Medusa

Medusa is a developer-focused, modular commerce platform for building custom online stores and marketplaces. It provides a ready-made commerce backend (products, carts, checkout, orders, customers, taxes, shipping, payments) that can be extended through modules and integrations while allowing full control over the storefront.

Key Features

• Modular architecture with pluggable modules and integrations (payments, shipping, tax, fulfillment, etc.)
• Headless APIs for commerce resources (store, admin) designed for custom storefronts
• Admin dashboard for managing products, orders, customers, inventory, and promotions
• Extensible data model and business logic via customizations and plugins
• Multi-region / multi-currency support for international selling
• Promotion/discount tooling (e.g., discount codes and rules)
• Cart and checkout primitives with payment provider integrations
• Event-driven workflows/hooks for extending core commerce flows

Use Cases

• Build a fully custom headless storefront (Next.js/React/Vue) backed by a commerce API
• Implement B2B or marketplace-like commerce flows requiring custom logic and integrations
• Create a commerce backend for multiple storefront channels (web, mobile, POS)

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires engineering effort to assemble a full solution (storefront, hosting, integrations) compared to all-in-one SaaS platforms
• Some advanced enterprise features may depend on specific modules/integrations or custom development

Medusa fits teams that want a flexible commerce core without being locked into a hosted SaaS. Its modular approach makes it suitable for bespoke commerce implementations that need to evolve over time.