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Swell is the most powerful headless ecommerce platform for brands, startups, and agencies. Build marketplaces, take pre-orders, sell subscriptions, B2B, wholesale and enterprise - natively! No 3rd party apps needed. Truly headless architecture and an API-first approach allows you to sell as creatively as you imagine. Launch fast with headless themes, scale with a fully customizable solution. Deploy faster with a git workflow, and use JAMSTACK tech to create performant frontends.
Provider
Swell
Located In
United States
Foundation
2015
Open API
Yes
Deployment
Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Training
In Person, Documentation, Live Online
Support
Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, 24/7 (Live rep)
Developers, start-ups, and enterprises alike, searching for a powerful headless commerce solution.
Content Source: Swell
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Swell Reviews
"Perfect for setting up a marketplace "
Overall: I find that a lot of platforms have been designed for non-technical or developer users in mind, but as a developer, I normally prefer to build out fully customized solutions from scratch. But for this particular project I was looking to test out a marketplace so I didn't want to invest significant time and resource into it if there was an easier option. There pretty much aren't many options out there that offer a powerful marketplace solution, without having to use 3rd party apps or plugins. Swell offered a native solution which is why I initially got started.
Pros: Having the headless theme was really useful because it meant I saved resources in having to hire a designer (which can also get really pricey really quickly). All the pre-settings were really well set up. It also meant I didn't have to build the front-end from scratch which saved me at least a few weeks of development time. We were able to launch pretty quickly, much sooner than I expected. I had initially factored a few months into the plan but we got Swell working for us in under a month. A huge plus is that Swell lets you use the latest tech instead of running on frameworks from 20 years ago. It's pretty good to be able to deploy on Netlify and Heroku.
Cons: Multi-currency is key, but I can see that's already on the product roadmap.
Vendor Response
"Excellent Headless Option"
Overall: - Would recommend it to anyone building a B2B marketplace, it gives you the flexibility of a custom platform without having to actually build from the ground up.
Pros: - Powerful solution for B2B marketplace selling scientific equipment. - Unbeatable price compared to other expensive enterprise ecommerce software on the market. - Strong agency partnership network with deep expertise - Swell was able to bring on the right agency partners for us to execute the project. Being able to draw out a roadmap to launch, flag out the key milestones and challenges and putting together the plan to get things done, was really important for us. In the end we were able to build out the full marketplace to spec and launch in under 3 months, much sooner than what we initially expected. - Can be managed with a smaller development team, unlike Magento or SAP Hybris, we didn't need an entire team of devs on hand to continuously maintain and operate the solution. - Flexible solution, the architecture of Swell lets you customize the platform exactly to your needs. - Can also be easily operated by business dev / sales / marketing / finance without needing to go through the development team all the time.
Cons: Really none at all. This solution has far outperformed my expectations, it has been a huge bang for the buck, and the team behind the product has been helpful, responsive, and ingenious solving our problems thus far.
Vendor Response
"Very complacent support"
Pros: Looks good in theory but nothing works...
Cons: Very complacent support who doesn't take responsibility or show any proactivity. I've been struggling with trying to create an account since the past 2 FREAKING months!
"Best headless software out there"
Overall: You can tell this software has been designed by people who really care about the product - the feature set is really strong, the headless architecture is really flexible and overall, the entire software is really easy-to-use.
Pros: - We chose this project because we needed to sell subscriptions with flexibility of payment gateways e.g. I didn't want to be locked into one payment provider. - Swell also lets you build out marketplaces, pre-orders so we would be able to adapt to however we wanted to sell our products in the future. - We were aiming for a headless solution and a big plus of this one is that it comes with a headless theme - so we didn't have to build the front-end from scratch
Cons: I'd love to have multi-language and multi-currency, but their team has just told me that they're likely releasing it in Feb 2021 anyway so this will be a big pain point solved.
Vendor Response
"Innovative headless ecommerce for developers"
Overall: I would normally only recommend headless commerce to bigger clients as you need deep pockets to afford. Only well-backed startups or big companies can justify the price tag for the superior online experience. What I really love about Swell is that it lets you build a headless store out of the box. Plus, any developer after can build on it. Now I can afford to build headless solutions for a wide range of clients and know that it will fit well within their price range.
Pros: As an ecommerce developer, I actually have the choice to use a git-based workflow to deploy on Swell's hosting, or can also choose to use a CDN backed provider like Netlify or Vercel. There's a headless theme powered by Nuxt and Vue, which is a big differentiator as other headless solutions require you to develop the front-end solution from the ground up. Also, a key constraint I often encounter in Shopify or BigCommerce are product variant limitations, especially dealing with large ecommerce stores. With Swell, I can create unlimited product variants and attributes. This is a truly headless solution.
Cons: A stronger CMS, customer portal and multi-language solution.
Vendor Response
