Migrating from Adobe Commerce to Swell - A Complete Guide

For merchants wrestling with Adobe Commerce's complexity, high licensing costs, and lengthy implementation timelines, headless commerce platforms offer a practical alternative. Adobe Commerce's architectural overhead—requiring 5-10+ developers for maintenance, demanding 3-6 month implementations, and carrying enterprise-tier licensing costs—drives growing brands toward API-first solutions purpose-built for agility. Swell addresses these limitations with rapid deployment, native subscription billing, and full API access that enables 1-3 developer teams to manage complete commerce operations.

The migration from Adobe Commerce requires systematic planning, but the payoff shows up in reduced total cost of ownership, faster time-to-market, and infrastructure that scales without requiring enterprise-level investment. With Adobe Commerce holding 2.32% market share and legacy platforms facing growing competition from modern headless architectures, merchants have clear incentive to evaluate purpose-built alternatives.

Key Takeaways

• Adobe Commerce's 3-6 month implementation cycles and team requirements of 5-10+ developers contrast sharply with Swell's 2-4 week implementations manageable by small development teams
• Swell's native subscription engine eliminates dependency on third-party extensions, providing built-in recurring billing, dunning management, and customer self-service without additional costs
• 43% of companies experience disruptions or data loss during migration without proper planning—pre-migration audits determine success more than store complexity
• Swell's API-first architecture means the same API powering the dashboard is available to developers, enabling custom storefronts in React, Vue, Next.js, or any JavaScript framework
• Merchants migrating from Adobe Commerce gain unlimited product variants and custom attributes, removing the modeling constraints that force workarounds on legacy platforms

Understanding the Shift: Why Modern Retailers Choose Swell Over Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) launched in 2008 and was Adobe's 2018 acquisition. The platform built its reputation on enterprise-grade capabilities and deep customization, but that power comes with significant overhead that mid-market businesses increasingly question.

The Limitations of Traditional Platforms

Adobe Commerce's primary challenge isn't capability—it's accessibility. The platform demands substantial technical resources: 5-10+ developers for ongoing maintenance, specialized Magento expertise, and dedicated infrastructure management for on-premise deployments.

Implementation timelines reflect this complexity. While Swell merchants report launching in under a month, Adobe Commerce projects typically span 3-6 months for comparable functionality. One Swell customer noted: "We were able to launch pretty quickly, much sooner than I expected... we got Swell working for us in under a month."

Industry analysis identifies Adobe Commerce as having a high degree of complexity with considerable development costs to manage that complexity. For businesses below enterprise scale, this overhead consumes resources better deployed elsewhere.

Swell's Vision for Future-Proof Commerce

Swell's architecture starts with a different premise: the same API powering the admin dashboard should be available to developers. This API-first design means anything possible through the interface can be replicated, customized, or extended through code.

The platform philosophy centers on three principles:

• Data-centric: Merchants control data modeling and API access
• Flexible: Adaptable to new technologies and business models
• Future-proof: Scale from single product validation to global millions without re-platforming

This approach delivers what customer reviews consistently highlight: "The workflow has clearly been optimized and built for devs which is a world away when working with other ecommerce platforms."

Swell's Core Strengths: Unpacking the API-First Advantage and Built-in Features

The differences between Adobe Commerce and Swell extend beyond marketing claims into concrete operational impacts.

The Power of a Unified API

Swell provides two API access points: the Backend API with full CRUD access using secret key authentication, and the Frontend API for browser-based operations with public key authentication. Both follow RESTful conventions with consistent behavior across endpoints.

The developer console built into the dashboard enables testing API calls, viewing request/response logs, and troubleshooting integration issues directly in the browser. This accessibility contrasts with Adobe Commerce's steeper learning curve for API implementation.

Beyond Third-Party Apps: Swell's Native Solutions

Adobe Commerce's 4,000+ extension marketplace offers solutions for virtually any use case—but adds complexity, ongoing costs, and integration challenges. Swell builds common requirements directly into the platform:

Native to Swell (no extension needed):

• Subscription billing with flexible intervals, dunning management, and customer self-service
• Unlimited product variants with custom attributes
• Multi-level navigation menus
• Customer group-based pricing
• Product bundling with individual inventory tracking
• Order editing post-purchase

The native subscription engine works with any connected payment gateway through Swell's encrypted card vault. Unlike third-party subscription extensions that add fees and create integration complexity, subscription management integrates directly with checkout and customer data.

Enhanced Control with the Admin Dashboard

Swell's admin dashboard provides customizable views and role-based permissions without requiring enterprise-tier pricing. Non-technical team members can manage products, orders, and customers while developers focus on custom implementations.

The model editor accessible through both dashboard and API enables creating custom data structures for business-specific needs—functionality that often requires significant development investment on Adobe Commerce.

Seamless Transition: Mapping Your Adobe Commerce Data to Swell

Most migration issues trace back to incomplete planning. Proper upfront work prevents the disruptions and data loss that affect poorly planned migrations.

Preparing Your Data for Migration

Export your complete Adobe Commerce catalog and analyze data structures. Key elements to map:

• Product attributes and custom fields → Swell custom fields
• Customer groups and pricing tiers → Native customer group pricing
• Subscription data (if using extensions) → Native subscription billing
• Order history and customer records → Standard import process

Swell's CSV import/export handles bulk product management, while the API enables programmatic data migration for complex catalogs.

Product Variants and Attributes: Unlimited Possibilities

Adobe Commerce offers more flexibility than some platforms, but Swell removes restrictions entirely. Customer reviews highlight this as a key differentiator: "Unbeatable price compared to other expensive enterprise ecommerce software on the market" combined with unlimited product modeling.

Custom fields work across all data models—products, customers, orders, and carts. A B2B wholesaler might add fields for net payment terms, a subscription business could track preferences, and a marketplace could manage vendor-specific metadata—all native to the platform.

Building Your New Storefront: Headless Development and Theme Compatibility

Swell offers implementation paths suited to different technical capabilities and timeline requirements.

Choosing Your Development Path: Hosted or Fully Headless

The hosted storefront solution with visual theme editor and modular content blocks enables launching without custom development. Pre-built themes provide responsive designs optimized for conversion.

For complete control, custom headless builds connect via the Frontend API. Popular frameworks include:

• Next.js – Server-side rendering with React ecosystem
• React – Component-based UIs
• Vue – Progressive framework with intuitive syntax
• Svelte – Compiled components with minimal runtime

Headless storefronts can deploy anywhere: Vercel, Netlify, AWS, or custom infrastructure. This flexibility enables performance optimization difficult to achieve with monolithic platforms.

Connecting Multiple Touchpoints with a Single Backend

Swell's architecture supports connecting multiple customer touchpoints—web, mobile apps, IoT devices—to a single commerce backend. This enables consistent experiences across channels without duplicating product catalogs, inventory, or customer data.

The same API powering your website can serve a mobile app, in-store kiosk, or connected device, with all transactions flowing through unified order management.

Streamlining Operations: Payments, Subscriptions, and International Commerce

Swell's payment infrastructure provides competitive transaction structures while supporting comprehensive gateway options.

Flexible Payment Solutions for Every Business Model

Payment gateway setup connects existing processor accounts to Swell. Supported gateways include Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.Net, and Amazon Pay, all processing through Swell's unified payment abstraction layer.

Buy Now Pay Later options integrate natively: Affirm for consumer financing, Klarna for flexible payment plans, and Resolve for B2B net terms.

Subscription Automation and Customer Retention

Subscription plan creation happens through the dashboard or API. Define billing intervals, separate invoicing and fulfillment schedules, and configure trial periods.

Customer self-service features reduce support burden:

• Pause/resume subscriptions
• Update payment methods
• Change shipping addresses
• Upgrade/downgrade with prorated invoicing

Automatic payment retry with configurable dunning rules reduces involuntary churn by retrying failed charges intelligently.

Operating in Global Markets

Multi-currency functionality supports 230 currencies with explicit pricing rules or automatic exchange rate conversion. Multi-language support handles 170 languages for all customer-facing content.

Tax calculation integrates with Avalara AvaTax and TaxJar for region-specific compliance, with support for custom tax rule groups by location and product type.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Swell's Transaction Fees and Pricing Structure

Understanding true platform costs requires looking beyond licensing fees to implementation, maintenance, and scaling expenses.

Total Cost of Ownership Considerations

Adobe Commerce's enterprise focus means high yearly costs suited primarily for large or global enterprise clients. Swell's pricing scales with business size, offering tiers designed to match different revenue levels.

Key cost factors when comparing platforms:

• Implementation costs: Swell's 2-4 week implementations versus Adobe Commerce's 3-6 month projects
• Team requirements: 1-3 developers versus 5-10+ developers
• Extension dependencies: Native features versus paid extensions
• Hosting management: Included SaaS versus self-managed or cloud fees

Swell earns a 5.0/5 value rating on Capterra, reflecting the platform's competitive positioning for mid-market businesses.

The Case for Competitive Transaction Structures

Swell's transaction fee structure is designed to be favorable for growing businesses. While revenue-based fees apply above certain thresholds on each plan, the overall cost structure remains competitive compared to other platforms' percentage-based transaction fees.

Combined with eliminated extension costs for subscriptions, product options, and advanced shipping, overall platform costs can be substantially lower than enterprise alternatives with necessary add-ons.

Developer Experience: APIs, Webhooks, and Integration Ecosystem

Swell's architecture prioritizes developer productivity with modern tooling and comprehensive API access.

Empowering Developers with Full API Access

The Backend API provides full CRUD access to all data models with secret key authentication—use it for server-side operations, data migrations, and admin tools. The Frontend API handles customer-facing operations with public key authentication.

One reviewer captured the difference: "We didn't need an entire team of devs on hand to continuously maintain and operate" the platform.

Real-time Event Notifications with Webhooks

Webhooks fire notifications when events occur—order placed, subscription renewed, payment failed, inventory depleted. Custom shipping and tax calculations can run via webhook, enabling complete control over critical checkout components.

Building a Connected Commerce Stack

Native integrations include Klaviyo for email marketing, ShipStation for fulfillment, and Contentful for headless CMS. The Custom Swell Apps framework enables building bespoke extensions for unique operational needs.

Success Stories: Merchants Thriving After Migrating to Swell

Real-world migrations demonstrate the tangible benefits of moving to Swell's architecture.

Complex Products, Simple Solutions: THE RAYY's Jewelry Journey

THE RAYY, a fine jewelry brand, migrated from BigCommerce because headless architecture was required for their unique customer experience. Key requirements included:

• Unlimited custom product options for personalized engravings
• Multi-currency pricing (EUR, USD, CHF) for international customers
• Worldwide tax rule groups for compliance
• Complex product modeling for jewelry configurations

The migration eliminated architectural constraints preventing the brand from delivering its intended customer experience.

Scaling with Subscriptions: Spinn Coffee's Marketplace Model

Spinn Coffee built a DTC marketplace connected to a mobile app and IoT coffee brewer, enabling customers to purchase coffee from multiple roasters with flexible subscription scheduling. As Spinn noted: "Swell has been like a spring for Spinn, allowing us to efficiently grow and scale."

From Legacy to Leading Edge: Velobici's Global Reach

Velobici, a cycling apparel brand, implemented product bundling for cycling kit sales—75% of their revenue comes from bundles. They also added multi-currency pricing across 17 currencies and multi-language storefronts. The brand migrated from WooCommerce due to poor UI, difficult stock management, and plugin complexity.

Support, Reliability, and Future Scaling: Swell's Long-Term Commitment

Platform stability and support accessibility matter as much as features for migration decisions.

Ensuring Business Continuity with High Availability

Swell reports 99.963% overall platform uptime. Backend API maintains 99.85% uptime (90-day average), while Frontend API, Dashboard, and Hosted Checkout maintain 100% uptime over the same period.

Infrastructure uses a combination of bare metal servers and cloud providers for performance and scalability during traffic spikes.

Accessing Expert Help: Support Tiers and Developer Resources

Email and chat support comes standard across all plans. Priority support starts at mid-tier plans, with developer support available on higher tiers. Documentation includes developer docs, help center guides, and integration setup instructions.

The agency partner program connects merchants with development shops experienced in building Swell implementations.

Preparing for Growth: Scalability and Future Roadmap

Swell's pricing structure supports growth without re-platforming. A business can start on entry-level plans and scale through higher tiers as revenue grows, with each tier offering increased limits and capabilities.

Test environments separate from live stores support development and QA workflows. Role-based permissions enable team collaboration as organizations grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I evaluate whether Adobe Commerce or Swell is right for my business size?

The decision often comes down to resource availability and complexity requirements. Adobe Commerce's 315,000+ developers and extensive partner network serve enterprises with dedicated technical teams and budgets for 3-6 month implementations. Swell targets mid-market businesses seeking enterprise-grade capabilities without enterprise overhead. If your team has 1-5 developers and needs to launch in weeks rather than months, Swell's architecture likely fits better. Adobe Commerce may still suit businesses requiring deep Adobe Experience Cloud integration or highly specialized B2B workflows beyond basic wholesale.

What Adobe Commerce extensions become unnecessary after migrating to Swell?

Common Adobe Commerce extensions that Swell replaces natively include subscription and recurring billing modules, advanced product options managers, customer group pricing extensions, multi-level menu builders, product bundling tools, and order editing utilities. Evaluate your current extension stack and calculate annual costs—these savings factor into total cost of ownership comparisons. Some specialized extensions (ERP integrations, industry-specific tools) may need alternative solutions or custom API development.

Can I preserve my existing payment processor relationships when migrating?

Yes. Swell connects to existing Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.Net, and Amazon Pay accounts. You maintain your processor relationship, preserve processing history and negotiated rates, and benefit from Swell's payment abstraction layer. For subscription migrations, payment tokens from compatible gateways can transfer to enable continued billing without customer re-authorization.

How does Swell handle B2B commerce compared to Adobe Commerce's B2B features?

Swell provides native wholesale and B2B capabilities including customer group-based pricing, net payment terms through Resolve integration, and custom fields for B2B-specific data. Adobe Commerce offers more specialized B2B features like quote management, company hierarchies, and requisition lists. For businesses with straightforward B2B requirements (wholesale pricing, customer accounts, net terms), Swell covers core needs. Complex enterprise B2B scenarios with multi-level approval workflows may still favor Adobe Commerce's specialized B2B module.

What's the recommended approach for migrating a large product catalog from Adobe Commerce?

Start with data structure analysis—map Adobe Commerce attributes to Swell custom fields before any export. Use Swell's API for programmatic migration of large catalogs rather than CSV imports. Migrate in phases: products first (no dependencies), then customers, then historical orders. Test with a representative product sample before full migration. Plan for variant restructuring if you're consolidating products previously split due to platform limitations. Allow 2-4 weeks for catalog migration and validation on complex stores.