Headless Commerce Builds on Medusa
An off-the-shelf commerce platform hands you its data model, its checkout rules and its release schedule. Medusa v2 is a framework you run yourself, so the parts of your business that do not fit a template get built rather than worked around.
The platform you are on is rented
A hosted commerce platform is a good deal right up to the point where it is not. You get its data model, its checkout rules, its release schedule and its price list, and while your business is shaped like the template, all four are somebody else's problem.
You do not find the ceiling in an error message. You find it when someone in the company starts keeping a spreadsheet beside the shop, or when a rule that is obvious to your sales team turns into a manual step at the end of every day. The workaround is the tell. It means the system cannot be changed, so the work has been built next to it instead.
That is a fine place to be for a while. It stops being fine when the workarounds are load bearing.
Commerce logic as code, not a settings screen
Medusa v2 inverts the arrangement. It is an MIT-licensed framework you run yourself, written in TypeScript on Node.js with PostgreSQL underneath, and its extension points are the point rather than an afterthought.
Custom modules let you model the entities your business actually has. Workflows give you durable steps, so a multi-part process survives a failure halfway through instead of leaving you to work out what did and did not happen. Subscribers react to events, so behaviour hangs off what occurred rather than off a cron job scanning for changes. The admin is extended by plugins rather than by requesting a feature and waiting.
The database is yours as well, which sounds small until the first time somebody asks a question about your own sales data and the answer is a query rather than a support ticket.
The storefront is a separate application
In a headless build the shop your customers see is its own application, talking to the commerce backend over an API. We build those in Next.js, and we are an official Vercel partner, so the deployment side of that is familiar ground.
The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: redesigning the shop becomes a frontend project. New layout, new landing pages, a different structure for how products are browsed, none of it requires touching the commerce layer or negotiating with a theme system. The two halves change on their own schedules.
When headless is the wrong answer
It is not automatically the right one, and we would rather say that here than three meetings in.
Headless costs you a frontend that you build and then own. It costs you the upgrades, the hosting and the operational responsibility that a subscription was quietly covering. If your catalogue is modest, your process is standard and your shop mostly needs to look decent and take payments, a hosted platform will very likely serve you better and cheaper, and the honest recommendation is to stay where you are.
The case for a build is specific. It is strong when your process genuinely does not fit a template, when several systems have to agree with each other around the order, when the frontend is part of how you compete, or when the platform's ceiling has already turned into a permanent manual step somebody performs every week.
We run this stack ourselves
We publish seven Medusa v2 plugins as open source, each with its own documentation, and they are not a portfolio exercise: they are the same code running in our own store. Our platform's subscription and usage billing is built on a Medusa store we host ourselves.
Every one of them keeps the Medusa packages as peer dependencies instead of vendoring the framework, which means a plugin builds against whatever Medusa version a store is already on rather than dictating one. That constraint exists because we have to live with it too.
You can read the code and the documentation before you commission anything. The plugin index is at /docs/medusa-plugins, and being able to inspect the work first is a reasonable thing to expect.
What you get
A Medusa v2 backend on your own infrastructure
Node.js and TypeScript on top of PostgreSQL, running where you choose, with the code and the database in your accounts rather than behind somebody else's admin login.
A data model that matches how you actually sell
Custom modules for the entities your business has and the platform template does not, so the difficult part of your catalogue stops living in a spreadsheet next to the shop.
A storefront in Next.js
A separate application talking to the commerce API, which makes a redesign a frontend project rather than a replatform and stops the shop being hostage to a theme system.
Post-purchase logic written as code
The steps that follow an order expressed as workflows with durable steps and as subscribers on events, instead of a settings screen with a ceiling you find by hitting it.
An admin your team can actually work in
The Medusa admin extended with the screens and columns your operation needs, so the daily work does not quietly migrate into exports and shared spreadsheets.
Deployment, environments and handover
A staging environment, a repeatable deploy and documentation specific enough that another team could take the project over. A system you cannot hand over is a system you rent from us.
How we work
- 01
Start with the rule that does not fit
The reason to leave a hosted platform is usually one specific process it will not accept. We want that one first, because if it turns out to be configurable where you already are, the honest recommendation is to stay.
- 02
Decide what a product and an order are here
What counts as a product, what counts as a variant, what has to be true at the moment an order is accepted. These are business decisions and they are much cheaper to settle before the code than after it.
- 03
Build the backend and the storefront in parallel
They are two separate applications by design, built against an API agreed up front, so frontend work is not sitting idle waiting for the commerce layer to be finished.
- 04
Run the new system beside the old one
Traffic moves when the catalogue, the prices and the orders agree across both, not on a date picked in advance. Comparison comes before anything starts depending on the new system.
- 05
Hand over the keys
Repository, infrastructure, admin access and the documentation to go with them. The framework is MIT-licensed and the database is yours, so continuing without us has to be a genuine option.
Tools and technology
Where a solid open-source tool exists, we choose it over a closed one. No lock-in to a single vendor, and costs you can actually predict.
- Medusa v2
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Next.js
- React
- Vercel
- Stripe
- Docker
- GitHub Actions
Frequently asked questions
More services in this category
Marketplace Integrations for Allegro
Selling on Allegro next to your own shop usually means one catalogue kept in two places and a spreadsheet holding them together. The offers, the stock and the orders can live in the same admin as everything else instead.
Pricing Automation Across Currencies
Foreign currency prices that recalculate themselves every day from the Narodowy Bank Polski rate, and a purchase cost sitting next to every product, so margin is a number in the admin rather than something rebuilt in a spreadsheet at month end.
Invoicing and KSeF Compliance for Online Stores
Invoicing is the part of a shop where a plausible guess is worse than no answer at all. The pipeline issues what is clearly issuable, files what the law says must be filed, and hands everything else to a human with the reason attached.
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