[HN Gopher] Show HN: Medusa - Open-source alternative to Shopify
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Show HN: Medusa - Open-source alternative to Shopify
Author : owjuhl
Score : 218 points
Date : 2021-09-10 14:19 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medusa-commerce.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medusa-commerce.com)
| kasbah wrote:
| I'm wondering if this could be used for building a crowd-funding
| platform or if there are headless solutions someone might
| recommend for that.
| Bishop_ wrote:
| The linkedin and github links in the footer aren't set. Best of
| luck.
| sent-hil wrote:
| Interesting project. Couple questions:
|
| 1. What separates you from Spree which recently started offering
| a headless platform as well?
|
| 2. Do you support Tax/Shipping calculations?
|
| 3. Where can I see a list of all supported integrations?
|
| 4. Do you offer deployment options?
| thenberlin wrote:
| Heads up that the landing page appears broken in Safari v14.0.3
| -- the header logo and top-nav links are floating over the main
| hero image like halfway down it, and when I scroll I can see that
| the hero collapses, but the header remains, as does the big blue
| area behind it, taking up 50+% of the viewport.
|
| Otherwise looks like an interesting project and I'll keep an eye
| on it!
| ngellner wrote:
| Sorry about this problem - we are aware and are working to get
| it fixed soon! Until it is fixed, the best solution will be to
| use a different browser :-)
| Reubend wrote:
| Congrats, this is one of the best landing pages I've seen this
| year. It looks really nice, and I love the idea of a headless
| ecommerce platform, especially one that comes with a nice backend
| GUI for managing inventory, etc.
|
| I took a quick look through the documentation as well, and was
| pleasantly surprised by the maturity of the features that it has.
| This provides pretty much all of the basics I think one would
| need to manage a medium sized store. One area I do think could be
| improved perhaps is in the internationalization; it seems to me
| that every product has a single string to be the description, a
| single string to be the title, etc. with no easy way to localize
| the text across different regions.
|
| I also am curious about the pricing; the landing page mentions
| that you can get started for free, and "start building for free",
| but is there some component that costs money down the road? I
| don't see any pricing page on the website so for now I'm assuming
| it's 100% open source.
| dubcanada wrote:
| My biggest problem is there is zero discussion on why this is
| better/worse then the other 500 options available.
|
| WooCommerce, Craft Commerce, Drupal Commerce, Magento, Vendura,
| etc all offer APIs to build a headless ecommerce platform.
|
| Why is this better/worse?
| ukyrgf wrote:
| I mean right off the bat it means not having to maintain
| WordPress, Craft, Drupal, Magento. I've maintained all of
| those at some point over the years and I'll probably have
| nightmares tonight now that you reminded me of them. Don't
| know Vendura.
| dewey wrote:
| Isn't it just a matter of time until this one also becomes
| hard to maintain? These other platforms are complicated for
| a reason and that is that ecommerce isn't easy.
| Localizations (Medusa doesn't seem to have a proper system
| for that yet according to the top comment), deep support
| for taxes in various countries, changing tax rates, b2b and
| b2c price rates etc.
| ukyrgf wrote:
| I'm sure it could become hard to maintain, but it is
| built as an ecommerce platform. Plugins like Woocommerce
| are just one of innumerable amounts of plugins that
| WordPress has to attempt to not break.
| dewey wrote:
| I was more referring to the dedicated and feature rich
| frameworks like Drupal and Magento than the WordPress
| plug-ins.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| at the mere utterance of "Magento" thousands of souls to
| cry out in terror
| RL_Quine wrote:
| It renders almost unusably for me in Safari 14.
|
| https://a.uguu.se/khPaNnDA.png
| owjuhl wrote:
| Sorry - my bad! Will fix that immediately. Thanks for showing
| it.
| owjuhl wrote:
| It seems to be a Safari + Webflow issue, so using a
| different browser would be the best solution right now :)
| blitzar wrote:
| Your main logo (top left hand corner) directs to a bad
| url btw.
| DenseComet wrote:
| Could be an issue with content blockers and safari. The
| page works fine with safari for me.
| brookside wrote:
| Something about the landing page invoked Team Treehouse visual
| style: https://teamtreehouse.com/
| owjuhl wrote:
| Many thanks for the kind words Reubend!
|
| And the feedback for internationalization is on point; it is in
| our roadmap to add a localization element to the core. Though,
| not in the very near future, since this is more a nice-to-have
| feature compared to a lot of other things in these early
| stages.
|
| You are correct in regards to pricing. We are 100% open source,
| and are soon to release an easy `npx` command to get you up and
| running with everything in a matter of seconds.
|
| Until then you can find our admin and other simple starters
| under our Github organization.
| moneywoes wrote:
| What did you use to build the landing page? Also the GitHub
| and LinkedIn buttons don't work on it
| abstract_put wrote:
| Specifically the GitHub button at the bottom of the page,
| the GitHub button at the top does work and leads to:
| https://github.com/medusajs/medusa
| RileyJames wrote:
| Great landing page. Love the focus on integrations, tho I
| immediately wanted to know more. None of those logos are
| clickable, and I was impatiently waiting for the logos to scroll
| to see if there was an accounting integration. I also don't
| recognise all the logos. I'd suggest this deserves its own page,
| and from experience, this will draw in users / customers via
| search / seo.
|
| I found a repo for your admin panel which talks about a 'Medusa
| Cloud' account, but I can't find any other details about this.
|
| There a couple of models with integrations, you can build them as
| open source, but then you have to maintain them. Or you can have
| 3rd parties build and maintain them as Saas offerings. Either
| works, they both have significant positives and negatives. Either
| way it's a significant opportunity for revenue generation.
|
| If you're interested in Xero / accounting integration reach out.
| I could work with you to build your own, or could connect you
| with folks that would build out such services around your
| product.
|
| Minor: Copy under 'SEO Friendly' header is duplicated from
| another header.
|
| 'Get Started' doesn't go anywhere.
| raman162 wrote:
| Very impressive work! This seems promising and well thought-out.
| I plan on taking a deeper look at this especially regarding
| payments.
| Vadim__Smirnov wrote:
| Thank you so much! Would love to help you with onboarding and
| intro session, feel free to join our Discord, so we can see how
| we can help you https://discord.gg/DSHySyMu :)
| vira28 wrote:
| Awesome work.
|
| How does it differ from WooCommerce? Perhaps that might my other
| question. What is headless ecommerce platform? Thanks.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| A headless ecommerce platform is an API first ecommerce
| platform where you build your own FEs on it.
| gdsdfe wrote:
| I've never understood why people use nodeJs for more than a hobby
| projects or small internal tools
| jimmyspice wrote:
| If it's well written, customers won't be able to tell
| gdsdfe wrote:
| By customers I guess you mean shoppers, yeah they never care
| nor they should. Merchants on the other hand will loose money
| if the solution don't scale affordably.
| mbesto wrote:
| I've kept a list of headless ecommerce providers:
|
| https://saleor.io/
|
| https://www.swell.is/
|
| https://www.vuestorefront.io/
|
| https://www.elasticpath.com/
|
| https://boldcommerce.com/
|
| https://nacelle.com/
|
| https://www.contentful.com/
|
| Why are there so many of these? What are people actually using?
|
| I see a lot of e-commerce companies (albeit older and using
| solutions like Magento, Shopify, Oracle, etc.) and I rarely see
| any full blown e-comm companies using them, but rather they use
| them for simple checkout/cart functionality. Curious to get
| people's views here.
| s_severus wrote:
| There is a compelling argument for headless e-commerce, which
| is the _freedom to build and rebuild your storefront using the
| technologies that you want_. With non-headless (traditional)
| platforms, you are limited to using the templating features or
| themes provided by the vendor. Another benefit is the ability
| to power multiple clients (web, mobile, in-store) from a single
| API & back-end.
|
| A full refresh of the storefront using the latest technologies
| or developer workflows can prove either impossible or
| incredibly challenging. That's why there are a lot of e.g.
| Magento projects stuck with huge JS bundles and unpleasant
| developer ergonomics. Ultimately there is the risk of needing
| to "replatform" - re-build the entire solution (front-end and
| server-side) on a different framework/platform, which is not a
| desirable situation to be put in.
|
| That said, headless has its trade-offs. Building a storefront
| is not trivial. For many merchants it may not make sense. But
| for a certain class of use-cases it is a massive advantage.
|
| It should also be noted that "headless e-commerce" has also
| graduated into buzzword territory, so you might get an inflated
| impression of the relative importance or use of it. Even
| Magento & Shopify are leaning into "headless" despite their
| clear interest in the monolithic model which is relied on by
| the majority of their marketplace offerings currently. Other
| platforms (e.g. Saleor, Sylius) which started off as non-
| headless have recently re-branded as headless.
|
| Ultimately there is definitely hype in this area, but there is
| also genuine value too.
|
| Source: I've been developing a headless e-comm framework for
| the past 3 years (vendure.io)
| ngellner wrote:
| Some super good points!
|
| On the last point on the adoption vs. hype question. Indeed
| there has previously been some strong buzz-word tendencies
| around headless architecture probably way ahead of the
| relative use of such solutions. Nevertheless, I also believe
| that the demand of such solutions from the merchants' side
| has been steadily increasing recently due to:
|
| * increased ecom competition; making it more important to
| differentiate through enhanced performance (page-speed +
| SEO); better UX; advanced analytics and tools to create
| differentiated customer journeys - all areas that are better
| catered for with a headless solutions
|
| * more advanced merchant use cases; more B2B companies coming
| into the ecom market with complex needs or social commerce
| solutions not covered by existing solutions - these all need
| a specialised setup which is better build from a headless
| foundation
|
| * more digital-first/digital-only merchants coming to market
| with a strong ecom focus and not willing to make setup
| compromises which you often will have starting with a
| monolithic structure
|
| That being said, there is still a long way to making headless
| the preferred way of building commerce - but the tailwind
| seem to be there!
|
| EDIT: Formatting
| stefanvdw1 wrote:
| Looks very good! I've been looking for a headless e-commerce
| solution for a new product for a while and I might go for Medusa.
|
| One thing I was missing was a demo admin panel and demo store to
| get a bit of a feel for what is possible.
| ngellner wrote:
| That sounds really interesting! We are working on getting to a
| demo to showcase it a bit better on out dotcom as well, but we
| would be happy to give you a personal walk-through of the
| solution if you could be interested
|
| Just reach us on Discord and we can set up a session either in
| the weekend or next week :-)
|
| https://discord.gg/F87eGuwkTp
| codegeek wrote:
| Looks nice but to be a Shopify alternative, headless is not the
| way. Does it come with batteries included so I can plug and play
| after a quick installation ? Headless makes me think that I have
| write my own interfaces which then is not really a shopify
| alternative. As a developer though, I like it.
| mixologic wrote:
| It is also not a Shopify alternative in that Shopify is a
| _service_ and not just software.
|
| Its like comparing "raw organic apples" to "Apple cider made
| with conventionally farmed apples"
| codegeek wrote:
| The service part is just how it is distributed. I would say
| it is ok to claim as Open Source Shopify alternative if you
| can install and get it running in a few minutes and could be
| used by a non technical ecommerce business owner.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Personally, I'd prefer the submission title kept the webpage
| title's "Open-source headless commerce engine". Much more
| descriptive of what it actually does. Some Shopify customers use
| it headless but I'd be surprised if even the majority do.
| agustif wrote:
| This looks super nice!
|
| I've been interested in the ecommerce + graphql space for a
| while, yours seems a really great project, will be following
| along and looking into migration paths!
|
| I love the stack choices as well, seems much more lightweight and
| approachable to me than other alternatives like saleor (which I
| don't really dig these days anymore) or vendure which is an
| excellent project too but with a stack I am no too familiar with
| (NestJS, Angular)... So kudos for making this open source!
| mariushn wrote:
| Thanks for building it as open source! Few q's:
|
| 1. It doesn't seem to be multi-tenant (that is, hosting multiple
| shops/companies with one db). Are there plans to add multi-
| tenancy?
|
| 2. What are the major differences vs https://github.com/vendure-
| ecommerce/vendure ? (another nodejs solution, with included Admin
| panel and storefront)
|
| 3. How do you plan to monetize?
| s_severus wrote:
| I'm the maintainer of Vendure, so I might be able to offer a
| bit of insight on your second question, after having studied
| the Medusa repo a little. Medusa devs, please correct me if any
| of this is wrong!
|
| * The Vendure project is a bit older and I think a bit further
| ahead in terms of awareness and adoption.
|
| * Medusa lists a team of 10 on their notion board, plus a bunch
| of investors. Vendure is just me (plus OSS contributors) and is
| bootstrapped.
|
| * Medusa exposes a REST-style API, whereas Vendure uses
| GraphQL.
|
| * Medusa seems to be mostly JS built directly on Express,
| whereas Vendure is TypeScript built on NestJS.
|
| * We're both using TypeORM for the data layer.
|
| * As mentioned, Medusa does not ship with an admin interface,
| whereas Vendure does.
|
| * Medusa seems to have a whole bunch of supported integrations
| in the monorepo (Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, Sendgrid, Twilio),
| whereas Vendure does not currently have any official
| integrations like this.
|
| * Vendure supports multi-channel, multi-language stores. Could
| not see much about Medusa's support for that, but maybe I
| missed it.
|
| All in all, Medusa is very much the most similar project I've
| seen to Vendure. The Node ecosystem has long been neglected in
| terms of e-commerce dev tooling, so I'm glad to see more
| interest in this area. Full-stack JS/TS/Node can be very
| productive and really nice to work with, in my experience.
|
| Congratulations to the Medusa team for the launch. Slightly
| envious that your post has gained so much traction compared to
| the ~3 upvotes from my launch a few months ago, but no hard
| feelings, haha.
|
| edit: formatting
| ngellner wrote:
| s_severus think you covered this one well. Also think what
| you have build with Vendure is a really strong solution and
| we have deep respect for what you have been able to set up
| almost on your own!
|
| Three short comments on the functional differences: - Admin
| interface: We have made our admin open source as well
| (happened this week) so this will be part of a Medusa setup
| when you launch our OS version - On multi-regional support:
| We have built this into Medusa's core to make it easy to
| shift between currencies, shipping options etc. across
| different markets - On Multi-tenant functionality: This
| feature will come soon; we will launch a concept called
| "Stores" in the near future to enable you to control multiple
| shops/branches from one place
|
| s_severus, we should take an offline chat soon. Think we
| could learn a great deal from each other!
| s_severus wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words, and good to hear you have open-
| sourced the admin panel app - I feel that is really key for
| allowing devs to quickly get a feel for using the system.
|
| And yes, I'd be really interested to chat! You can email me
| at "contact at vendure.io"
| pelasaco wrote:
| > Congratulations to the Medusa team for the launch. Slightly
| envious that your post has gained so much traction
|
| > compared to the ~3 upvotes from my launch a few months ago,
| but no hard feelings, haha
|
| Interesting. Maybe your title wasn't so "click-bait" as this
| one and you linked your github repo instead of your well made
| website https://www.vendure.io/?
|
| Both are definitely great projects!
| rambambram wrote:
| I really like your landing page! In love with the little
| triangles everywhere, haha. I'm not the target group for a
| headless e-commerce solution, but I think your landing page
| makes it more clear to visitors what your software is about.
| In contrast to the main article, which left me wondering what
| Medusa exactly is.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| i've gotta ask, why name it Medusa?
| ngellner wrote:
| Great question! If you check how the Greek Medusa ended her
| life then you might see some linkage with building _headless_
| ;-)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| ahhhhhahaha good job
| boringg wrote:
| Right I guess that kind of in a warped way makes sense, but
| medusa was also a monstrous mess of a creature that would
| turn people to stone. I mean I get the headless reference but
| wouldn't it make sense to be called Perseus (the hero who
| killed Medusa)? Named after beheading a monstrous creature,
| instead of being named after the creature?
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(page generated 2021-09-10 23:00 UTC)