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Legacy digital commerce architectures are no longer sustainable in today’s commerce arena. With every component tightly integrated into a monolithic architecture, a legacy platform’s inflexibility, low reliability, and high maintenance costs make it nearly impossible for a merchant to test and roll out commerce capabilities in sync with consumer expectations.

To address these limitations, many merchants have shifted toward a more flexible commerce architecture — like headless commerce. This structure decouples the front-end presentation of a merchant’s storefront from back-end services like inventory management and payment processing. Headless commerce enables merchants to independently evolve and scale each element of their infrastructure, which reduces risk during system updates and supports the creation of unique customer experiences and functionalities.

Platforms that support headless commerce are API-first, meaning they can facilitate seamless transactions across various customer touchpoints (e.g., desktop, mobile, social, and IoT). However, today’s dynamic digital commerce landscape often demands even more flexibility and customization. This is where composable commerce comes into play.

Composable commerce elevates the concept of headless commerce by enhancing flexibility and adaptability. It not only decouples the front end from the back end, as is the case with headless, but it also separates every element of the commerce architecture, including content management, site search, and personalization. This eliminates vendor lock-in and enables retailers to integrate best-of-breed applications for any functionality.

As a result, merchants gain the flexibility to update individual components without risking disruption to the entire business, allowing them to adapt swiftly to market changes and innovate at scale. But is there such a thing as too much freedom and flexibility when it comes to customization?

Three hidden pitfalls of unlimited freedom