Swell — Build a headless ecommerce store in minutes

@aaronoleary That's great feedback...the ability for non-coders to customize their storefront is definitely one of the reasons Shopify has done so well, but it's a tough gap to cross with headless. (We've spent months working on that part alone.) At the moment we're focusing on native integrations, but will eventually have a marketplace for 3rd party ones, along with themes. There's lots of moving parts there, and we want to get features like our CMS interface and multi-market/multi-region done first.

@paper_tokyo Makes total sense. I mean the fee structure alone is a strong sell to me vs shopify, being that there is no fee on sales. Coupled with 3rd party apps down the way could be fantastic also. I do feel there needs to be moderation on that side though, too many spammy less than desirable plugins live on the Shopify marketplace. Excited to see where this goes! Might give it a go for something I'm working on.

@aaronoleary We debated whether or not to add an additional transaction fee and realized most people hate that. Plus it's a pain to implement. We'd rather offer a first-party payment gateway option (like Shopify Payments) with a reduced processing fee down the line. Generally speaking there isn't as much need for a mountain of plugins anyway, because there's more functionality baked-in. Subscriptions, product attributes, unlimited options/variants, custom content fields, complex multi-tier nav menus, editable abandoned cart sequences...lots of things that you'd need apps for with Shopify. When we do get to that point though, we'll be more like the App Store and less like the Play Store in terms of quality control ;)

@thinker Thanks so much Nick - I can confirm Eric is an awesome dude and an amazing co-founder ❤️

@bilater thanks for the question, a bunch of things: • Swell "themes" are full headless apps that work out of the box, and have complete integration with the theme editor/customizer (headless Shopify apps are all custom from scratch, so it's a lot more work to get that off the ground, and you lose connection with the theme editor for admins). • Headless store themes are hosted by Swell out of the box, and can be pushed to Netlify/Vercel/whatever you prefer. That means people starting a new store are using a headless architecture out of the box, and customizing from there is dramatically less effort than building a headless frontend from scratch, which is what people do on Shopify. • Having an integrated theme editor allows a lot of content management to stay within the platform instead of being ejected into another system. You may still want to use Contentful or similar, and those are great products, but our long term goals include bringing most of this functionality into one backend. • The Swell API can be customized programmatically with new data models and custom fields. That means a Swell theme can become any kind of storefront, not just a small catalog. Small/medium catalogs are important too and our first theme starts there, but going forward themes can implement any kind of user experience out of the box that may even require custom data models to work. And they'll work without 3rd party databases or services. This approach opens the gates for theme developers to get way more creative. (As an example, full 2-sided marketplaces like https://www.spinn.com/market have already been developed on Swell, all within one backend. It's significantly simplified development of an otherwise very complex build). • A lot of small things like: Editor supports more complex menu structures (i.e. mega nav), Collection filtering using Attributes, Multi-level categories, Store-wide promotions with multiple discounts (vs just single discount coupons), again all without 3rd party apps. We're aiming at a higher level of native functionality because we think it's a better experience, while apps (we're building an app marketplace likely next year) should be focused on non-core features. Happy to expand on any of these too!

@ericingram Nice nice. That clarifies things thanks :)

@bilater @austin_storm1 You also have to use multiple APIs to achieve less, so that's...not awesome.

@bilater @austin_storm1 😂

@corey_haines Thanks Corey! Huge fan of your work :) Frankly there is a lot of background to how we got here (look forward to telling that story in full), but what you see now is truly the result of an amazing team grinding away for 2 years.

@tinyprojects Thanks so much! We released our first headless theme this week - you can sign up for free to check it out :) Once you create a store, demo data will automagically be added to the shop and you can demo the shopping experience. Most of our brands use the theme as a starting point and customize from there (it's designed to be customized pretty heavily). We have more storefront themes on the way soon for specialized use cases like subscriptions, pre-orders, and try before you buy :)

@tinyprojects Just to add onto what Michelle said: Themes are going to be a main focus for us over the next 1-2 years, while we have work to do on documentation/guides for developers to build their own themes, and a marketplace for users to turn them on easily. Aim is to have dozens of different themes (covering many more business models) in the coming years. Theme developers wanted!

Thnx google "Headless software is software capable of working on a device without a graphical user interface."

@marcelhagedoorn Thanks so much! The front end and back end are completely separated, which means brands get freedom of expression to build whatever and however they want. Swell gives you the same starting point of other well known ecommerce platforms, but also allows for brands to build the exact custom experience they want without being locked into a template. Our headless storefront themes also give users an interface that they can start from easily!

Thnx, I get it now, just didn't know it was called 'Headless'. As long as your target audience knows it, right?

@marcelhagedoorn haha yes - we're finding that the term "headless" is becoming more commonly used as time goes on. Plus, it's a pretty neat word anyway ;)

It's a relatively new term that describes the diversion between ecommerce/cms platforms that 1) have had a hard coupling between the front-end & back-end code, and 2) have completely separated the two, so that developers you hire to customize a website aren't limited in what they can do. The technical definition can be confusing at first, but the long-term benefit is: your ability to continually improve your store/website without hitting a wall imposed by the platform. Not everyone needs to/should worry about these implications early in a business (but if you're successful, you will), which is why we put so much effort into the rest of the platform. You shouldn't have to make that trade-off.

@andreasklinger Thanks so much for the support. I'm happy we became friends a couple years ago - and that you dug what we were working on, and decided to join! :) Yep, that's exactly right -- decoupled frontend and backend making it ideal to be more innovative and creative without hitting ceilings. Super excited for the next chapter of delivering API-first, headless commerce to the world.

@bogdan_ionita Thanks Bogdan! That's actually really insightful. Some of our first merchants was a hardware company launching their first IoT coffee maker and now its a full blown marketplace! Thanks so much for the feedback!

@gauthier_nadaud Most definitely, we know there's a lot of merchants in Europe who need this. We're working on a seamless way to handle multiple regions/markets with unique catalogue content and pricing in several languages. If you can email sales@swell.is with some details on how you want to handle pricing, availability, and payments in different countries that will help us ensure we're covering the most common use cases.

@gauthier_nadaud Great question. By the way, I love our Smiirl :) Swell already has quite a few internationalization/multi-currency features under the hood but there's still work for us to make them more accessible. We're going to land probably exactly where you expect, but briefly, Swell has: • An API for real-time currency conversion that can be used in storefronts • Multi-currency built into the data model (products, orders support designation in any currency independent of the base currency configured for the store) What's on the roadmap: • Multi-language translations for content (there are some 3rd party services you can use in the meantime like localize.js) • Ability to define price lists or rules for pricing in different currencies (as opposed to real-time conversion) • Methods in SwellJS for easily handling display of these elements on the frontend That said, all of this is possible on Swell already with customization

@techwraith Oh man, that means a lot! I'm happy you value great design and great product -- they're only going to be more important as we head into the future. Also love what you're working on with Viable Fit!

@valentin85 Sounds like you have an interesting and complex operation there! It's likely you wouldn't need that many apps or webhooks with Swell, but if you get in touch with us you'll be able to see if the platform is a good fit or not.

@traffric Thanks Ricardo! That is our general philosophy with pricing, though we will be experimenting with different ideas and taking feedback into account. (For example, we just removed the limit on subscription products for all plans.) We are trying to align the tiers with business scale and complexity as much as possible, so that we aren't withholding features that could help merchants grow. For the advanced reporting, it's the kind of things that you'd only use once you're doing a lot of sales anyway, and need detailed breakdowns for your finance team.

@traffric thanks for the feedback!

@yonidejene Great question, and that's why we're working to make the rest of the platform experience amazing for operators (not just devs), so it's easy to get clients on board. We believe you shouldn't have to trade ease of use and features for a headless architecture. If you create a store and dig in I think you'll see what I mean :)

@orksliver So good to hear! Eric and I are always agonizing over the details of API implementation. We have a Segment integration that can forward selected events on system models (you can also trigger webhooks) but I'm guessing you're talking about something client-side? Our storefront SDK https://swell.store/docs/js/ handles data fetching and cart updates, so you could just send events to your preferred analytics platform when those calls return.

@orksliver Love you dude

@dayhaysoos Appreciate that! If you signup you'll see a Sandbox account plan you can use for development only. The caveat is that we can't offer support on sandbox accounts, but like you said we thought it was important to have something for devs to play around with the API and experiment. Having a succinct backend that can solve a wide range of use cases is definitely the foundation of the platform.

@dayhaysoos Ha, I actually came across this a couple weeks back...very cool idea! We want to make https://github.com/swellstores/s... tree-shakable and compatible with React Hooks/Vue Composition API, which will probably end up looking a lot like what you have there. It uses our (undocumented) frontend API so there's no need for another layer to handle privileged data server-side, but you totally could integrate https://github.com/swellstores/s... into a cloud function and go nuts.

@rickbakas Here's a demo running our first storefront theme (built with Nuxt.js): https://origin-demo.swell.store/. You can actually set up this exact demo when you sign up just to give it a spin. To see some live (real) stores, check out our case studies with links at: https://www.swell.is/case-studies/ Thanks Rick, hope you get to try it out soon, we'd love to have you!

@ericingram The pricing for Swell is confusing. Tier 1 is $59 and then the next tier up is $299? That's a dramatic jump in price! I'm looking at the features and failing to see what there's such a steep jump. That alone is enough of a deterrent for me to avoid signing up. Wishing you guys success but I will not be using Swell with the current pricing model.

@zarina_maizel we have a long way to go with themes and the editor, agreed. That said, some of the features you mentioned (subscriptions, requiring the user to sign up to the store, "sale sets" i.e. bundles?), are all going to be a lot easier to get done with Swell and a freelance developer to work with. And you'd be ready to move faster on whatever comes next!