README

A new way to build commerce

We unlock and modularize the core commerce logic trapped within monolithic platforms and give developers the tools to craft unique and rich applications

README.md

We started Medusa because we wanted a better way to build rich digital commerce applications. A way that wasn’t full of hacky workarounds and where we weren’t locked to infrastructure we couldn’t control. The most popular platforms today were built in a time when infrastructure was rigid and where simply having an ecommerce channel gave you an edge. Cloud platforms made it easy to start an e-commerce site and offered the scalability and reliability guarantees required to make online sales the most powerful channel available to consumer businesses. But things have changed a lot.
Digital commerce businesses today need to constantly improve customer experiences and optimize operations to stay competitive. For these purposes, the existing monolithic platforms are becoming a bottleneck, constraining businesses from reaching their goals and forcing developers to build wrong.
The core commerce logic in cloud platforms is trapped behind rigid APIs, making it difficult for developers to build the customizations they want to without accruing large amounts of technical debt. This, in turn, degrades the possibilities for further customizations and eventually brings your commerce stack to a complete halt. Companies that reach this point typically have to go through painful replatforming projects or start building core commerce logic from scratch. Both options are costly, time-consuming and boring.
At Medusa, we want to enable a future where businesses and developers can create the commerce experiences they envision quickly and reliably — without degrading their commerce stack over time. For this to become a reality, developers need better tools. Tools that will replace the tightly coupled platforms used today. It’s our mission to build these tools.
Medusa is a new way to build commerce applications. We have unlocked the logic within commerce platforms to make it reusable in rich customizations and portable to new, modern environments. Our commerce modules ship as open-source packages that can be installed in any Node project. This means developers don’t have to build core commerce logic from scratch, while still being able to extend and modify their applications for bespoke commerce experiences.
You may think that a more modularized approach cannot match cloud platforms' scalability and reliability guarantees. But new infrastructure technologies like serverless and edge workers enable unparalleled performance, reliability, and scale while leaving businesses in complete control of their commerce roadmap. By disintegrating and modularizing commerce, we enable teams to iterate faster and push the boundaries of what digital commerce means.
This new way of building will not be for everyone. Platforms will still have their merits for companies that are just getting started and don’t need customization. Medusa, however, is for brands and companies that want to create new experiences. It is ideal for those with the creativity and expertise to innovate and who believe having control over their commerce stack will give them an edge.
Developers will build these experiences, and we are building Medusa for them.