currencies on their ecommerce websites. They can specify prices for a product for each currency or region the website supports.
• Medusa’s storefront has Next.js and Gatsby storefronts, which customers use to browse products and make purchases.
• Users can set up multi-currency payment options for different regions and pricing for individual products using the admin dashboard.
• Medusa’s community plugin, Medusa Extender, provides multivendor support and full customization capabilities to create a custom ecommerce website.
• Its integration architecture that allows web developer to integrate any third-party services into the whole system.

Overall, Medusa allows full customization and can be fully modified to suit your business needs. Medusa has an active developer community on Discord that can answer your questions and help resolve issues with setup.

Check out the quick start guide to create your first Medusa server.

Vue Storefront

Vue Storefront is an open source tool built on JavaScript. It offers Frontend as a Service (FaaS), and runs on the Vue.js framework. It is simple to use and provides developers with the tools to create attractive and user-friendly ecommerce websites.

Vue Storefront’s features include:

• Integrate the storefront into any backend ecommerce platform, including Medusa.
• Fully-optimized themes and components for a fast experience and for mobile devices.
• Components are available to be used in any Vue.js-based project using the Storefront UI library.
• Design and components are built to be reusable and customized to provide an on-brand experience.
• Can also be integrated to headless CMS platforms like Contentful.

Vue Storefront has a community that consists of in-house developers and users on Discord and GitHub.

Strapi

Strapi is an open source, Node.js based headless CMS framework. Strapi can be integrated into any platform, including ecommerce platforms. Its extensive API layer is used to create customized content and data structures associated with ecommerce.

Strapi's features include:

• Fully customizable content models with types like relations, media and files, rich text, and much more.
• A content management system and a content editor that allows users to create and edit content.
• Strapi grants users security features like access control, authentication, and authorization.
• The admin panel and the APIs are fully customizable and extensible.

Strapi has an active open source community on GitHub.

Reading Suggestion: Create an Ecommerce Storefront with Medusa, Strapi, and Remix

3. Odoo:

Odoo is an open source tool businesses use to manage their ecommerce websites. It offers a large suit of tools to manage products, customer relations, a drag-and-drop website builder, and more.

Odoo’s features include:

• The dashboard helps users monitor analytics, and communicate with customers through SMS, push notifications, and emails.
• The shopping experience is optimized with wish lists, a search bar, a customer portal, and a straightforward checkout process.
• Odoo simplifies payment and shipping by connecting to services such as Paypal and DHL. Users can also create and add payment methods of their choice.

Find Odoo on GitHub to learn more about its amazing features and its community.

Builder.io

Builder.io is an open-source tool used to create ecommerce websites using drag-and-drop features. It allows third-party integrations and custom themes, widgets, and plugins to design online shops.

Some of Builder.io’s features include:

• It provides a drag-and-drop visual design system that can be used to build websites, including ecommerce storefronts. This also means that it requires minimal-to-non technical knowledge.
• It can be integrated with other apps and systems using its plug-and-play architecture.
• Builder.io includes essential content management features such as scheduling content, reports, and analytics.

Check out Builder.io’s GitHub repository for more details about its features and community.

Meilisearch

MeiliSearch is a full-text search engine that can be integrated into any website, including ecommerce websites. It can be integrated into any platform using its countless number of SDKs.

MeiliSearch's features include:

• User-friendly features such as auto-completion of text, search suggestions, and multi-language support.
• Provides libraries to easily integrate into popular frontend frameworks such as Gatsby.
• It’s fast, promising results in less than 50ms even for large number of data. This is essential for a great user experience.
• Data can be stored in any schema, which gives developers more flexibility when integrating it into existing systems.

Check out MeiliSearch's GitHub repository to get started.

Conclusion

Open source tools are an essential part of ecommerce stacks. These make ecommerce websites fully optimal and provide the best experience for business owners and clients.

To fully utilize open source tools in your ecommerce stack, you should ensure that your ecommerce platform can be integrated with these tools without the need for hacky workarounds.

Composable ecommerce platforms like Medusa provide a flexible and abstract architecture with a plug-and-play integration system. Developers and businesses using Medusa have full freedom and choosing what tools they use within their tech stack.

You can get started with Medusa by following the quickstart guide.

Should you have any issues or questions related to Medusa, then feel free to reach out to the Medusa team via Discord.