Headless or Not? A Plain-English Guide for Salesforce Commerce Buyers

TL;DR - If you're a small, growing business that needs to start selling online quickly and doesn't have developers in-house, start with Salesforce's ready-made storefront (Lightning Web Runtime, or LWR, for B2B and D2C). Your team can run it day to day without writing code.

Go headless when your business needs something the ready-made storefront can't do, and you're prepared to keep developers involved for the long term. Headless gives you the freedom to build almost anything. The trade-off: every new kind of page becomes a development task, not a drag-and-drop job.

Modular and headless in plain English

Every online store has two halves: the shop window customers see, and the engine behind it that holds products, prices, carts and orders. The three approaches differ in how tightly those halves are joined.

Think of it like housing. Modular is a furnished apartment: move in tomorrow, but the layout is fixed. Modular is the same apartment where you can knock through a wall or swap the kitchen. Headless is building your own house on the same utilities: any design you like, but you need builders for every change.

One important point: in every option, Salesforce still runs your catalog, pricing, promotions and orders. Headless only changes the shop window.

Where React, Next.js and Salesforce fit together

In a typical headless website, two pieces work as a pair. A front end built in React or Next.js draws the pages. A headless platform such as Prismic or Kentico stores the content and serves it to the front end on request. The front end never holds the content itself; it asks the platform for it.

A headless Salesforce Commerce project follows the same pattern. The difference is which platform sits behind the front end: Salesforce Commerce takes the place that Prismic or Kentico would fill. Instead of serving articles and page copy, it serves products, prices, stock, carts, checkout and orders.

There is one gap to plan for. Salesforce Commerce is built around products and orders, not marketing content. Salesforce has a headless content system on its roadmap, but until it arrives, a headless Salesforce store has two ways to manage pages:

• Add a third-party content system. Salesforce Commerce serves the products, and a platform such as Prismic or Kentico serves the page content. Marketers edit pages in the content system without developer help, once developers have set up the page sections. This suits brands that publish campaigns and landing pages often.
• Change pages directly in React. Developers update the pages in code whenever something needs to change. There's no extra license to pay, but every content change waits for a developer, or LLM. This suits stores whose pages rarely change.

Either way, Salesforce Commerce remains the headless platform behind the store; the question is only where page content lives.

What headless gives you, and what it doesn't

Headless gives you the power to build anything. It does not give you the power to build it yourself without developers.

What you gain:

• Any design or buying journey. Product configurators, quick-order screens for trade buyers, or a brand experience that doesn't look like a template.
• Speed. A well-built headless site can load faster, which helps conversion.
• Many channels, one engine. The same products and prices can feed your website, a mobile app, a sales-rep tablet or an in-store screen.
• Freedom to mix tools. Plug in a specialist content system, search tool or personalization service without being limited to what the platform supports.
• Safer changes. Developers can update the shop window without touching the systems that take orders.

What you don't get:

• Drag-and-drop pages by default. On an LWR storefront, a marketer can lay out a new page in Experience Builder. On a headless storefront, layouts are code. Salesforce itself notes that a React site can't be edited in Experience Builder.
• Lower costs. Headless typically costs twice as much to build and 50% more to maintain.

The gap is narrowing. Salesforce now lets merchandisers customize key Storefront Next layouts in Page Designer, so check what your specific edition supports before deciding.

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Content production: who does what

On a modular storefront, marketers configure pages. On a headless storefront, developers first build the building blocks, then marketers configure within them. That shift is the biggest day-to-day difference your team will feel.

The practical advice: if you go headless, budget up front for a content system and the developer time to set up reusable page sections. That investment is what lets marketers keep publishing without raising a ticket for every campaign.

Which businesses need headless, and which don't

Businesses that need headless:

• Brands selling through several channels (website, app, sales-rep tools, in-store screens) from one catalog.
• Manufacturers and distributors with complex buying journeys, such as product configurators or bulk ordering, that templates can't handle.
• Brands where the online experience is the main competitive edge.
• High-traffic stores where page speed measurably affects revenue.

Businesses that would benefit, but don't have to start there:

• Growing D2C brands that want more design freedom than templates allow.
• B2B companies with a working portal who plan a mobile app or customer-specific experiences.

For this group, a modular approach is often best: launch on the standard storefront, then rebuild the pages that matter most as you grow.

Businesses that should start with LWR / modular:

• Small businesses launching their first online store or B2B ordering portal.
• Companies replacing manual ordering by phone, email or spreadsheet.
• Teams with no in-house developers, where day-to-day changes will be made by non-technical staff.
• Anyone who needs to be live in weeks, not months.

A standard storefront can be live fast: ForteNext's Accelerated Commerce Program launches a Salesforce store in one month, starting at $8,988 per month. Choosing it now doesn't lock you out of headless later, because the Salesforce engine underneath stays the same.

At a glance

Not sure where you fit? ForteNext builds with both approaches, from one-month LWR launches to React-based headless storefronts. We'll help you pick the approach that matches your goals, your team and your budget, not the one that sounds most impressive.