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Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

medusa-commerce.com

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Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#41

Post by ngellner »

s_severus wrote: post #33
mariushn wrote: post #18

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?

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 cont…

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!

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#42

Post by ngellner »

thenberlin wrote: post #39

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!

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 :-)

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#43

Post by s_severus »

ngellner wrote: post #41
s_severus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cont…

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-region…

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"

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#44

Post by ngellner »

s_severus wrote: post #38
mbesto wrote: post #35

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 ful…

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 storefr…

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

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#45

Post by pineconewarrior »

ukyrgf wrote: post #25
dubcanada wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

at the mere utterance of "Magento" thousands of souls to cry out in terror

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#46

Post by RileyJames »

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.

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#49

Post by gdsdfe »

jimmyspice wrote: post #47
gdsdfe wrote: post #40

I've never understood why people use nodeJs for more than a hobby projects or small internal tools

If it's well written, customers won't be able to tell

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.

Re: Show HN: Medusa – Open-source alternative to Shopify

#50

Post by abstract_put »

moneywoes wrote: post #20
owjuhl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

What did you use to build the landing page? Also the GitHub and LinkedIn buttons don’t work on it

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
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