eCommerce technology & platform guide
The technology matters. How it fits together matters more.
eCommerce businesses accumulate software quickly. A platform may be excellent at what it does and still be the wrong choice for a particular business, process or technology stack.
We work across strategy, implementation and operations, so our perspective on software starts with a simple question: what problem are we trying to solve?
- 15 platforms
- Organised by function
- Written for operators
How to read this
Every page here answers the same six questions, including the two most software guides skip.
- 01What the platform actually does
- 02Where it sits in the stack
- 03When we'd look at it
- 04When we'd question it
- 05What to answer before implementing
- 06What we think, plainly
Everything else on this page is a tool we have implemented, supported or evaluated for merchants, and some of those links are referral links. Shopify sits apart: it is the platform we specialize in, and the Plus Partner designation is a formal recognition by Shopify rather than a commercial arrangement.
The shape of a stack
Software decisions are easier once you know which stage of the chain owns the problem.
- Storefront
- Customer
- CRM & Retention
- Operations
- Fulfillment
- Reporting
Most stack problems we're called into are not a missing tool. They're two systems that both believe they own the same stage.
A good platform doesn’t eliminate the need for a good operating model.
Platform directory
Grouped by the job, not by the logo.
Commerce Platform
The system that owns the transaction. Everything else in the stack either feeds it or reads from it.
Email, CRM & Retention
Where owned audience, lifecycle messaging and recurring revenue live. The most commonly over-tooled part of the stack.
Customer Experience & Social Proof
Support, reviews and post-purchase communication — the systems shoppers judge you by before and after they buy.
Merchandising & Conversion
Tools that change what a shopper sees and prove whether the change was worth making.
Operations, Inventory & Finance
Where an eCommerce business stops being a website and starts being an operation.
Marketing & Advertising
Paid media systems that only pay off when the underlying economics and data are already trustworthy.
Data, Compliance & Recovery
Unglamorous infrastructure. Nobody notices it until the day it would have mattered.
Business & Ecosystem
Platforms that sit around the store rather than inside it — content, acquisition and exit.
On the word “partner”
These are platforms we work with, implement, integrate or recommend where they fit. Where a referral relationship exists, it is disclosed on the page. We don’t claim certified, premier or preferred status anywhere on this site unless the vendor has formally awarded it.
A platform’s presence in this directory is not a recommendation for your business. Several of these pages spend as much space on when not to buy the software as on when to buy it, which is the honest way to write them.
Not sure which technology belongs in your stack?
Software decisions affect more than software. We can help evaluate the process, architecture and operating requirements before another platform gets added.