Front-Commerce is a Ready-to-use storefront for headless commerce and a French tech solution created for Magento2 stores.
History
The project was initiated by Toulouse-based Web engineering agency Occitech, a 13-year-old company that has been working on Magento based projects since 2010. Through their various projects, Occitech noticed several things during that period:
- E-commerce solutions were behind technology on the frontend part
- Monolithic architecture hindered innovation
- Integrating multiple services together were complicated
- Microservices, APIs and headless solutions were emerging but expensive to implement
Occitech, therefore chose not to use the Magento template engine, which was too restrictive, and decided to develop a storefront solution that makes it easier to build a unique user experience. This would lay the groundwork for the integration of new uses (Mobile, AI, VR , chatbots, …).
To facilitate both the UX and the developer experience, best practices are used in Front-Commerce. The solution offers a modular theme inspired by the Atomic Design approach and provides a default Design System. This greatly enhances the creation and maintenance of the theme throughout its lifecycle.
E-shops in production since early 2018
Since early 2018, several e-shops have been put into production with Front-Commerce.
Some of them are the three shops of La Chaine Thermale du Soleil. Indeed, Occitech started by working on the gift shop (Front-Commerce and Magento 2). Convinced by the quality of the solution, they have entrusted them with the implementation of their main sites: La Chaine Thermale du Soleil and Compagnie des Spas, a multi-store …. WITHOUT Magento.
La Chaine Thermale is a very well known brand and with the increased traffic brought due to TV advertising, we see that Front Commerce can easily handle significant loads of traffic.
Since 2018, Front-Commerce technical support team has been accompanying its customers. At the same time as they have been adding new functionalities to the Front-Commerce and evolving all the Javascript slacks.
Front commerce now supports Magento 1
When the announcement was made that support for Magento 1 will end in June 2020, there were few alternatives for the concerned e-merchants. There was basically no choice: migrate … or migrate!
But in fact, Magento1 is not dead and the Magento LTS community has a plan that gives a second life to this version of Magento. That’s why Front-Commerce supports OpenMage by becoming a partner.
On one side, one of the earliest solution’s partners PH2M is currently working on making Magento 1 a headless solution compatible with Front-Commerce’s GraphQL middleware.
And on the other hand, OpenMage announces the compatibility of Front-Commerce with Magento LTS.
Being able to implement Front-Commerce on existing shops offers the e-merchants a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief.
They will be able to continue to make changes by taking advantage of the technological gains and contributions of the PWA, and also get the corrective and evolutionary maintenance of Front Commerces’ support.
One does not mean the other. At any point in time magento1 users can decide to migrate to Magento2. All that has been developed with Front-Commerce is compatible and reusable.
Today, Front-commerce is working with its partners to set up new stores.
Public and qualitative documentation
Everybody knows the importance of quality documentation for developers. That’s why Front-Commerce chose to make its documentation public so that you can judge the quality and functionality of the solution.
Well supplied, they enrich the Front-Commerce documentation on a daily basis and make sure that you understand and apply all the new features brought by the new versions of Front-Commerce.
The Developer experience is at the heart of the vision, so feel free to browse the dedicated site for more information: https://developers.front-commerce.com/
Conclusion
The Front-Commerce ready-to-use storefront for headless commerce, a pioneer among frontend solutions, enters a period of growth. Today, we are actively seeking new partner agencies as well as technical partnerships. So get in touch with us to discuss your interest, your feelings or get answers to any questions you may have. We are listening to you 🙂.