The best Open-Source e-commerce web applications
Tags: Online Shopping, Entrepreneurship, Ecommerce, Online Business, Mongodb

SaaS, open-source, or headless, what are your options?

First of all, you have three options, two of them will be probably recognized by you, but the third one is a pretty modern solution, and for many of you, might be new.

open-source

SaaS

headless

The first type is probably the oldest and most popular type. Usually, it’s free, open-source software, which can be installed on your own hosting. This way is usually preferred by developers and more technical entrepreneurs. It gives you complete freedom in customization and development. However, it requires technical knowledge from owners.

The second type is Software-as-a-Service. It’s a type of software when you “rent” the e-commerce platform. The fact is that SaaS software removes the complexity of running an online business. You don’t have to think about hosting, all technical stuff. It’s all about paying the monthly fee, and that’s all.

The third type — headless. For many developers, it’s the voice of the future. At a glance, headless commerce is an e-commerce platform that stores, manages, and delivers content without a front-end layer. In a nutshell, in a headless e-commerce platform, the “head”, so front-end layer(mostly theme) has been removed. Well, is it good or not? It’s not my business to judge, but it will certainly find its supporters. It certainly has its advantages, but I can’t say it’s the best e-commerce platform type.

Open-source and headless give you unlimited customization and development possibilities. The main benefit is that you are not dependent on any company. You become the “owner” of your store, the source code of it, and every custom implementation that you will make. SaaS businesses may disappear from the market at any time.

Best open-source ASP.NET e-commerce platforms

GrandNode

Overview of GrandNode — an e-commerce platform

GrandNode is an e-commerce platform for developing online stores. It gives you the possibility to create highly advanced, good-looking online stores that have unlimited power of customization.

The store owner challenges

GrandNode was designed to solve the most important business challenges in the world of digital shopping. The goal for us is to provide the platform with:

The high-performance front-end, rendered within milliseconds,

The high-performance application to handle temporary and permanent traffic overloads,

Highly advanced e-commerce platform with unlimited possibilities of integration with existing third-party software

Fast development with the modern codebase

Scalable e-commerce platform to grow with the business

Pros

The biggest advantage of GrandNode is a fact that it has the widest range of functionalities through all e-commerce platforms listed in this report. By the widest range of functionalities, I mean features that are available out of the box, without the need to install external plugins.

Every developer will appreciate the fact that Web API is available as a standard feature of the application. It will ease up the integration process. Implemented Web API allows creating highly advanced workflows.

The whole application is based on Mediator. Fundamentals built on SOLID principles guarantee the highest quality code.

GrandNode achieves the highest ranks in all performance and speed tests available on the internet. You can check the official performance stress test summary.

Advanced logging with Serilog. Possibility to save logs in the File, send them via e-mail, or show in the console.

Technology Stack

Overview of technologies used in GrandNode

Price & Business model

GrandNode is an open-source e-commerce platform, it can be downloaded from GitHub, or an official site and installed on hosting or cloud. GrandNode can be also configured via a preinstalled 1-click app on DigitalOcean cloud.

Typical businesses size

GrandNode can be easily adopted in every size of online business. Thanks to the number of features, it can be a perfect solution for small stores, however, the full potential can be shown only in Medium to the Enterprise. Where you need the highest performance, speed, functionality.

Partners

GrandNode partnership program contains three levels of partnership. Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The main goal of the partnership program is to share know-how and resources that can be used in future projects. The Solution partners program does not include sharing leads, but guarantees that you will receive materials that will help you create new projects. (Like a package of premium plugins with source code).

Marketplace

On the GrandNode marketplace, you will find plugins and premium themes made by GrandNode Team.

Themes: 15

Extensions: 92 (to the newest version)

License

GPL-3.0

Resources

Official site: https://grandnode.com

Forum: https://grandnode.com/boards

GitHub: https://github.com/grandnode/grandnode