Why we created Moltin

What is Moltin?

Moltin is a cloud-based eCommerce solution that allows rapid integration of eCommerce functionality such as inventory, shopping carts, and the checkout flow into any website or application through simple and powerful APIs.

Building and maintaining eCommerce sucks

Most developers know from experience that working with leading eCommerce platforms is a complicated and tiresome process full of potential pitfalls.

With constant painful maintenance, bloated code bases and inflexibility, it’s probably no surprise that eCommerce development has come to be seen as costly and problematic for everyone involved.

What needed to change

Many downloaded platforms are feature packed, but simple updates become a minefield of time, resources and money.

Cloud-based solutions, such as Shopify, alleviate some of these maintenance issues but come with their own restrictions: when extending these platforms with features beyond their limited core offering, store owners and developers are often forced to turn to the add-on marketplaces, only then realizing that the monthly pricing model quickly results in costly subscriptions.

To overcome these issues we turned to an often overlooked methodology in eCommerce: the potential of the API first approach.

The Holy Grail of eCommerce

At Moltin, we didn’t just want to build a platform for one language. We saw that building an API could offer so much more than that: it would dissolve the barriers between developer communities.

With this approach, our platform extends beyond programming languages, trends and frameworks. Moltin offers the best of both worlds, delivering the customization and flexibility of downloaded solutions with the speed and ease of use that cloud-based platforms provide.

What does this look like?

You only have to take one glance at this code visualization, to see just how few files are actually needed to host a powerful and feature-rich eCommerce site with Moltin. Between Magento 2.0 and our AngularJS storefront, Magento 2.0 has a seriously bloated codebase.

Developers no longer need to concern themselves with database or server setup, maintaining differing versions of the core and other modules. Simply implement the features you need with a few lines of JavaScript, bind the data into your views and you're ready to deploy your site.

Where we are today

After over 18 months of careful development, we’re now rolling out version 1.0 of the Moltin API. We’ve boiled down hundreds of eCommerce features to a handful of API endpoints.

We wanted to offer a truly flexible API, allowing developers to take control of the data structures. Flows our custom EAV infrastructure, allows individual stores to extend existing data sets and add new ones, giving you a solution which is truly customizable, fitting even the most complex structural needs.

We know that this is the solution everyone has been searching for, developers come to us every day and ask “is this really what I think it is”... the short answer is YES! We are finally able to deliver to developers the tools they deserve, removing many of the eCommerce headaches so many of us experience every day.

We hope you’ll join us in discovering how much easier and enjoyable eCommerce development can be.

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