Sébastien Morel

Subscriptions can mean various things in e-commerce, such as recurring payments, plans, tiers, and more. But what exactly does a subscription entail in e-commerce and with Crystallize?

The traditional eCommerce setup often entails substantial upfront investments in server infrastructure, complex management, and maintenance routines. Additionally, the rigidity of such setups can impede the scalability essential for handling traffic surges during sales events, thus affecting performance and user experience.

Serverless eCommerce emerges as a solution to these challenges, offering a new approach that significantly reduces operational overhead, enhances scalability, and optimizes cost-efficiency.

The State of Serverless 2023 report by Datadog underscores a rising trend in major cloud providers adopting serverless technologies​. The global serverless architecture market, valued at over USD 9 billion in 2022, is projected to burgeon at a CAGR of over 25% from 2023 to 2032​. Similarly, the global serverless computing market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 20.8% from 2022 to 2028​.

The statistics we mentioned above testify to the significant strides the serverless approach is making. It's (kind of) evident that if you haven't done so already, now is the time to delve deeper and enumerate serverless benefits, check real-world use cases, discuss technical considerations, and understand best practices for businesses eyeing a transition to this modern eCommerce paradigm.

But before all that we've got some term explaining first.

Welcome aboard, tech enthusiasts! In today’s digital world, there’s no such thing as being too secure. With data breaches making headlines, it’s high time we pull up our socks and look at security essentials.

So, what’s all the hullabaloo about authentication vs. authorization?

Well, let’s break it down.

These two A’s are like the Batman and Robin of security protocols. They work hand in glove to protect the Batcave (read: your data). Hang tight, as we’re about to get down and dirty with these two superheroes.

More and more businesses are relying on cloud-native microservice apps to increase development speed and take advantage of the cloud's scalability and availability.

With the number of available tech solutions, tools, architectures, and approaches to web development today, it is easy to get overwhelmed when choosing the one for your online store.

Headless, composable, API-first, Remix, UI or UX-driven design, etc. Tracking development and design trends in eCommerce is both tough and rewarding at the same time.

Remix and eCommerce go well hand in hand, and we have a free open-source boilerplate for retail storefronts to prove it.

“Crystallize apps” have been released! We are pleased to announce that you can now build an “Application” that can be injected into the main Crystallize App.

Crystallize #jamstackconf2022 story. In short: “I had a blast.”

I am sure that the dev community is going to talk about the Next 13 in the upcoming weeks extensively, so this post is more about my first impression from the perspective of Crystallize users. Bare with me, will ya!

There are numerous approaches to developing a web application that is performant. Going the static site way is just one of them. Pause here. What do we/I mean when we/I say static sites?

As a headless eCommerce platform, our primary goal is to create services that delight front-end developers. This involves extensive research, hands-on experimentation with cutting-edge frontend frameworks, and the development of open-source eCommerce starters utilizing these technologies.

With React, Angular, and Vue, along with frameworks built on top of React, such as Next JS and Remix Run, and Vue, like Nuxt JS + frameworks like Svelte, Astro, and 11ty, the landscape of front-end frameworks appears nearly limitless. Still, this post is not about comparing or choosing the best one.

Instead, here we will highlight the frameworks we’ve found most rewarding to work with and believe should be part of your tech stack. By the way, our enthusiastic endorsement of these frameworks is admittedly biased, shaped entirely and solely by our own meandering experiences.

You've probably heard the terms APIs, and Microservices used when talking about web development. What are they? How do you use them, and what is the difference between them?

So RemixConf2022 happened last month. Remix Run is on fire. This tool/framework is the key to Frontend performance with its progressive unique approach. During the conference we’ve learned a lot about Remix, from its core concepts to navigation through the state machine, forms, HTTP cache, and more, and all transparently degraded when Javascript is off!

But let’s start from the beginning.

Working as a team on a professional setup that implies many “micro/macro” services is challenging and can lead to invisible and unexpected errors if not set up well. Time to market, first time to success, and reducing the feedback loop are important topics for all your teams. This article is about setting up your project for a successful production workflow.

Remix is getting quite some attention lately, and being in the eCommerce space, it has caught our eye.

Let us dive into the topic typically described as the most complicated topic to learn for developers. Or better, the hardest to master.

Netlify, Vercel, Platform.sh … the static website hosting landscape has changed significantly in the past few years and is only getting better.

Often critiqued for NOT delivering on a promise of transforming front-end development, since its release in 2013, React JS has been under the fray of the dev world.

Last year's annual State of JS report on front-end frameworks and libraries survey showed interest may be falling, but React usage is growing (source link). Furthermore, insights from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2023 reinforce React's position in the ecosystem as the most loved web framework, with a notable percentage of developers either using it or expressing interest in using it shortly (source link).

While we wait on fresh stats, one could argue it is the framework of the web. Still, web development is an ever-changing beast. Yesterday's underdogs are today's hyped frameworks/libraries/approaches/architectures/concepts _________________(add anything here).

Not long ago, most businesses relied on monolithic solutions for content management (CMS) and eCommerce with coupled front and back end. That became a problem as new screens, markets, and channels emerged. The rise of headless architecture allowed businesses to think differently.

New technologies/frameworks significantly simplify the web development, management, and distribution processes while allowing for better reach, performance, and the web in general.

Why are we mentioning this here? Well, if you know React and are ready to take advantage of headless architecture in your blog or online store, all you'll need is a static site generator to get you going  (so to speak).

Crystallize users and customers trust us to keep their data safe. We take security very seriously and aim to be as clear and open as possible about the way we handle security.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Crystallize team.