logo
  • Product
  • Solutions
  • Developers
  • Resources
  • Pricing
  • Log in
  • Create a store
  • Product

  • Pricing
  • Try for free
  • Log In
  • Merchandising

  • Operations

  • Building

  • Integrations

  • Products

    Powerful modeling and versatile presentation of your entire catalog.

  • Subscriptions

    Sell recurring physical and virtual products alongside one-time offerings.

  • Discounts

    Get the sale with coupons, BXGY promotions, and automatic discounts.

  • Wholesale

    Sell B2B like it's DTC, along with volume pricing, customer groups, and invoicing.

  • Content

    Manage all your products content through the admin dashboard.

  • Users

    Multi-store admin accounts and role-based permission controls.

  • Customers

    Manage customer info, generate reports, and see buyer activity.

  • Orders

    Edit orders anytime and get the right information for smooth fulfillment.

  • Fulfillment

    Ship from multiple locations, track inventory, and split shipments.

  • Reporting

    Monitor your store's performance to ensure you have visibility across the business.

  • Storefronts

    Swell storefronts are fully customizable, allowing you to create just the right experience.

  • Checkouts

    Use our hosted checkout, integrate with a partner, or build a custom flow.

  • Payments

    Connect multiple gateways simultaneously, store cards, and split payments.

  • Internationalization

    Go global with region-specific languages, pricing, and payment methods.

No-code integrations

Connect with 40+ services for marketing, payments, fulfillment, automation, and more.

See all integrations →

Use Cases

  • Direct-to-consumer

    Tell your story and give customers a unique shopping experience

  • Subscriptions

    Sell personalized subscription bundles, memberships, and one-time items together

  • B2B/B2C

    Support retail and wholesale customers from one catalog and dashboard

  • Marketplaces

    Create a B2B or B2C marketplace with multi-vendor carts and split payouts

Customer Stories

  • Spinn Coffee

    A coffee revolution sparked by a connected machine and marketplace

  • Smashing magazine

    Global tax and shipping for complex product bundles

  • Infinitas Learning

    Delievering leading educational experiences in Europe

All customer stories →

Documentation

  • Quickstart

  • Backend API reference

  • Frontend API reference

  • Guides

  • Core concepts

  • Storefronts

Community

  • GitHub

  • Discussion forum

  • Changelog

  • API status

Resources

  • Help Center

    The latest industry news, updates and info.

  • Customer stories

    Learn how our customers are making big changes.

  • Become a partner

    For agencies creating innovative commerce experiences.

  • Changelog

  • API Status

  • Contact us

Blog

Presenting Swell at Netlify Headless Commerce Summit 2021

During the spring of 2021 Swell hosted a live lounge at Netlify's Headless Commerce Summit. In this post, we recap our experience demoing awesome new features such as out-of-the-box tools, a two-sided marketplace, and our custom model editor.

July 27, 2021

About Netlify Headless Commerce Summit

Netlify's Headless Commerce Summit is aimed to expand the knowledge of technologists, key decision-makers, agency partners, and ecommerce experts. This two-day event engages the community to discover new ways to stand out from their competitors.

As a sponsor and contributor, Swell hosted a live lounge and was featured on Netlify's attendee perks page. During our presentation, our team expanded on what makes Swell a leader in the space.

Swell's out of the box tools

Dave Loneragan, Co-Founder of Swell, kicked off our Live Lounge by providing an overview of how Swell’s API-first ecommerce platform is re-shaping the way users think about headless commerce.

He observed that decoupling the front and backend only scratches the surface of what’s possible with the architecture. While enabling infinite customizability, headless doesn't have to mean building from scratch or stitching together a pile of apps and services. Out-of-the-box tools can be provided while allowing the same level of flexibility.

Recollecting the history of Swell, Dave pointed out that Swellians have come from all corners of the ecommerce space, from running stores to developing apps for clients. However, at some point, most users experienced frustration with the limitations of existing platforms. Inflexible backends, hacky workarounds for what-should-have-been common tasks, and a need to build custom solutions from scratch seemed to be the norm.

Swell was built to bridge the gap between the ease-of-use of a SaaS platform and the power of a fully customizable solution. This allowed the support of unconventional shopping experiences and flows like marketplaces and subscriptions. Native support was added for many common workflows, like price rules, subscriptions, and unlimited variants, all within a highly customizable dashboard.

Turning back to JAMstack, Dave noted the ease of deployment of Swell storefronts onto Netlify, writing serverless functions with swell-node (the open-source backend library) and the full suite of webhooks provided by Swell.

Finally, Dave revealed some future development planned around a storefront app marketplace, purchase options, multiple markets, and an open-source checkout. These are all intended to support unique business models with native, turnkey solutions.

Christian Bach netlify co-founder featuring Swell as a partner
Christian Bach, co-founder at netlify, featuring Swell as one of their official partners.

Two-sided marketplace

Next Alex Sagel, Technical Account Manager at Swell, demonstrated how a full two-sided marketplace could be built. He used a mock coffee store as an example. By simply defining buyer and seller customer groups and configuring vendor fields within the Swell dashboard, a single backend could support both B2B and B2C storefronts.

Bonus: audience members were given a first look at the new custom model explorer UI to gain additional insights into the data model.

Read more about custom models →

A look at Swell's custom model editor

To wrap up the session, Greg Hoskin, Solutions Engineer at Swell demonstrated the new custom model editor. This allows customers to create entirely new building blocks within their ecommerce backend, consumable via API across any client. Continuing with the coffee company example, a coffee preference quiz was devised, which presented insights into customers’ coffee preferences.

The new model auto-generated a serviceable endpoint, with fields linked to customers’ accounts and their quiz responses. This example revealed that data models of any type could be added to the Swell ecommerce backend, and help employ a truly headless solution to future-proof any business.

We hope you enjoyed getting caught up on the Netlify Headless Commerce Summit and encourage you to check out our product demo showcasing Swell’s new custom models and fields feature.

See the full demo below.

Next-level commerce for everyone.

X.comGitHubLinkedIn

Subscribe to our newsletter for product updates and stories

Subscribe

Resources

Help CenterDeveloper CenterCommunityAgenciesChangelog

Use cases

SubscriptionsB2B WholesaleMarketplaceOmnichannelDirect-to-consumer

Explore

FeaturesPricingIntegrationsCustomer stories

Developers

OverviewDocumentationGuidesStorefrontsHeadlessSwell Apps

Company

About usPartners

© 2025 Swell. All rights reserved.

Privacy PolicyTerms of Service