Comparing the best front-ends for headless commerce
Every e-commerce has different technological needs, often influenced by their teams and customers. When it comes to choosing a storefront solution for your online store, there’s a lot to think about. Framework, provider, features ..
We’ve put together the comparison chart below in order to outline the technical differences between some of the top e-commerce front-end providers available today. And ultimately help inform you in your choice.
Download the PDF version of the comparison (it’s prettier 😉)
Headless Front-End Comparison
as of 15/11/2022
If you’re on mobile, scroll right to view all columns, or download the PDF version ↑
| Category | Sub-category | PWA Studio | Vue Storefront | Front-Commerce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
General |
Created | June 2018 | November 2017 | 2015 |
| Last Version | 12.6.0 | 2.7.2 | 2.19 | |
| Software Development Mode | OpenSource | OpenSource | Proprietary | |
| Provider | Adobe | Vue Storefront | Front-Commerce | |
| Agnostic | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| HQ | USA | USA & Poland | France | |
| Frontend Demo | veniapwa | demo.vuestorefront.io | Demo | |
| Link to | GitHub | GitHub | GitHub | |
| Pricing | Included in Magento | Free version and Enterprise version | Pricing | |
Integrations |
Ecommerce connector | Magento 2.3+ | BigCommerce Commercetools Magento 2 OS Odoo SAP Salesforce Commerce Cloud Shopify Shopware Spree Sylius Vendure |
Magento 1 (CE, EE) Magento 2 (OS) Adobe Commerce B2B BigCommerce Oro Proximis |
| CMS | M2 CMS API / Page Builder | Amplience Bloomreach Content Contentful Contentstack LexasCMS Sanity Storyblok |
Magento CMS API WordPress Prismic Contentful |
|
| Search | ElasticSearch | Algolia Bloomreach Discovery Constructor.io |
Algolia Attraqt ElasticSearch Magento 2 Native search (ElasticSuite) |
|
| Payments | Check MO MultiSafepay Paypal (Braintree) Stripe |
Adyen Apple Pay Braintree Checkout.com G Pay Klarna Mollie Paypal Stripe |
Adyen Affirm BuyBox HiPay LYRA / Payzen Monext Online (Payline) Ogone Payment on account B2B Paypal Stripe |
|
| Tracking | Google Tag Manager | Vue Analytics Google Tag Manager |
Google Analytics 4 Matomo |
|
Tech |
Release pace | Minor version every 6-10 weeks | Releases undated | Minor version every 6 weeks |
| Frontend CodeBase | React.js | Vue.js | React.js | |
| Backend codebase | Redux | NodeJS | NodeJS | |
| Middleware | GraphQL | GraphQL | GraphQL | |
Cloud hosting solution |
In-house Cloud hosting solution | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| CDN | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| 24/7 Monitoring | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Continuous deployment | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Hosted in | ❌ | Unknown | France | |
| Autoscaling | ❌ | Unknown | ✔️ | |
| Problem Source Identification | ❌ | Unknown | ✔️ (For all Front-Commerce and connected third-party issues) |
|
Other |
Coverage of features | Incomplete | Incomplete | Covers 100% of backend solution features (e-com, CMS, search, …) even B2B |
| i18n | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Multi-Websites | ✔️ | ✔️ (beta) | ✔️ | |
| Checkout | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Offline Support | ✔️via Workbox | ✔️Full | ✔️ Basic |