Shopify Releases Commerce Components: Mostly About Checkout Now, But Gives It a Placeholder in Composable Future

Shopify for the past two years has been pursuing an "Everything, everywhere all at once" strategy: simple for entrepreneurs, configurable for growing stores, and ... Plus, is well Plus. I mean, it is more, but historically has been not THAT much more than standard Shopify.

If you ask most people why they choose Plus, 9 out of 10 people I talk to answer Dedicated "Account management".

Shopify Commerce Components slots in ... well, somewhere in here, but is designed for this audience above Shopify's Plus offering (from what I can tell).

A few takes:

* In true Shopify form, a lot of this is marketing -- repackaging existing things they have like Hydrogen, along with a new set of non-rate limited APIs.

* This is essential for their (new) global consulting partners like Accenture (TheStable) and Deloitte. Or else, they probably wouldn't be able to seriously develop these partners. The standard Shopify playbook for the last 5 years of continually declining agency project sizes doesn't fly in the Enterprise customization world.

* BTW: CommerceTools vs Commerce Components vs Headless vs Composable vs MACH? Not confusing at all!

* This reminds me somewhat of Microsoft's transition from saying "everything needs to be on our platform" to "we are now in a cloud-first, mobile-first world."

* By far, Shopify's biggest advantage in this space is their checkout which is world-class. And they know it given their focus in their release on checkout. In some ways this is needed to make Shopify Checkout relevant to this up-market segment and to stop people from moving on from Shopify when they outgrow other parts of the stack. Enterprises aren't looking for one platform, they are looking for best in class across a range of components.

This is needed in some respects so that Shopify gives it's Checkout a chance to run.

* How is this related to Plus? Is this above Plus? Plus Plus? Asking for a friend.

* Finally, , one thing I have observed at the high-end of the Enterprise world in the last year is the beginning of a consolidation around CommerceTools in this segment in the composable commerce realm. Speaking of marketing, CommerceTools' introduction of MACH alliance in 2020 continues to be one of the more brilliant marketing coups in the sector in recent memory.

While CommerceTools is not the only company pushing this vision, this should be a big vote of confidence and validation for their approach.

After all, isn't imitation is the most sincere form of flattery?