Discover the true costs of ecommerce platforms in our free guide.
See how industry leaders succeed with Virto.
Boost ecommerce with advanced marketing.
“Composable commerce is like building with LEGO bricks.” Well, not necessarily. However, many platform vendors seek to convince us of that. But true composability shouldn’t limit you to predefined shapes, models, and strict manuals. It’s about architectural freedom and flexibility to shape your commerce experience.
Virto Commerce is an example of a truly composable ecommerce platform that leverages the power of PaaS and combines both platform and deployment composability. Think 3D printing with the freedom to define your architectural design rather than a LEGO set with predetermined templates.
This article is part of a deep dive into commerce composability. We’ll explore the differences between composable, headless, and legacy systems, and see what makes a platform composable.
Composable commerce is a modern approach to building digital commerce solutions where each part of the system is modular. It’s a relatively new ecommerce term that was first introduced in the 2020s.
Composability principles suggest that instead of relying on a single, one-size-fits-all platform that tries to cater to everyone, businesses can select and integrate best-in-class components such as search, catalog, checkout, CMS, PIM, and more to create a custom commerce stack tailored to specific business needs.
Here’s the official definition of commerce composability by Gartner:
A composable digital business applies the core principles of composability (modularity, autonomy, orchestration, and discovery) to the foundations of its business architecture (the business model, enterprise operations and strategy) in order to master the risk of change and reach untapped business value.
According to Gartner, everything can be seen as modular and changeable in composable ecommerce. In modern commerce, change is presented as an essential tool, no longer a threat or burden, and the ability to quickly respond to changing market conditions is seen as a major business advantage.
Seven composable thinking principles
Source: Gartner
“Don’t fix what ain’t broke” no longer applies in the digital realm. Everything that’s not changeable is a business or technical “debt” that can become a serious obstacle to the vitality of the organization that’s facing market disruptions.
If you’re interested in learning more about the “cost of innovation” or “cost of change,” we have an in-depth analysis of the topic in this article.
With legacy monolithic systems, all components of an ecommerce solution are tightly connected, including backend and frontend, causing any backend modifications to impact the entire solution. This often leads to slow performance, integration challenges, and security vulnerabilities.
In a headless system, the frontend is completely decoupled from the backend logic. The frontend communicates with the backend via an API, and multiple frontends (customer-facing or admin frontends, B2B portals, mobile apps, and more) can be easily added to the platform via APIs. Although headless is among the four core MACH principles, merely adhering to the formal definition of “headless” doesn’t guarantee high speed and efficiency in creating and modifying frontend channels.
With a composable approach, on the other hand, every piece of an ecommerce solution—the user interface or frontend, business logic, database interactions, and server-side applications, as well as every functioning module—is independent of each other. This is called platform composability.
Monolithic
|
Headless
|
Composable
|
---|---|---|
Every piece of an ecommerce system is tightly coupled.
|
Backend decoupled from frontend.
|
Fully modular, every component decoupled.
|
In this case, the main difference between composable commerce vs. headless can be summed up as follows: every composable solution is headless, but not every headless solution is composable.
Interestingly, Gartner positions traditional, or so-called static SaaS platform vendors, as “legacy.” This could refer to vendors that aren’t API-first or fully composable.
For a commerce platform to be truly composable, it must combine these characteristics:
Unlike one-size-fits-all legacy or traditional monolithic platforms, composable commerce platforms use the best-for-me approach when it comes to ecommerce architecture. It means enterprises don’t solely rely on the fixed set of out-of-the-box features or integrations a platform vendor provides. They can select, scale, and potentially repurpose any element of their solution to best meet their specific business model needs.
This unprecedented level of flexibility that composable commerce offers comes in especially handy for enterprises operating in the complex B2B business environment, where complex data workflows, role-based access control, contract-based catalogs, and pricing rules can make or break a business.
Most modern “composable” commerce platforms on the market follow the principles of platform composability described above. Most of them are, indeed, API-first, cloud-native, and PBC-driven, with a strong focus on platform modularity. However, when it comes to true commerce composability that empowers large enterprises, one of the crucial ingredients is usually missing: deployment composability.
Deployment composability means your business can choose how and where to run every piece of your commerce, with full control over deployment and hosting. That might be in a private cloud, the vendor’s managed cloud, a hybrid setup, or even fully on-premises, depending on your business requirements.
In a deployment-composable platform, infrastructures are fully decoupled from one another—backend, business logic, frontend—and each infrastructure can be deployed and hosted separately as well.
Deployment Composability Model: Virto Commerce example
The ability to host frontend apps, admin services, and backend processing independently, in different regions or clouds, is crucial for regulatory compliance and performance optimization of large enterprises.
HEINEKEN is a great example of composable commerce for B2B. For instance, HEINEKEN, like many other global companies, needed to host frontend applications close to their B2B customers in the APAC region for low latency and compliance with local laws, while keeping backend services in a centralized, highly available cloud environment in Europe. Virto Commerce gave the company the much-needed independence and freedom to place workloads exactly where they make the most sense.
Such decentralized deployment with centralized governance allows the deployment of microservices per business unit, product line, or market.
Enterprises adopting a composable approach to their ecommerce solutions see the following benefits for their ecommerce business:
Truly composable commerce enables you to stop treating your ecommerce solution as “rented” software to maintain and start treating it as a strategic asset you own and together evolve with.
As powerful as composable commerce is, the transition from legacy systems to composable solutions isn’t without hurdles. It demands new ways of thinking, organizing, and operating.
These challenges do require preparation, but shouldn’t scare you away. With Virto Commerce and the Virto Guarantee approach, replatforming can be a smooth process supported by a proactive vendor.
The benefits of composable commerce are real, but they’re unlocked only through deliberate planning, the right partner ecosystem, and a willingness to evolve both technology and process.
Composable commerce isn’t the universal answer for every ecommerce business, but it’s the right answer for many large enterprises facing global scaling, complex commerce models, or market disruptions by competitors.
Here are a few questions to answer before migrating to composable commerce:
If you nodded “yes” to at least two of the above, composable commerce can be the answer. It can provide the control, speed, and flexibility you need to grow.
However, a composable commerce solution may not be the right fit if:
In these cases, an all-in-one solution might serve you better in the short term. But keep in mind—even small brands grow. Investing early in a scalable, modular foundation can save years of accumulated technical debt and significantly reduce your overall TCO.
For large enterprises, the question isn’t if you’ll need it—it’s when. The sooner you prepare, the more competitive advantage you can gain.
Many platform vendors describe composable commerce as building with LEGO bricks. But that metaphor overlooks the big picture.
LEGO sets come with predefined shapes and strict manuals. Most users build exactly what’s pictured on the box. Have you tried building the LEGO’s “Back to the Future Time Machine”? One single misstep could lead to disassembling the structure and building from the ground up again. That’s how most “composable” platforms work today. They offer modules, but only within the constraints of their ecosystem.
True composability is about building and having full ownership of something entirely your own: deployment, hosting, custom logic, and integration flows tailored to your business. A 3D printer of the ecommerce world, if you may.
Virto’s Commerce Innovation Platform goes beyond the LEGO-style composability that most vendors offer. Our platform was built from the ground up with composability at every layer, including deployment composability.
One of the key differentiators of Virto Commerce is its PaaS delivery and deployment composability. Unlike SaaS platforms, Virto enables access to the platform’s backend.
Additionally, Virto Commerce allows businesses to break their solution into independently hosted and deployed components based on regions, expected load, or usage, for performance optimization.
Here’s an example of how this separation of components can look like:
Each of these environments can scale independently, be maintained separately, and even be hosted in different geographic locations and clouds. This means:
No cross-impact from traffic spikes: A promotional surge in your storefront won’t slow down admin or backend operations.
Better compliance and performance: Store sensitive customer data in one region, if required, and run business processes in another.
Unlimited scaling: Add or duplicate environments as needed (for testing or regional distribution).
Seamless updates and maintenance: Update one module or component without disrupting others, making it easier to innovate without downtime.
Cloud-agnostic flexibility: Host any part of your solution anywhere (Virto Cloud, your private cloud, or on-premises) on your terms.
This level of granularity and control is what true composability looks like. With a leader in composable commerce, Virto Commerce, you’re getting the best of both worlds: you can quickly leverage 80+ out-of-the-box PBCs and customize a commerce infrastructure that fits your exact vision and evolves with your business.
Since 2018, Virto Commerce has powered HEINEKEN’s digital transformation, now spanning across 25+ countries. Virto’s composable architecture became the foundation of HEINEKEN’s mobile-first, region-specific B2B solution, and helped the company scale in the APAC region at an accelerated pace. Thanks to the composable nature of Virto’s platform, each new localized market can be launched as a tailored version of the standardized core at just 35% of the cost of the original implementation.
Building on the success of its initial ecommerce rollout, this legendary brewer joined forces with Virto Commerce for a major upgrade to its Digital Order Transfer (DOT) platform in 2025.
The upgrade delivered significant improvements:
Bosch and Virto Commerce’s collaboration is also a long-standing one. Together, we built and scaled a digital loyalty portal that now serves over 150,000 registered users, with more than 210,000 orders fulfilled across different European countries. The solution supports a points-based rewards model with localized conversion factors and custom order-splitting logic for multi-provider fulfillment.
What started as a fragmented network of local loyalty programs has evolved into a unified, centrally governed, API-driven, composable commerce platform with:
Europe’s leading distributor of American auto parts and a General Motors subsidiary launched distinct yet complementary webstores—B2B and B2C marketplaces—with Virto Commerce. Thanks to Virto’s composable ecommerce platform, the client could launch a multi-storefront solution supporting different business models, multiple languages and currencies, all managed via a single core system.
Now, the solution handles an expansive catalog of over 4 million products, providing a smooth shopping experience to wholesale and B2C buyers across 30 countries, with each business unit adopting new features and integrations without disrupting others.
Composable commerce is a modern approach to ecommerce, and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes an industry standard for all commerce platforms. Rather than adopting a LEGO-like approach to limited composability, Virto Commerce offers true composability at every layer. With its cloud-agnostic PaaS platform, you can separate, host, and scale every infrastructure—backend, business, frontend—independently, not being tied to one composable commerce technology or cloud provider.
Ready to adopt composability for your enterprise?