Migrating from Elastic Path to Swell - A Complete Guide

For businesses running on enterprise composable commerce platforms, the complexity that once felt powerful can become a liability. Elastic Path's microservices architecture delivers unlimited customization potential, but that flexibility comes at a cost—extensive development resources, lengthy implementation timelines, and ongoing maintenance overhead that drain budget and bandwidth from growth initiatives. Headless commerce platforms like Swell offer an alternative: API-first architecture with pre-built commerce functionality that delivers 80% of the customization capability with a fraction of the complexity.

The migration path from Elastic Path to Swell represents a strategic simplification rather than a capability downgrade. With 90% of ecommerce platform changes boosting revenue and sales according to recent industry data, the business case for re-platforming has never been clearer—particularly when the target platform eliminates third-party app dependencies for subscriptions, B2B pricing, and content management.

Key Takeaways

• Elastic Path's composable architecture creates significant complexity and cost overhead that mid-market businesses can eliminate by migrating to Swell's managed headless approach
• Migration success depends on following proper data dependencies: products → customers → orders → shipments → subscriptions, with many companies experiencing disruptions when skipping thorough upfront planning
• Swell's native subscription engine, B2B wholesale pricing, and unlimited product attributes eliminate the need for third-party apps and custom Elastic Path Composer integrations
• Properly implemented 301 redirects preserve 90-99% of SEO value, making URL mapping essential before cutover
• Total cost of ownership analysis shows substantial reduction in platform and integration costs when moving from enterprise composable setups to Swell's pre-built headless architecture

Understanding Swell's Headless Commerce Advantage for Your Migration

Elastic Path built its reputation on composable commerce—assembling microservices into custom ecommerce stacks. This approach works for enterprises with dedicated development teams and unlimited budgets. For businesses that need sophisticated features without building everything from scratch, Swell provides a different value proposition.

Why Headless Architecture Matters for Scalable Ecommerce

Headless commerce separates the frontend presentation layer from backend commerce functionality. Both Elastic Path and Swell follow this principle, but their implementations differ fundamentally.

Elastic Path requires assembling individual microservices—product information management, cart, checkout, subscriptions—each requiring separate integration work. Swell delivers these capabilities as a unified platform with consistent APIs across all commerce functions.

The practical difference shows up in development velocity. A feature that takes months to build on Elastic Path—coordinating multiple microservices, managing data consistency, handling authentication across systems—can launch in weeks on Swell using native functionality and consistent API patterns.

Swell's API-First Approach Explained

Swell's architecture starts with a principle Elastic Path developers will appreciate: the same Backend API powering Swell's dashboard and checkout is available to developers. Anything possible in the admin interface can be replicated, customized, or extended through code.

The Frontend API handles browser-based operations with public key authentication—product catalogs, cart management, checkout flows. The Backend API provides full CRUD access with secret key authentication for server-side operations, data migrations, and administrative functions.

This dual-API approach maps cleanly to Elastic Path's frontend/backend separation while eliminating the complexity of coordinating multiple independent microservices.

Leveraging Modern Frameworks for Your New Storefront

Swell supports building storefronts in any JavaScript framework—React, Vue, Svelte, Next.js—connecting to the same commerce backend. For Elastic Path merchants already running custom frontends, this means preserving your frontend architecture investment while simplifying the backend infrastructure.

The platform also offers hosted storefronts with visual editing for merchants wanting faster time to market. This flexibility lets businesses choose their implementation approach based on internal capabilities rather than platform constraints.

Key Differentiators: Swell vs. Traditional Platforms

The decision to migrate from Elastic Path involves understanding what capabilities you gain, retain, or potentially lose in the transition.

Breaking Free from Integration Complexity

Elastic Path Composer—the platform's integration orchestration layer—requires significant setup and maintenance for connecting commerce functionality with marketing, fulfillment, and financial systems. Each integration adds complexity, potential failure points, and ongoing maintenance burden.

Swell's native integrations with platforms like Klaviyo, ShipStation, Avalara, and Contentful eliminate this orchestration layer. Connect services through dashboard configuration rather than custom integration development.

For custom integrations, Swell's webhook system and consistent API patterns make building connections straightforward—without the microservices coordination overhead Elastic Path requires.

Native Functionality vs. App Ecosystems

Swell builds commerce essentials into the core platform rather than requiring third-party additions:

Native to Swell (no app or custom build needed):

• Subscription billing with flexible intervals and dunning
• B2B/wholesale pricing with customer groups
• Product bundling with individual inventory tracking
• Multi-level navigation menus
• Order editing post-purchase
• Unlimited product options and variants

These features that require custom development or third-party services on Elastic Path come standard with Swell, reducing both implementation costs and ongoing maintenance.

Power of Swell's Unified API

Elastic Path's microservices architecture means different APIs for different functions—each with its own authentication, data models, and quirks. Swell's unified API provides consistent patterns across all commerce operations.

The model editor accessible through both dashboard and API lets merchants create custom data structures for business-specific needs. Custom fields work across all standard models—products, orders, customers, carts—enabling data flexibility without custom database work.

Navigating Data Migration: Products, Customers, and Orders

The technical migration process follows a specific sequence based on data dependencies. Understanding this sequence prevents the cascading issues that cause migration disruptions.

Strategies for Seamless Product Data Transfer

Export your complete product catalog from Elastic Path and prepare for transformation to Swell's format. Key considerations:

• Product titles, descriptions, and SKUs map directly
• Elastic Path's complex product hierarchies may simplify on Swell
• Custom product attributes transfer to Swell custom fields
• Variant structures can expand beyond Elastic Path's configuration

Swell's migration endpoint supports batch imports with $migrate: true flag, allowing you to preserve original IDs and timestamps. Limit batches to 500-1,000 records to avoid timeout issues on large catalogs.

Migrating Customer Accounts and Order History

Customer migration preserves the relationships that drive repeat business. Export complete customer data including:

• Contact information and addresses
• Account creation dates
• Customer groups and tags (map to Swell customer groups)
• Custom attributes (map to Swell custom fields)

Passwords require special handling—Swell accepts bcrypt-encrypted passwords for seamless login continuity. If your Elastic Path setup uses different encryption, plan for customer password resets on first login.

Order history maintains context for customer service and lifetime value analysis. Swell's MongoDB ObjectId format allows importing compatible primary keys directly, maintaining reference integrity across products, customers, and orders.

Leveraging Swell's API for Complex Data Structures

Elastic Path's flexible data modeling may include custom entities beyond standard commerce objects. Swell handles this through custom models created via the model editor or API.

Audit your Elastic Path custom models and plan their Swell equivalents:

• Standard commerce data maps to Swell's native models with custom fields
• Business-specific entities can become custom Swell models
• Complex relationships may simplify when native features replace custom builds

Document your data mapping thoroughly before beginning migration—proper planning prevents the data integrity issues that derail migrations.

Rebuilding Your Storefront: Design and Development on Swell

Storefront development often determines migration timeline more than data transfer. Swell offers multiple paths based on your team's capabilities and timeline requirements.

Utilizing Swell's Hosted Storefront Features

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

For Elastic Path merchants running complex custom storefronts, this option provides a faster path to market while your team develops custom implementations. Launch on hosted storefronts, validate the migration, then transition to headless builds on your timeline.

Customizing Your Frontend with Headless Capabilities

Custom headless builds connect to Swell via the Frontend API using your preferred framework. Popular choices include:

• Next.js – Server-side rendering with React ecosystem
• Vue – Progressive framework with intuitive patterns
• React – Component-based architecture with extensive libraries
• Svelte – Compiled components with minimal runtime

Swell's developer documentation provides starter templates handling authentication, cart management, and checkout flows—accelerating development compared to building from scratch against Elastic Path's microservices.

Adopting Modern Technologies for Faster Stores

Headless architectures enable deployment as static sites behind global CDNs, delivering performance difficult to achieve with monolithic platforms. Swell's infrastructure uses a combination of bare metal servers and cloud providers optimized for handling traffic spikes.

Performance optimization tactics that work with Swell's architecture:

• Static site generation for instant page loads
• Edge caching through CDN deployment
• Image optimization via Swell's media CDN with transformation capabilities
• API response optimization by requesting only needed fields

Managing Subscriptions, Payments, and International Commerce Post-Migration

These operational areas often require the most planning, particularly for businesses with active subscribers or international customers.

Streamlining Subscription Management with Native Tools

Swell's native subscription engine eliminates third-party app dependencies that create integration complexity on other platforms. Core capabilities include:

• Flexible billing intervals (monthly, yearly, custom)
• Separate invoicing from fulfillment schedules
• Mixed cart support (subscription + one-time products)
• Customer self-service (pause/resume, plan changes)
• Automatic payment retry with configurable dunning rules

For Elastic Path merchants running subscriptions through third-party services, migration to Swell's native system simplifies the architecture while maintaining full functionality.

Do not use the $migrate: true flag when importing subscriptions—they rely on subsequent events to set up billing automation correctly.

Globalizing Your Store with Multi-Currency and Multi-Language Support

Swell processes payments across over 135 currencies with two pricing approaches: explicit pricing per currency or automatic exchange rate conversion. Multi-currency functionality includes pricing rules for products, shipping, and discounts per currency.

Multi-language support across 170 languages handles field-level translation for all customer-facing content—products, categories, checkout, and email notifications—through the admin dashboard or API.

Securing Payments and Reducing Churn

Payment gateway setup connects your existing processor accounts—Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.Net, Amazon Pay. The encrypted card vault enables native subscription billing with any connected gateway.

Tax calculation integrates with Avalara and TaxJar for region-specific compliance, simplifying the tax automation that often requires custom development on Elastic Path.

Developer Experience: APIs, Integrations, and Customizations on Swell

Developers accustomed to Elastic Path's API-first approach will find familiar patterns in Swell—with significantly reduced complexity.

Empowering Your Development Team with Swell's APIs

The Backend API provides full CRUD access to all data models with consistent patterns across endpoints. The developer console built into the dashboard lets you test API calls, view request/response logs, and troubleshoot integration issues without leaving the browser.

Webhooks fire real-time notifications when events occur—order placed, subscription renewed, payment failed. Custom shipping and tax calculations can run via webhook, allowing complete control over these critical checkout components.

Extending Functionality Through Native Integrations

Swell's integration ecosystem includes 40+ native connections to essential commerce services:

• Email marketing: Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend
• Fulfillment: ShipStation, EasyPost
• Tax automation: Avalara, TaxJar
• Search: Algolia
• CMS: Contentful, Builder.io

For integrations not available natively, Zapier connects Swell to 5,000+ apps through no-code automation.

Migrating Existing Integrations and Workflows to Swell

Elastic Path Composer integrations don't transfer directly—they require rebuilding for Swell's architecture. The good news: many become unnecessary when native features replace custom builds.

Reconnecting Your Tech Stack

Audit your Elastic Path Composer flows and categorize by function:

Native replacements available:

• Subscription billing orchestration → Swell native subscriptions
• B2B pricing rules → Swell customer groups
• Tax calculation routing → Swell Avalara/TaxJar integration

Rebuild required:

• Custom ERP/OMS connections → Swell webhooks + API
• Proprietary fulfillment integrations → Custom development or middleware

Budget appropriately for integration rebuilds—this work often represents the largest variable cost in migrations from composable platforms.

Post-Migration: Optimizing Performance and Scaling with Swell

Migration completion marks the beginning of optimization. Swell's architecture supports growth without re-platforming—a core advantage over platforms that force enterprise upgrades at scale thresholds.

Leveraging Swell's Infrastructure for Robust Performance

Swell reports overall uptime with Backend API, Frontend API, Dashboard, and Hosted Checkout maintaining high availability. Infrastructure uses a combination of bare metal servers and cloud providers optimized for performance during traffic spikes.

Media delivery through global CDN with image transformation capabilities ensures fast asset loading worldwide. Test environments separate from live stores enable development and QA workflows without production risk.

Scaling Your Business Without Re-platforming

Swell's platform architecture scales with business growth, supporting merchants from validation through substantial revenue. Higher tiers provide increased API request limits, additional admin users, and advanced features like role-based permissions and priority support.

For Velobici, migration to Swell enabled product bundling for cycling kit sales—75% of revenue comes from bundles—across 17 currencies. The complexity that required plugin workarounds on their previous platform became native functionality.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the primary reasons to migrate from Elastic Path to Swell?

The most common drivers include reducing platform complexity and total cost of ownership. Elastic Path's composable architecture requires significant development resources for features that come native to Swell—subscriptions, B2B pricing, product bundling. The migration makes sense when the development backlog stretches months for basic feature requests, when Composer integration maintenance consumes disproportionate resources, or when platform costs exceed the value of unlimited customization potential.

How does Swell's headless architecture simplify the migration process?

Swell's unified API contrasts with Elastic Path's microservices approach by providing consistent patterns across all commerce operations instead of coordinating multiple independent services. The migration endpoint handles bulk imports with original ID preservation, and data dependencies are clear: products first (no dependencies), then customers, then orders (require product and customer IDs). This consistency reduces the coordination complexity that makes Elastic Path migrations challenging.

Can existing Elastic Path integrations be easily reconnected with Swell?

Direct reconnection isn't possible—Elastic Path Composer flows require rebuilding for Swell's architecture. However, many integrations become unnecessary when native features replace custom builds including subscription orchestration, B2B pricing rules, and tax calculation routing which all have native Swell equivalents. For remaining custom integrations, Swell's webhook system and consistent API patterns make rebuilding straightforward, though native feature replacement often offsets rebuild costs.

What kind of support is available during and after migration to Swell?

Support levels scale with plan tiers, from email and chat support on entry-level plans to priority support and developer assistance on higher tiers, with enterprise plans including dedicated support with custom SLAs. For complex migrations, Swell's agency partner network provides implementation services—useful for businesses lacking internal development resources. Post-migration, the developer console, comprehensive API documentation, and help center support ongoing operations.

What data points should I prioritize when planning my migration to Swell?

Active subscriptions require the most careful handling—billing schedules must sync precisely to avoid customer disruption, so export complete subscription data including next charge dates, billing frequencies, and payment tokens before beginning. Customer data with purchase history supports lifetime value analysis and personalized marketing, while product catalogs with complete variant and pricing information enable consistent customer experience. Order history provides context for customer service, and planning URL redirects for SEO preservation is essential since missing redirects cause ranking drops that take months to recover.