I find that a lot of platforms have been designed for non-technical or developer users in mind, but as a developer, I normally prefer to build out fully customized solutions from scratch. But for this particular project I was looking to test out a marketplace so I didn't want to invest significant time and resource into it if there was an easier option. There pretty much aren't many options out there that offer a powerful marketplace solution, without having to use 3rd party apps or plugins. Swell offered a native solution which is why I initially got started.

Having the headless theme was really useful because it meant I saved resources in having to hire a designer (which can also get really pricey really quickly). All the pre-settings were really well set up. It also meant I didn't have to build the front-end from scratch which saved me at least a few weeks of development time. We were able to launch pretty quickly, much sooner than I expected. I had initially factored a few months into the plan but we got Swell working for us in under a month. A huge plus is that Swell lets you use the latest tech instead of running on frameworks from 20 years ago. It's pretty good to be able to deploy on Netlify and Heroku.

Multi-currency is key, but I can see that's already on the product roadmap.

I would normally only recommend headless commerce to bigger clients as you need deep pockets to afford. Only well-backed startups or big companies can justify the price tag for the superior online experience. What I really love about Swell is that it lets you build a headless store out of the box. Plus, any developer after can build on it. Now I can afford to build headless solutions for a wide range of clients and know that it will fit well within their price range.

As an ecommerce developer, I actually have the choice to use a git-based workflow to deploy on Swell's hosting, or can also choose to use a CDN backed provider like Netlify or Vercel. There's a headless theme powered by Nuxt and Vue, which is a big differentiator as other headless solutions require you to develop the front-end solution from the ground up. Also, a key constraint I often encounter in Shopify or BigCommerce are product variant limitations, especially dealing with large ecommerce stores. With Swell, I can create unlimited product variants and attributes. This is a truly headless solution.

A stronger CMS, customer portal and multi-language solution.

Looks good in theory but nothing works...

Very complacent support who doesn't take responsibility or show any proactivity. I've been struggling with trying to create an account since the past 2 FREAKING months!

- Would recommend it to anyone building a B2B marketplace, it gives you the flexibility of a custom platform without having to actually build from the ground up.

- Powerful solution for B2B marketplace selling scientific equipment. - Unbeatable price compared to other expensive enterprise ecommerce software on the market. - Strong agency partnership network with deep expertise - Swell was able to bring on the right agency partners for us to execute the project. Being able to draw out a roadmap to launch, flag out the key milestones and challenges and putting together the plan to get things done, was really important for us. In the end we were able to build out the full marketplace to spec and launch in under 3 months, much sooner than what we initially expected. - Can be managed with a smaller development team, unlike Magento or SAP Hybris, we didn't need an entire team of devs on hand to continuously maintain and operate the solution. - Flexible solution, the architecture of Swell lets you customize the platform exactly to your needs. - Can also be easily operated by business dev / sales / marketing / finance without needing to go through the development team all the time.

Really none at all. This solution has far outperformed my expectations, it has been a huge bang for the buck, and the team behind the product has been helpful, responsive, and ingenious solving our problems thus far.

You can tell this software has been designed by people who really care about the product - the feature set is really strong, the headless architecture is really flexible and overall, the entire software is really easy-to-use.

- We chose this project because we needed to sell subscriptions with flexibility of payment gateways e.g. I didn't want to be locked into one payment provider. - Swell also lets you build out marketplaces, pre-orders so we would be able to adapt to however we wanted to sell our products in the future. - We were aiming for a headless solution and a big plus of this one is that it comes with a headless theme - so we didn't have to build the front-end from scratch

I'd love to have multi-language and multi-currency, but their team has just told me that they're likely releasing it in Feb 2021 anyway so this will be a big pain point solved.

- I wanted a headless commerce solution that was easy to set up. And I got exactly that with Swell. Overall experience has been really good, the workflow has clearly been optimized and built for devs which is a world away when working with other ecommerce platforms, and it's really user-friendly for non tech people to use too.

- It has an in-built headless theme, so I don't have to code the front-end. Even though I'm a front-end developer, it doesn't mean I want to spend the time building something from scratch if I don't have to haha! The beauty of the Swell headless solution is that I could still customize the brand experience exactly how I wanted, but with all the basics out-of-the-box. The store was live within less than a week which is lightning fast - it just shows you how much resource and time you save with the theme. - It also has a workflow that's targeted towards devs. I could work using git and I got to code how I wanted to instead of being restricted, unlike Shopify's workflow which I've used in the past. - Other pros include you can actually fully customize your checkout.

- None yet - I'll keep you posted. Thanks!

- Swell has been really easy-to-use, straight forward to set up and support has been really helpful. Whenever I have a question, I get a pretty good response straight away from their guy.

- In the past, I had used Kickstarter and Indiegogo to take pre-orders but when I wanted to transition to opening up an ecommerce store really quickly, I had to move to Shopify. - I've since discovered Swell, which can take pre-orders but then can easily transition into an e-commerce play without having to change platforms. I also wanted to take subscription payments without having to use any plug-ins, and Swell offers that too. All in all, it's definitely one of the most flexible solutions out there. - Other pros include not having the Kickstarter or Indiegogo branding on the site, being able to own my email list (otherwise it's owned by KS or IGG) and being able to communicate with backers whenever I want instead of being restricted to KS and IGG rules. - Other major con is that this is a fully developer friendly platform. To make any customizations, I can code in any language that I want with a GIT workflow - run multiple environments and preview it before I push it live. As a developer, this is pretty key and I haven't seen many other ecommerce platforms offer something like this.

- If you're looking for a 'discovery' feature for your pre-order sales like on Kickstarter, then you won't find it on Swell. You need to promote this to your own audience yourself, but if you already have your market and you're looking for a fully branded solution then this is definitely the way to go.

Swell is a turnkey solution for online marketplace creation tool with its advance infrastructure.

Swell needs to support more languages and more currencies in payment module.

Swell is absolutely great! We were able to get our website migrated from Shopify AND host it in Swell. the migration only took a couple of weeks and was such a smooth sail. Our dev was able to make it our own, by having as base their storefront option. He told us that because there was already so many things built in js, he was able to spend more time creating new parts and animations.

More documentation on how to solve some more advanced problems would be an improvement.