[HN Gopher] Show HN: Medusa - Open-source alternative to Shopify ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-10 23:00 UTC)