Custom eCommerce Platforms vs. OTS Software

Clarity can handle any integration challenges you have, whether it means fixing off-the-shelf problems or creating you a new custom eCommerce platform. Off-the-shelf (OTS) is no problem for us. But we’d like to give you some reasons to choose a custom eCommerce solution if you have the option. 

When Clarity started more than 15 years ago, we received many requests from companies who wanted us to start with off-the-shelf software and then customize it to their needs. While that might sound simple at first, we had to create so much new code to get everything to work that we ended up making a sort of Rube Goldberg platform or CRM. 

What All Platforms Need

Nearly every eCommerce platform wants some sort of search. It needs to be fast and smart, and so it needs to have fuzzy logic, fuzzy search, the ability to make suggestions based on what other people are searching for. Other times it can offer specific terms the client will suggest. All of these must come together so that the right tools are suggested but the wrong ones aren’t. If someone is on a site selling tools and they type in “hammer,” someone must decide how many hammers to show them before moving on to the option of a “hammer drill.” 

Other basic features are also needed by nearly every client we work with to create their custom eCommerce platform. These include: 

• Registration 
• Check out 
• Account management 
• Order management 
• Account management 
• Password security 
• Payment information storage 
• Shipping calculation 
• Tax calculation 

While all of these are standard to nearly every platform, it’s still important to have all of these customized so that they work together and do exactly what a business is looking for. Having each separate is also an excellent way to swap out old components with new ones. Generally, we find that 80% of the project might be based on basic “building blocks” that we’ve created over the years, while 20% will need to be heavily customized. 

Custom Platforms vs. OTS eCommerce Options

You won’t be surprised that we prefer creating a custom eCommerce platform for our clients. To tell the truth, we have reason to do so because we’ve worked on trying to customize so many OTS software options. 

• With OTS software, any add-ons you have custom-built might not transfer from one version to the next. Using a custom solution lets you keep the code that works and only write new code for specific needs, not the entire platform.   
• Most OTS software isn’t architected for overridability; they don't want anyone to get in there and mess with it, because they want to be seen as self-contained and present themselves as software where “no one will need anything beyond what we offer.” 
• Clarity’s custom eCommerce solutions ensure that your business will not outgrow the software. For all intents and purposes, it’s infinitely upgradable. 
• We can’t deny it: You can get OTS software up and running fast than you can with a custom solution. It’s off-the-shelf, so it's simpler to start up. But, thanks to Clarity’s building block’s approach, Clarity has discovered that custom eCommerce development services can be up and running faster than ever before. 
• If you choose a SaaS eCommerce platform, you’re at their mercy. When they have an upgrade, you have to upgrade. If you want anything custom, they will simply say no. They’re not going to change anything for one client. 
• Clarity’s approach shows results. Sometimes OTS software will promise it can do something that it can’t. But most companies are already heavily invested by the time they discover what they need is missing. 
• With a lot of the off-the-shelf systems that are open source, you can modify the code and you can extend it, but you end up  having to modify the core code. This means changing the baseline functionality so that, if there is a critical security patch, clients have to wipe away the customizations and redo it in a different way because the system has changed fundamentally Any model that they had in place for making customizations isn't going to preserve. 

Clarity has worked with many off-the-shelf systems, and we can still perform integrations with them. But when a client brings a brand-new project to us and suggests an OTS software, we have to make it very clear about the limitations they might experience.  

Interestingly, Clarity didn’t start off with the idea of building what our clients needed from the ground up. We started with eCommerce custom development software that took existing software and changed it to meet a client's needs. It only took us a few years to realize that most clients just couldn’t do business as they wanted to without a ground-up build. 

Clarity has created hundreds of custom eCommerce platforms for our clients, and those clients support millions of customers. Many of them realized that the OTS eCommerce framework options just didn’t have the necessary architecture and couldn’t do what they wanted, and Clarity was able to offer them control over what we built for them. Even the hardest challenges are easier to address with a custom eCommerce platform. 

At Clarity, we pride ourselves on taking on the toughest problems that many other eCommerce custom development services pass up. We love building eCommerce platforms and working with old ones so that they perform as optimally as possible. No matter whether you have off-the-shelf software that needs upgrades or want to integrate your existing information to a new platform, we’re ready to help.  

It’s almost certain we’ve already tackled a problem just like yours and can prove it with a demo. We’ve performed C2C, B2C, and B2B eCommerce custom development projects for and extensive array of clients. Contact Clarity today!