Composable Commerce Cost: How to Optimize Implementation

Feb 18, 2025 • 15 min read

Composable commerce has captured the interest of e-commerce leaders due to its promise of agility, rapid innovation, and highly customizable user experiences.

However, adopting a composable commerce solution can be expensive if not approached with careful planning—especially in the early stages. At Netguru, we’ve guided brands through successful composable commerce projects, helping them strike the balance between robust functionality and prudent budgeting. This article explores proven strategies for keeping implementation costs under control while still reaping the long-term benefits of a composable ecosystem.

1. Benefits of Composable Commerce

Composable commerce offers several benefits, including:

Faster Innovation: Composable commerce allows businesses to pilot or roll out new features in one service without waiting to upgrade or re-architect an entire system. This agility enables rapid response to market changes and customer demands.
Personalization on a Deeper Level: By picking and choosing specialized components—like advanced product recommendation engines or dynamic pricing modules—businesses can create truly unique customer experiences that drive engagement and loyalty.
High Resilience: If one microservice encounters a glitch, other parts of the store remain unaffected, ensuring continuous operation and a seamless customer experience.
Omnichannel Integration: Composable commerce enables seamless integration with various sales channels (physical stores, mobile apps, marketplaces), ensuring a consistent brand experience wherever customers shop.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership: By investing specifically in areas of their business that need the most attention, businesses can keep costs in check and avoid the expenses associated with monolithic platforms.

2. Embrace Gradual, Phased Adoption of Composable Commerce Strategy

A common mistake is to tear down your existing e-commerce infrastructure all at once and rebuild it as a fully composable platform. While that might be necessary in some edge cases, it often leads to high upfront expenses and potential disruption.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Instead of a full-scale overhaul, start small by replacing just one component—like the frontend or the checkout module—with a composable alternative. Iterate gradually, swapping out legacy parts in targeted phases. This approach spares you from having to manage a massive, costly replatforming project all at once, allowing you to transition smoothly to more flexible and efficient digital commerce platforms.

3. Leverage Existing Assets

Switching to composable commerce doesn’t necessarily mean discarding every system you own. If your existing backend or payment gateway works well, consider keeping it in place while you modernize the user-facing experience or add microservices to handle new functions.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Perform an inventory of current tools and services to identify which still meet your performance, security, and scalability needs. By building around effective systems, you reduce the scope—and cost—of changes.

Benefits of Composable Commerce

Core Commerce Functionality: Composable commerce ensures that essential capabilities required for effective online selling are integrated seamlessly, allowing businesses to address unique needs while remaining adaptable to change.

4. Select Vendors and Partners Wisely

When building a composable architecture, you’ll probably work with multiple vendors (e.g., a PIM solution, an AI-based recommendation engine, a cloud platform). Not all providers offer the same level of integration, scalability, or pricing models. These microservices, often referred to as packaged business capabilities (PBCs), facilitate a plug-and-play functionality, allowing businesses to select and integrate only the components they need.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Conduct a rigorous vendor evaluation, focusing on value for money rather than sheer feature lists. Ask about hidden fees, support tiers, and ongoing maintenance costs. Look for vendors that align with your existing ecosystem or have proven integrations with your chosen microservices. Netguru often assists clients by mapping out the vendor landscape to ensure every piece fits seamlessly and cost-effectively.

5. Budget Planning and Alignment

A frequent source of budget overruns stems from underestimating either the complexity of integration or the time needed for testing. As composable commerce systems expand, scope creep becomes a real risk if you lack clear milestones and a well-defined budget.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Create a detailed project plan that outlines each microservice deployment, integration point, and testing phase. Factor in contingencies for unexpected challenges, especially around legacy data migration or custom API work. Keep stakeholders informed about budget usage and progress.

6. Invest in Team Training vs. Hiring

Recruiting a brand-new team of composable commerce experts can be costly, especially given today’s competitive talent market. Instead, consider upskilling your existing developers and IT staff.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Workshops, on-the-job training, and mentorship can help your current workforce adapt to headless architectures, microservices, and modern frontend frameworks. This approach avoids hefty recruitment costs and strengthens internal knowledge for future expansions.

7. Use Existing Libraries and FaaS Solutions for Seamless Integration

One reason composable commerce can inflate costs is the time spent creating custom frontends from scratch. While a fully bespoke user interface has its advantages, you can often speed up development and lower expenses by leveraging pre-built libraries or Frontend as a Service (FaaS) solutions.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Many platforms provide templated frontends that can be customized to match your brand identity. By starting with established building blocks, you reduce time-to-market and minimize the risk of code duplication or QA overhead.

8. Adopt an Iterative Methodology

A waterfall-style approach—where you plan the entire transition in one monolithic project—makes it harder to pivot if costs become too steep.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Break your composable commerce rollout into small, iterative sprints. You can pilot an integration or a new microservice with a limited user group, gather feedback, then refine before scaling it up. Iterative development fosters continuous improvement and helps you catch budget overruns early.

9. Avoid Overengineering

The allure of composable commerce can inspire teams to add multiple microservices, each performing a highly specialized function. While that granularity can be powerful, it can also lead to complexity.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Evaluate each microservice rigorously. Is there a business need for a standalone service, or could you combine functionalities without losing agility? Striking the right balance between microservices and overarching orchestration is crucial to managing costs.

10. Eliminate Unnecessary Features

Because composable commerce allows you to pick and choose modules, you might be tempted to adopt every cutting-edge tool on the market. But every additional feature raises license fees, integration time, and support overhead.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Determine which functionalities truly deliver ROI. For instance, if your user base doesn’t typically engage with augmented reality (AR) or voice assistants, you may not need to deploy those services immediately. Focus on the microservices that align with your core objectives.

11. Keep Monitoring and Analyzing

The composable approach isn’t just a one-off implementation—it’s a living ecosystem that will evolve over time. Costs can creep up as you add more services or expand your user base.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Use real-time monitoring tools to track resource utilization, performance metrics, and user engagement. If you notice a particular microservice underperforming or over-consuming resources, you can adjust or replace it. At Netguru, we stress the importance of continuous analysis to keep budgets in check.

12. Leverage Cloud and SaaS Options

Deploying microservices on-premises can incur high hardware and maintenance expenses. Many composable commerce components are available as cloud-based or SaaS solutions.

Cost-Optimization Tip: By opting for cloud hosting—AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or specialized SaaS providers—you often gain scalability and pay-as-you-go billing models. This approach limits upfront costs and makes it easier to handle traffic surges without costly overprovisioning.

13. Explore Hybrid Models if Needed

Not every business can move fully into composable commerce. Some smaller companies may find standard SaaS solutions (like Shopify or BigCommerce) more cost-effective. If your operations require more customization, a hybrid approach might be ideal—where part of your stack is composable and part relies on a managed service.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Align your decisions with your long-term strategy. A hybrid environment can offer the best of both worlds—cost savings from a managed service in certain areas, plus the agility of microservices where it truly matters.

14. Plan for Long-Term ROI and Total Cost of Ownership

Yes, composable commerce can appear more expensive during the initial phases of adoption. However, over time, the ability to evolve quickly, reduce technical debt, and avoid paying for one-size-fits-all monolithic features can lead to real savings.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Approach your cost analysis from a multi-year perspective. Factor in how quickly you can deploy new features (and capitalize on new revenue streams) and how seamlessly you can replace outdated modules without a large-scale rebuild.

15. Seek Expert Guidance

Managing the intricacies of composable commerce—from technology selection to integration workflows—can be daunting. Engaging an experienced partner like Netguru can mitigate costly mistakes, accelerate development, and ensure your architecture is both high-performing and financially sustainable.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Conduct a thorough consultation early in the project. External experts can help you set realistic timelines, budget forecasts, and best practices for implementation.

16. Measuring Success

Measuring the success of a composable commerce strategy requires a combination of metrics and KPIs. Some key metrics to track include:

Customer Satisfaction: Measure customer satisfaction through surveys, feedback forms, and social media monitoring to gauge how well the composable commerce platform meets customer needs.
Conversion Rates: Track conversion rates to see how effectively the composable commerce platform is driving sales and achieving business goals.
Average Order Value: Monitor average order value to assess whether the composable commerce platform is contributing to revenue growth.
Return on Investment (ROI): Calculate the ROI of the composable commerce platform to determine if it is delivering a positive financial return.
Time-to-Market: Measure the time it takes to launch new features and products to evaluate if the composable commerce platform is improving business agility and responsiveness.

17. Overcoming Common Challenges

Composable commerce can present several challenges, including managing multiple vendors and technologies, integrating various components and services, and investing in robust infrastructure and monitoring tools. To overcome these challenges, businesses can:

Develop a Clear Composable Commerce Strategy: Align the composable commerce strategy with business goals to ensure a focused and effective implementation.
Invest in Robust Infrastructure and Monitoring Tools: Ensure the composable commerce platform is supported by a strong infrastructure and comprehensive monitoring tools to maintain performance and reliability.
Develop a Skilled IT Team: Build a team capable of managing and integrating multiple vendors and technologies, ensuring seamless operation and innovation.
Implement a Phased Migration Approach: Minimize disruption by gradually transitioning to a composable commerce system, allowing for continuous operation and iterative improvements.
Continuously Monitor and Evaluate Performance: Regularly assess the performance of the composable commerce platform to identify areas for improvement and ensure it continues to meet business needs.

By addressing these challenges proactively, businesses can fully leverage the benefits of composable commerce and create a resilient, flexible, and cost-effective digital commerce ecosystem.

18. Review and Reassess Periodically

Composable commerce isn’t a “set-and-forget” solution. Regularly evaluate your environment. Are you retaining microservices that are no longer beneficial? Could consolidation reduce overhead? By staying proactive, you’ll keep your platform lean and cost-effective.

Cost-Optimization Tip: Conduct quarterly or biannual reviews, analyzing usage statistics, feature effectiveness, and any changing market conditions. This helps you retire redundant components and explore new ones that offer better value.

How Netguru Can Help

At Netguru, we’ve guided numerous brands through successful composable commerce projects, helping them optimize costs without sacrificing functionality. Our team of experts can assist in:

Assessing your current e-commerce setup and identifying areas where a composable approach can bring the most value.
Developing a clear strategy for phased adoption, leveraging existing assets, and selecting the right vendors and partners.
Providing training and mentorship to upskill your internal team in composable commerce best practices and technologies.
Implementing and integrating the selected microservices, ensuring seamless communication and optimal performance.
Providing ongoing support and guidance as your composable commerce ecosystem evolves and new opportunities for optimization emerge.

Conclusion

While composable commerce does require thoughtful investment upfront, the approach can ultimately yield cost efficiencies and improved business agility. By phasing your implementation, leveraging existing assets, choosing vendors wisely, and continuously monitoring performance, you can strike a careful balance between robust functionality and manageable spending.

Through a combination of smart planning, iterative development, and rigorous vendor evaluation, you can pave the way for a future-proof e-commerce ecosystem that fuels sustainable growth. If you’re considering a composable commerce implementation and looking to optimize costs, Netguru is here to help you navigate every step of the process.