Open SaaS
Introduction
BigCommerce offers a fully robust ecommerce experience that can be set up in minutes, while also supporting rich extensibility and customization. A high quality developer experience and powerful developer tools are key distinguishing features of the platform, meaning that whatever your functional requirements, you can achieve your vision with BigCommerce.
BigCommerce’s strengths in stability and security are attributed to its SaaS (software as a service) architecture. If you’re diving into developing on BigCommerce after being accustomed to other software models, your first challenge may be in understanding how SaaS customization works. Let’s explore how BigCommerce’s developer tools work in tandem with your own custom software to build your ideal ecommerce experience.
The Benefits of SaaS
On-premise software runs on your own infrastructure, giving you full access to and control over the application code but also placing the full burden of maintenance and stability on your development team. By contrast, a SaaS platform provides the core application as a subscription-based service, with the provider fully hosting and maintaining the software.
As a SaaS solution, BigCommerce handles the heavy lifting of the core commerce experience, providing benefits over on-premise in several areas:
- Simple Setup: Since you don’t need to worry about planning and implementing your own hosting infrastructure, it’s quick and easy to get your BigCommerce storefront up and running, usually with lower up-front costs
- Stability: Developing on BigCommerce doesn’t involve a trade-off between outdated software and costly cycles of patches and upgrades, since BigCommerce handles the maintenance and updates of the core ecommerce service
- Security: With up-to-date security features and PCI-compliant infrastructure, BigCommerce frees you from worrying about vulnerabilities in your core commerce layer
- Scalability: You’ll never outgrow your infrastructure with BigCommerce’s cloud-based offerings that easily scale to your needs
- Support: BigCommerce comes with 24/7 support, meaning you’re never on your own for addressing issues with your implementation
The Open SaaS Toolkit
While SaaS comes with a large number of benefits, it is by nature a closed system. Open source software gives you access to every line of code, allowing you to customize any piece of the application to any degree. By contrast, many SaaS solutions offer very limited ability to customize their features.
BigCommerce’s approach is Open SaaS: A SaaS-platform committed to a developer-first mindset, offering entry points to customize and integrate for even the most complex requirements.
For those accustomed to open source, on-premise software, the difference means a change in approach. Rather than customizing the ecommerce back-end code directly, you’ll integrate your own apps and services to provide the custom features you need. In a sense, there is no “developing on BigCommerce” at all; rather, your own software complements the functionality of the core platform to achieve your ideal commerce experience.
In the end, this means major advantages for the developer experience as well. Building on open source ecommerce software usually means gaining expertise in incredibly complex systems even to make the simplest customizations, as well as conforming to the frameworks, tools, and patterns in the core product. When developing on BigCommerce, you can focus on just what your software needs to do and build applications with the tools you prefer.
Key Components of BigCommerce Development
APIs
BigCommerce offers thorough coverage of every part of the platform via a variety of web APIs, which are often the key entry point for your custom applications.
Storefronts
The storefront UI layer your shoppers interact with is the most critical piece of your ecommerce site. BigCommerce offers multiple options for building your custom storefront experience, from an integrated, template-based theme system to a fully de-coupled, composable front-end.
Apps and Middleware
Whether your requirements involve custom back-end functionality to support your storefront, enhanced capabilities in the BigCommerce control panel, or integrations with external services, your own applications are important components in delivering these features. BigCommerce is well suited to a microservice model, with apps focused on a single area of responsibility and integrated with the commerce back-end via web APIs.
After we’ve explored the APIs, storefront styles, and toolsets available for developing on BigCommerce, we’ll cover a few example approaches for orchestrating these pieces together effectively.
