Composable Commerce with Bagisto Headless Commerce and GraphQL

Anikesh Kumar

11 October 2025

Bagisto Headless Commerce is redefining open source headless commerce by offering a high-performance, flexible, and scalable foundation that meets the needs of both developers and businesses.

In this blog, we will explore how it helps brands move beyond traditional eCommerce and embrace composable architecture.

Part 1: Why Modern Commerce Is Changing

1. From Monolithic to Modern: The eCommerce Evolution

A few years ago, most online stores were built on old platforms called monoliths.

Think of a monolith as a single, giant machine. The front part (what customers see) and the back part (where all the business rules are) were glued together.

The Problem:

A small change on the front could break the whole system.
Updates took a very long time.
It was hard for developers to try new things.

To fix this, the world moved to Headless Commerce and then to Composable Commerce.

2. What is Headless Commerce?

In simple words, Headless Commerce means separating the “head” (frontend) from the “body” (backend).

The frontend could be anything: a website, mobile app, or even a kiosk.
The backend handles all the business logic — products, customers, orders, etc.

They communicate through APIs. This makes your store more flexible, scalable and ready for all kinds of digital experiences.

3. What is Composable Commerce?

Composable Commerce takes “headless” one step further. Instead of using one big platform for everything, you choose the best tools for each job:

CMS (Contentful, Strapi) for managing content
Search (Algolia, ElasticSearch) for fast product discovery
Checkout/Payments (Stripe, Razorpay) for transactions
Core Commerce Engine — and this is where Bagisto Headless Commerce comes in!

You compose (build) your perfect online store setup by connecting these best-of-breed services.

4. The MACH Principles (Modern Foundation)

Composable Commerce follows four main principles known as MACH:

M — Microservices: Each feature (cart, catalog, order) works independently.
A — API-first: Everything connects through APIs.
C — Cloud-native: Built to scale easily on the cloud.
H — Headless: Frontend and backend are separate.

These principles make modern commerce flexible, scalable, and fast.

5. Why Bagisto Headless Commerce is Perfect for Composable Commerce

Bagisto Headless Commerce is not just another open-source eCommerce framework — it’s a modern, performance-driven headless stack built to power today’s digital ecommerce experiences.

At its core, Bagisto headless commerce offers a powerful and high-performing GraphQL API that connects your frontend applications with lightning speed and precision.

Developers can fetch, filter, and manage large data efficiently, giving complete control over how information flows between backend services and modern frontend frameworks like Next.js.

A. Built for Performance and Scalability

Bagisto Headless Commerce is engineered for speed through a combination of advanced technologies:

Multi-layered caching ensures faster response times across APIs, assets, and search queries.
FrankenPHP and Swoole boost performance by enabling asynchronous request handling and concurrent execution, allowing our GraphQL API to execute most queries in under 100 ms, even under high traffic conditions
Varnish caching accelerates API response delivery by efficiently handling repetitive requests and reducing backend load.
ElasticSearch enhances search accuracy and response time for complex product catalogs and other data queries.

This multi-tier optimization makes Bagisto Headless Commerce capable of handling large-scale, enterprise-level traffic while keeping resource usage efficient.

B. Modern Frontend Compatibility

Bagisto Headless Commerce uses Next.js natively, the most popular modern frontend framework for headless commerce.
It provides native GraphQL compatibility, allowing frontends to query only the data they need, resulting in faster page loads, smoother user experiences, and improved SEO performance

Whether you’re building a mobile app, POS system, PWA, or a storefront using React, Next.js, or any modern frontend framework, Bagisto Headless Commerce fits perfectly into your composable commerce setup

Part 2: GraphQL — The API Layer for Speed and Flexibility

1. REST vs GraphQL: What’s the Difference?

Traditional APIs use REST, which often sends too much or too little data. This is known as over-fetching and under-fetching.

GraphQL solves this. With GraphQL, you ask for exactly the data you want — nothing more, nothing less.

Example:
If you only want product name and price, GraphQL gives just that.

This saves bandwidth, makes responses faster, and simplifies your code.

2. Bagisto’s Headless Commerce Built-in GraphQL API

Bagisto supports GraphQL out of the box using Laravel Lighthouse.
This makes it super easy for developers to build headless storefronts.

You can query products, categories, users, carts, and more — all through a single endpoint.

3. Quick Setup Guide: Bagisto Headless Commerce GraphQL

Here’s a basic step-by-step guide:

Install the GraphQL package ( Documentation )
Configure your endpoint (usually /graphql).
Test queries with a tool like GraphiQL or Postman.
Start fetching data, like this:

//Endpoint: http://localhost/graphql
allProducts {
  allProducts(
    input: [
      { key: "page", value: "1" },
      { key: "limit", value: "1" }
    ]
  )
  {
    paginatorInfo {
      count currentPage lastPage total
    }
    data {
      id name sku type price urlKey isSaleable
      shortDescription
      images {
        url
      }
      reviews {
        rating comment
      }
      configutableData {
        chooseText
        regularPrice {
          formattedPrice
        }
        variantPrices {
          finalPrice {
            formattedPrice
          }
        }
      }
      booking {
        type qty availableFrom availableTo
      }
    }
  }
}

//Endpoint: http://localhost/graphql

allProducts {

allProducts(

input: [

{ key: "page", value: "1" },

{ key: "limit", value: "1" }

]

)

{

paginatorInfo {

count currentPage lastPage total

}

data {

id name sku type price urlKey isSaleable

shortDescription

images {

url

}

reviews {

rating comment

}

configutableData {

chooseText

regularPrice {

formattedPrice

}

variantPrices {

finalPrice {

formattedPrice

}

booking {

type qty availableFrom availableTo

}

// Response
{
  "id": "306",
  "productNumber": "",
  "sku": "sofa5-variant-5-6",
  "type": "simple",
  "name": "Royal Luxe Leather Sofa",
  "urlKey": "sofa5-variant-5-6",
  "price": 4000,
  "shortDescription": "opulent furniture piece inspired by palace furnishings, characterized by ornate designs, hand-carved wooden frames, rich upholstery like velvet or silk, and intricate details such as tufting or gilding",
  "description": "opulent furniture piece inspired by palace furnishings, characterized by ornate designs, hand-carved wooden frames, rich upholstery like velvet or silk, and intricate details such as tufting or gilding",
  "images": [
    {
      "id": "369",
      "type": "images",
      "path": "product/306/tfRv72TPDugE6AeBm4KIpTYpdUe6ow1noRKYaszo.webp",
      "url": "https://nextjsv2.bagisto.com/storage/product/306/tfRv72TPDugE6AeBm4KIpTYpdUe6ow1noRKYaszo.webp",
      "productId": "306"
    }
  ],
  "videos": [],
  "createdAt": "2025-08-26 17:24:25",
  "updatedAt": "2025-08-26 17:24:25",
  "reviews": [],
  "isSaleable": true,
  "configutableData": {
    "attributes": [],
    "index": [],
    "variantPrices": [],
    "variantImages": [],
    "variantVideos": [],
    "chooseText": null,
    "regularPrice": {
      "formattedPrice": "$4,000.00",
      "price": 4000
    }
  },
  "customizableOptions": [],
  "booking": [],
  "downloadableSamples": []
}

// Response

{

"id": "306",

"productNumber": "",

"sku": "sofa5-variant-5-6",

"type": "simple",

"name": "Royal Luxe Leather Sofa",

"urlKey": "sofa5-variant-5-6",

"price": 4000,

"shortDescription": "opulent furniture piece inspired by palace furnishings, characterized by ornate designs, hand-carved wooden frames, rich upholstery like velvet or silk, and intricate details such as tufting or gilding",

"description": "opulent furniture piece inspired by palace furnishings, characterized by ornate designs, hand-carved wooden frames, rich upholstery like velvet or silk, and intricate details such as tufting or gilding",

"images": [

{

"id": "369",

"type": "images",

"path": "product/306/tfRv72TPDugE6AeBm4KIpTYpdUe6ow1noRKYaszo.webp",

"url": "https://nextjsv2.bagisto.com/storage/product/306/tfRv72TPDugE6AeBm4KIpTYpdUe6ow1noRKYaszo.webp",

"productId": "306"

}

"videos": [],

"createdAt": "2025-08-26 17:24:25",

"updatedAt": "2025-08-26 17:24:25",

"reviews": [],

"isSaleable": true,

"configutableData": {

"attributes": [],

"index": [],

"variantPrices": [],

"variantImages": [],

"variantVideos": [],

"chooseText": null,

"regularPrice": {

"formattedPrice": "$4,000.00",

"price": 4000

}

"customizableOptions": [],

"booking": [],

"downloadableSamples": []

}

You can also mutate data — for example, add a product to the cart or update a user profile.

4. Why Developers Love GraphQL

One endpoint for all data
Faster frontend rendering
Smaller payloads (faster load time)
Works perfectly with frontend frameworks like Next.js.

5. A Powerful Headless Starter Kit: Build in Minutes, Scale Without Limits

Bagisto Headless Commerce comes with a powerful, production-ready Starter Kit, not just a basic setup.
It’s designed to help developers and businesses launch a fully functional eCommerce platform in just minutes — with everything you need to build, scale, and grow.

This isn’t an empty demo — it’s a complete headless commerce foundation, pre-configured with Next.js, GraphQL, and Bagisto’s headless commerce core APIs, so you can start coding your frontend instantly without worrying about backend setup.

With our Starter Kit, you get:

Instant setup — go from zero to a running store in minutes.
Scalability for enterprise — smoothly handle up to 10 million SKUs with ease.
Flexible architecture — supports B2B, B2C, and Marketplace models out of the box.
Pre-integrated solutions — payments, search, shipping, and analytics already wired in.
Battle-tested performance — optimized for high-traffic environments, ensuring consistent uptime and fast responses.

Whether you’re a developer building modern commerce experiences or a business looking to adopt a future-ready stack, Bagisto’s Headless Commerce Starter Kit gives you a strong, scalable foundation to start fast and grow confidently.

👉 Check out the code and demo to experience how easy it is to build your next headless eCommerce with Bagisto Headless Commerce.

Part 3: The Developer and Business Impact

1. Why Developers Love Composable + Bagisto Headless Commerce

Faster development — frontend and backend teams work independently.
Modern tech stack — use Next.js, React or anything you like.
Scalable architecture — handle high traffic easily.
Community-driven — Bagisto’s open source Headless Commerce community is active and growing.

2. The Future of eCommerce with Bagisto Headless Commerce

Bagisto’s headless commerce open source nature and Next.js Foundation make it perfect for innovation.
As more businesses move to headless and composable setups, Bagisto Headless Commerce becomes the reliable open source engine at the heart of it all.

It’s not just about building a store anymore — it’s about creating a connected, flexible commerce experience across web, mobile, social, and beyond.

Conclusion

Composable Commerce + Bagisto Headless + GraphQL is the blueprint for next-generation e-commerce.

It delivers a fast, flexible stack that developers love and the limitless scalability that businesses demand.

Start simple, finish future-ready—that’s the power of Bagisto open source Headless Commerce.