Composable Architecture, Picking the Best Tool for Every Job
Most businesses eventually hit the same wall: the all-in-one platform that got them off the ground is now the thing slowing them down.
What is Composable Architecture?
Composable architecture is an approach to your systems that lets you pick the best tool for each job and connect them together, rather than being locked into whatever one platform decides to bundle in. Think of it like building a house from scratch, with all your favourite fittings and finishes rather than buying a starter house, with strict building regulations. Both are still great, one is just tailored to you and your tastes.
Why would your business implement it?
If you've ever been unable to add a payment method a customer wanted, or watched scaling up turn into a full re-platform instead of a simple upgrade, you've already felt the pain composable architecture exists to solve. It's about making sure the systems that your business depends on can evolve at the pace your business needs, instead of the pace your platform allows.
Playing well in the sandbox: How does everything fit together
Composable architecture isn't a single product you buy, it's an approach to connecting the tools you already use, or want to use. None of these pieces need to come from the same vendor, or even talk to each other directly. That's the point. They connect through well-defined APIs, so each one can be upgraded, replaced, or scaled on its own schedule, without a domino effect through the rest of your stack.
Your CMS
A natively headless CMS like Sanity or Payload handles your content and product storytelling, decoupled entirely from how and where it's sold. The Sanity and Shopify partnership is a good real-world example of this pairing in action, with Sanity managing rich content and Shopify handling transactions, synced automatically via API.
Your Commerce Engine
Whether that's Shopify, commercetools, or another platform, this layer owns catalog, cart and checkout and in a composable setup, it doesn't need to also be your content management system, your CRM, or your search engine.
Your PSP
Providers like Stripe or Adyen plug into checkout through a standard interface, which means you can run different providers for different markets without rebuilding checkout logic every time you expand.
The case for a composable CRM
Your CRM is where every customer relationship and interaction lives, making it one of the harder sections to upgrade or change. Which is exactly why it tends to calcify into the same all-in-one trap as everything else: one vendor holding your customer data, your automations, your reporting, and your integrations hostage to their roadmap.
A composable CRM setup flips that. Instead of forcing every team and workflow into one vendor’s set up, you build a CRM layer that pulls from and pushes to the rest of your stack, allowing you to swap out any single piece as your needs change.
In practice, that might look like:
- A CRM core (HubSpot, Salesforce, or a leaner tool) that owns customer records and relationship history, without also trying to be your commerce engine or your CMS.
- Automation and workflow tools sitting on top, so a change to your CRM doesn't mean rebuilding your entire marketing operation.
- Data syncing back and forth with your commerce platform in real time, so sales, support, and marketing are all looking at the same customer, not three different versions of them.
- The freedom to swap in a better-fit tool for one function like customer support, without touching how the rest of the CRM operates.
Anything that you might look for in a traditional CRM, such as marketing automations, personalisation and audience segmentation can all be built into your composable tech stack. The difference is, is that you get to pick and choose what features you want added.
Benefits of a Composable Commerce System
A more flexible stack means less time waiting on developers, less money spent on features you don't use, and more room to grow into new markets and channels without a full rebuild.
No more waiting for Dev time to update features
In a monolithic setup, adding a new checkout flow, a subscription model, or a loyalty program usually means waiting on your core platform's roadmap, because that capability is baked into the same system as everything else, composable commerce treats each of these as its own independent service, so you can plug one in without touching the rest of your storefront.
Your platform no longer holds you back
Monolithic platforms are built to do everything reasonably well, which usually means nothing exceptionally well, and outgrowing even one part has traditionally meant re-platforming the whole business to fix it. Composable architecture lets that one component get replaced or upgraded on its own, while everything else keeps running exactly as it was.
You're not locked into one vendor's roadmap, pricing or priorities
When your CMS, commerce engine, CRM and payments all live inside one platform, you inherit that vendor's pricing changes and feature priorities whether or not they suit your business. Spread across composable, best-of-breed services, a pricing hike or a stalled roadmap from one provider becomes a swap-out, not a crisis.
How has Hatchd used it?
Galvins
As a trade-first business, Galvins needed a commerce platform that could handle the realities of trade ordering, account-based pricing, bulk quantities, and workflows built around tradies rather than typical retail shoppers. Rather than force that complexity into an off-the-shelf checkout, we built a custom commerce architecture around Galvins' specific needs, giving them a trade experience that works the way their customers actually buy, with the flexibility to expand into retail without starting again from scratch.
Take a look at the commerce journey we built for Galvins →