commercetools Pricing: Why commercetools May Eventually Lower Your TCO

Investing in a new ecommerce platform technology like commercetools, is like buying a new car — it’s never a one-time payment. Businesses should understand that at some point, the services, just like vehicles, will require maintenance or a total makeover to provide the expected performance.

While you may choose the ecommerce software products based on the upfront cost you’re going to spend, you should also consider the future spendings, making up a total cost of ownership (TCO). And this is where commercetools provides more freedom and visibility into what their services could cost you now and later.

Since commercetools follows the MACH (Microservice-based, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) composable architecture approach, it allows you to use — and pay for! — only those solutions that are essential for your business. 

As a certified commercetools development company, Elogic will show you how this approach can be a game-changer, especially for businesses planning to optimize their expenses continuously. But before that, let’s see what’s so special about commercetools pricing and why it may appear less attractive than its competitors’ at first glance.

commercetools Pricing Model

One of the major commercetools benefits and distinctive features is that it charges an annual fee and offers various third-party services on a pay-as-you-use basis. The annual fee is proportional to your revenue rate, so the commercetools price for your business will depend on your annual income. This approach is very different from the pricing models of commercetools alternatives. 

Read more: How Much Ecommerce Website Costs: Set the Right Budget for Your Project 

For example, Salesforce charges per user, Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) has fixed upfront costs, and Shopify offers a low entry fee which grows exponentially if you try to scale. In most of these cases, if you need to switch to a more feature-packed plan, you will need to pay extra for upgrades, which is not what awaits you with commercetools.

But we understand that you want to see a real approximate price tag for commercetools services for your business. Here’s an example of an annual fee based on the project we worked on.

If your company shows its highest annual revenue around $100,000,000, you will pay $120,000 in annual license fees to commercetools. But you’ll also need to keep in mind other expenses: any third-party integrations (like license fees for your ERP or CRM) or development team should be included in your budget.

Small or mid-sized businesses will see it as some hefty check to pay; but it can be a lifesaver for enterprise-level companies. Especially those looking for agility and scalability yet still investing in legacy architecture maintenance. Let’s see how commercetools can lower the total costs of ownership in the long run and how your business will benefit from replatforming to commercetools. 

Who Will Benefit From commercetools? Top Reasons to Replatform and Optimize Your Costs

As ecommerce entrepreneurs, you know that tech infrastructure requires a lot of expenses. Lowering the TCO for software products, alongside speeding up time-to-market and delivering digital outcomes, is the top goal for ecommerce owners. Most likely, that’s your goal, too. How can you achieve it?

According to recent Gartner research, by 2024, the adoption of a composable application architecture will decrease the IT cost of managing SAAS operations by 50%. Since commercetools offers a composable, pay-as-you-use approach, migrating to this platform will reduce your tech management expenses. But that’s not the only impact of commercetools platform on your business. 

Below we’ve listed a few most common issues ecommerce businesses face and ways in which migrating to commercetools will help solve them.

Platform upgrades drain your budget

The cost of many ecommerce platform plans includes a specific feature set businesses can use without spending extra money. They also offer add-ons and extensions that you will need to budget for in your ecommerce website development project plan.

As your business evolves, your needs will change, and you might need an upgrade of certain features (like a number of users or storage) that are only available in the next tier plan. Eventually, you risk spending more time and money for the whole system upgrade to get the features you need now.

commercetools allows you to choose the needed functionality and pay for extra resources rather than unnecessary features that come with a new plan. This will help you save money, keep your ecommerce architecture neat and clean, optimize resource usage, and improve performance.

Your system is too bulky

Inflexible architecture might cause performance bottlenecks, system downtime, and website unresponsiveness. This wreaks havoc across your teams and prevents customers from shopping at your web store. Moreover, the system that doesn’t support flexible API-first integrations robs both sides of the ecommerce journey of a smooth experience with the brand.

commercetools takes a modern approach toward system architecture. Because it’s API-first and cloud-native, it gives you the agility to innovate and iterate without interrupting your clients’ shopping experiences. Plus, your team can focus on specific aspects of commercetools development without shutting down the whole system, which often happens with monolithic architectures.

Your time-to-market is slow

Time-consuming, complex changes in the backend are among the major reasons businesses can’t pull off a marketing campaign quickly and generate extra revenue. 

With a headless commerce tool, your team can customize the storefront within an hour without needing the help of the tech department. This way, you can always initiate flash sales and short-term promo campaigns. The best part? Your system will easily handle the fluctuating volume of customers and be up and ready for customization.

Read more: Best Headless Ecommerce Platform — Full Guide 

Another benefit of a flexible architecture is adapting to customer demands regarding functionality and performance. For example, if you sell makeup products, clothes, or accessories, a virtual try-on is a must-have to keep up with competitors’ websites. 

Lots of global brands use augmented reality (AR) in ecommerce, and Cione, Spanish glassware brand, isn’t an exception. Their commercetools website offers online shoppers an instant try-on of the eyeglasses and frames, so the customers can see how a particular shape will look on their faces without going to the actual store. That’s how the brand increases the chances of online purchases and boosts customer loyalty.

Your employees spend too much time on manual tasks

Automating things should be a priority for your business if you want to cut costs on manual work and employ fewer developers. The calculation is simple: the less manual work, the fewer people needed, and the less money you spend on salaries. Real-time inventory updates, customer segmentation, and data mapping — these are just a few features where automation is needed to streamline the processes and make them error-free. 

Read more: 20 Best eCommerce Tools to Boost Your Online Business 

With commercetools, you can boost your ecommerce software with extensions that eliminate the need for human intervention. You can automate order management flow, database indexes, ML-based recommendations, fraudulent behavior recognition, and more.

Plenty of B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses of various sizes are already improving their performance while saving money. Check out one of the enterprise cases that the Elogic team has recently worked on.  

commercetools for Enterprises: How an Industrial Manufacturer Saved Time and Costs

The commercetools enterprise price, just like the price for any other business, will depend on the generated revenue, so the more money the company makes, the higher the price for the services will be. Our client, a German B2B industrial automation brand, has decided to invest in microservices architecture, understanding that higher costs now will eventually reduce future scaling expenses and save time on expanding to other markets.

Before Elogic started commercetools implementation, the Client’s online store had several issues that drained the budget and negatively influenced the business performance:

• Bulky architecture that was costly to maintain and impossible to scale without a heavy upfront investment
• Lack of digital space that would bring the teams and clients together
• Reliance on paper-based communication and spreadsheets
• Complex customer journey mapping that prevented new clients from onboarding fast

After a few strategic sessions with the Elogic consultants, the company agreed to quit using its monolithic legacy system and switch to a microservice-based commercetools architecture. It allowed our engineers to integrate the ERP solutions and improve the website design, which provided more visibility and control over the UI/UX.  Moreover, this solution allowed automatic upgrading so the Client’s platform could perform best at any given time.

Thanks to the composable commercetools solution, the company reduced its TCO by 25%. Plus, ‌improved UX/UI increased the conversion rate by 30%.

Afterthought

Optimizing business operation costs is what companies will strive for in the years to come.

Fortunately, the technologies allow enterprises to cut their TCO and have the highest ROI. commercetools offers a composable ecommerce platform for businesses of any size that will help them eliminate idle services, decrease tech spendings for deployment and maintenance, and eliminate the need for manual work. 

Elogic is your trusted commercetools partner always ready to help you choose and integrate solutions that yield the highest ROI. If you want to know how much you can save by switching to headless commerce, our experienced consultants will guide you through the commercetools pricing, evaluate your current ecommerce architecture, and draw up a plan on how you can improve your platform’s performance and future-proof it.