Thnx google "Headless software is software capable of working on a device without a graphical user interface."

@marcelhagedoorn Thanks so much! The front end and back end are completely separated, which means brands get freedom of expression to build whatever and however they want. Swell gives you the same starting point of other well known ecommerce platforms, but also allows for brands to build the exact custom experience they want without being locked into a template. Our headless storefront themes also give users an interface that they can start from easily!

Thnx, I get it now, just didn't know it was called 'Headless'. As long as your target audience knows it, right?

@marcelhagedoorn haha yes - we're finding that the term "headless" is becoming more commonly used as time goes on. Plus, it's a pretty neat word anyway ;)

It's a relatively new term that describes the diversion between ecommerce/cms platforms that 1) have had a hard coupling between the front-end & back-end code, and 2) have completely separated the two, so that developers you hire to customize a website aren't limited in what they can do. The technical definition can be confusing at first, but the long-term benefit is: your ability to continually improve your store/website without hitting a wall imposed by the platform. Not everyone needs to/should worry about these implications early in a business (but if you're successful, you will), which is why we put so much effort into the rest of the platform. You shouldn't have to make that trade-off.

@aaronoleary That's great feedback...the ability for non-coders to customize their storefront is definitely one of the reasons Shopify has done so well, but it's a tough gap to cross with headless. (We've spent months working on that part alone.) At the moment we're focusing on native integrations, but will eventually have a marketplace for 3rd party ones, along with themes. There's lots of moving parts there, and we want to get features like our CMS interface and multi-market/multi-region done first.

@paper_tokyo Makes total sense. I mean the fee structure alone is a strong sell to me vs shopify, being that there is no fee on sales. Coupled with 3rd party apps down the way could be fantastic also. I do feel there needs to be moderation on that side though, too many spammy less than desirable plugins live on the Shopify marketplace. Excited to see where this goes! Might give it a go for something I'm working on.

@aaronoleary We debated whether or not to add an additional transaction fee and realized most people hate that. Plus it's a pain to implement. We'd rather offer a first-party payment gateway option (like Shopify Payments) with a reduced processing fee down the line. Generally speaking there isn't as much need for a mountain of plugins anyway, because there's more functionality baked-in. Subscriptions, product attributes, unlimited options/variants, custom content fields, complex multi-tier nav menus, editable abandoned cart sequences...lots of things that you'd need apps for with Shopify. When we do get to that point though, we'll be more like the App Store and less like the Play Store in terms of quality control ;)

@bilater thanks for the question, a bunch of things: • Swell "themes" are full headless apps that work out of the box, and have complete integration with the theme editor/customizer (headless Shopify apps are all custom from scratch, so it's a lot more work to get that off the ground, and you lose connection with the theme editor for admins). • Headless store themes are hosted by Swell out of the box, and can be pushed to Netlify/Vercel/whatever you prefer. That means people starting a new store are using a headless architecture out of the box, and customizing from there is dramatically less effort than building a headless frontend from scratch, which is what people do on Shopify. • Having an integrated theme editor allows a lot of content management to stay within the platform instead of being ejected into another system. You may still want to use Contentful or similar, and those are great products, but our long term goals include bringing most of this functionality into one backend. • The Swell API can be customized programmatically with new data models and custom fields. That means a Swell theme can become any kind of storefront, not just a small catalog. Small/medium catalogs are important too and our first theme starts there, but going forward themes can implement any kind of user experience out of the box that may even require custom data models to work. And they'll work without 3rd party databases or services. This approach opens the gates for theme developers to get way more creative. (As an example, full 2-sided marketplaces like https://www.spinn.com/market have already been developed on Swell, all within one backend. It's significantly simplified development of an otherwise very complex build). • A lot of small things like: Editor supports more complex menu structures (i.e. mega nav), Collection filtering using Attributes, Multi-level categories, Store-wide promotions with multiple discounts (vs just single discount coupons), again all without 3rd party apps. We're aiming at a higher level of native functionality because we think it's a better experience, while apps (we're building an app marketplace likely next year) should be focused on non-core features. Happy to expand on any of these too!

@ericingram Nice nice. That clarifies things thanks :)

@bilater @austin_storm1 You also have to use multiple APIs to achieve less, so that's...not awesome.

@bilater @austin_storm1 😂

@dayhaysoos Appreciate that! If you signup you'll see a Sandbox account plan you can use for development only. The caveat is that we can't offer support on sandbox accounts, but like you said we thought it was important to have something for devs to play around with the API and experiment. Having a succinct backend that can solve a wide range of use cases is definitely the foundation of the platform.

@dayhaysoos Ha, I actually came across this a couple weeks back...very cool idea! We want to make https://github.com/swellstores/s... tree-shakable and compatible with React Hooks/Vue Composition API, which will probably end up looking a lot like what you have there. It uses our (undocumented) frontend API so there's no need for another layer to handle privileged data server-side, but you totally could integrate https://github.com/swellstores/s... into a cloud function and go nuts.

@bogdan_ionita Thanks Bogdan! That's actually really insightful. Some of our first merchants was a hardware company launching their first IoT coffee maker and now its a full blown marketplace! Thanks so much for the feedback!

@noskovvkirill Thanks for your feedback - we wish we found you earlier as well! Contentful is a great product. At the moment, we have code-based content modelling built in which hooks up directly to the storefront theme editor. We're currently building out a full UI for managing content models and content like in Contentful (it's actually one of our top priorities at the moment), and hopefully will be releasing that soon :)

@tinyprojects Thanks so much! We released our first headless theme this week - you can sign up for free to check it out :) Once you create a store, demo data will automagically be added to the shop and you can demo the shopping experience. Most of our brands use the theme as a starting point and customize from there (it's designed to be customized pretty heavily). We have more storefront themes on the way soon for specialized use cases like subscriptions, pre-orders, and try before you buy :)

@tinyprojects Just to add onto what Michelle said: Themes are going to be a main focus for us over the next 1-2 years, while we have work to do on documentation/guides for developers to build their own themes, and a marketplace for users to turn them on easily. Aim is to have dozens of different themes (covering many more business models) in the coming years. Theme developers wanted!

@thinker Thanks so much Nick - I can confirm Eric is an awesome dude and an amazing co-founder ❤️

@orksliver So good to hear! Eric and I are always agonizing over the details of API implementation. We have a Segment integration that can forward selected events on system models (you can also trigger webhooks) but I'm guessing you're talking about something client-side? Our storefront SDK https://swell.store/docs/js/ handles data fetching and cart updates, so you could just send events to your preferred analytics platform when those calls return.

@orksliver Love you dude

@dmitriy_minchenko Dima! Can't thank you enough for being one of the earliest believers in Swell, and how far we've come. The team is incredible, grateful for everything you do

@jakediz You could say that! Shopify is a great product, but obviously we believe stops short of what people need to do their best. Can't wait to show the world how much better they can be.

@taylorclauson Thanks Taylor! It's been awesome to have your support & input

@taylorclauson You're the best man - thank you for the support!

@celiknimani Appreciate the warm and fuzzies! We pride ourselves on speed and uptime. Any website stand out to you in particular? :)

@shauntrennery Cheers! Yep, we support multi-tenant stores. We currently have a few two-sided marketplaces who've built on Swell. If you're interested, you can check out the case studies on Spinn (global IoT coffee store) and NowVac (B2B marketplace for scientific vacuums) on our website!

@exabyssus absolutely agree on the need and we do have it on our roadmap to solve for multi-language. In addition to language there are other facets to consider so it'll take time to solve it in an ideal/seamless way, but we'll get there! That said, many of our early adopters use Swell in different countries around the world already.

@andreasklinger Thanks so much for the support. I'm happy we became friends a couple years ago - and that you dug what we were working on, and decided to join! :) Yep, that's exactly right -- decoupled frontend and backend making it ideal to be more innovative and creative without hitting ceilings. Super excited for the next chapter of delivering API-first, headless commerce to the world.

@techwraith Oh man, that means a lot! I'm happy you value great design and great product -- they're only going to be more important as we head into the future. Also love what you're working on with Viable Fit!

@notrab Thanks for checking it out Jamie!