Vendure

Vendure is a fully‑featured, headless e‑commerce platform that delivers an API‑first experience built on modern TypeScript tooling. At its core, Vendure exposes a GraphQL schema that models every commerce concept—products, orders, customers, shipping, payments—and can be consumed by any frontend or mobile client. The platform is engineered for enterprise‑grade scalability, leveraging NestJS’s modular architecture and TypeORM (or Prisma) to interface with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MariaDB. This tight coupling of GraphQL and a robust ORM allows developers to write type‑safe queries while benefiting from automatic migrations, eager loading, and fine‑grained permission control.

Architecture

• Runtime: Node.js (v18+) powered by NestJS, which provides dependency injection, middleware support, and a modular plugin system.
• Language: TypeScript across the stack, ensuring compile‑time safety and rich IntelliSense for developers.
• Data Layer: TypeORM (or Prisma) with support for PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, and SQLite. The schema is generated from a declarative model definition that can be extended via plugins.
• API Layer: GraphQL (Apollo Server) with a fully typed schema, auto‑generated resolvers, and support for subscriptions.
• Admin UI: A Vue 3 + Vuetify dashboard that communicates with the same GraphQL endpoint, offering CRUD operations, analytics, and workflow management out of the box.
• Extensibility: A plugin SDK exposes lifecycle hooks, custom services, and GraphQL extensions, allowing developers to inject business logic without touching core code.

Core Capabilities

• Customizable Business Logic: Through the plugin API, developers can replace or augment checkout flows, pricing rules, inventory management, and fulfillment strategies.
• Multi‑Channel & Internationalization: Built‑in support for multiple currencies, locales, and shipping methods. The data model separates channel configuration from product definitions.
• Webhooks & Events: An event bus exposes hooks for order creation, payment updates, and inventory changes, which can be consumed by external services or micro‑components.
• Security & Permissions: Role‑based access control (RBAC) is enforced at the GraphQL resolver level, with granular permissions for admins, vendors, and customers.

Deployment & Infrastructure

Vendure is designed to run anywhere Node.js runs. It can be deployed as a single container, orchestrated with Docker Compose or Kubernetes, and scaled horizontally behind a load balancer. The database is the single source of truth; the application itself is stateless, making it trivial to roll out zero‑downtime updates. For CI/CD pipelines, the project ships with Dockerfiles and Helm charts that integrate seamlessly with GitHub Actions or GitLab CI.

Integration & Extensibility

• Plugin Marketplace: A curated list of community plugins covers payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal), shipping carriers (UPS, FedEx), and marketing tools (Mailchimp).
• Custom Plugins: Developers can create plugins that expose new GraphQL types, extend existing resolvers, or hook into the request lifecycle. The SDK supports TypeScript generics for type‑safe extensions.
• External APIs: Vendure can act as a data source for headless CMSs (e.g., Strapi) or analytics platforms via GraphQL subscriptions and REST endpoints.

Developer Experience

The documentation is comprehensive, with a clear “Getting Started” guide that walks through installation, schema generation, and plugin creation. The SDK is well‑typed, and the community channels (Discord, GitHub Discussions) provide rapid feedback loops. Since Vendure is open‑source under GPLv3, developers can audit the codebase, contribute improvements, and build proprietary extensions without licensing constraints.

Use Cases

• B2B Platforms: Custom pricing, bulk discounts, and order approval workflows can be modeled through plugins.
• Multi‑Vendor Marketplaces: Separate vendor storefronts share a single backend while maintaining isolated inventories and revenue splits.
• Enterprise D2C Stores: High traffic, global operations with multi‑currency support and advanced analytics are natively supported.

Advantages

Vendure’s performance stems from its lightweight NestJS core and efficient GraphQL queries. Its flexibility is achieved through a plugin‑centric architecture that removes the need for workarounds. Licensing under GPLv3 ensures that companies can self‑host without vendor lock‑in, while still benefiting from a vibrant ecosystem of community plugins. Overall, Vendure offers a developer‑first platform that balances rapid prototyping with the robustness required for large‑scale commerce solutions.