Talk to us about your ecommerce project.
Tell us your current platform, the catalogue and checkout requirements it can't handle, and the revenue model you're building toward. We'll tell you what we'd build and how.
Ecommerce Software Development Company
Custom ecommerce software for online retailers, subscription businesses, B2B sellers, and marketplace operators who need a platform built around their specific catalogue, checkout, and fulfilment model -- not a Shopify theme or a SaaS plan that covers 80% of the requirement.
When your product configuration, bundle logic, B2B pricing rules, subscription mechanics, or multi-vendor marketplace requirements can't be modelled without significant compromise on a standard platform, we build the system that fits the business rather than the other way around.
Custom ecommerce platforms with product catalogue, checkout, order management, and fulfilment workflows built for your specific inventory model
Multi-vendor marketplace development with seller onboarding, commission management, and payout automation
Headless commerce architecture decoupling your storefront from your backend so content teams and developers work independently
AI personalisation and recommendation engines that increase average order value and repeat purchase rate from your existing traffic
RaftLabs builds custom ecommerce software for online retailers, B2B sellers, marketplace operators, and subscription commerce businesses. We develop custom ecommerce platforms, multi-vendor marketplaces, headless commerce frontends, AI-powered personalisation and recommendation engines, subscription and recurring commerce platforms, and B2B ordering portals. Most ecommerce projects deliver in 10 to 16 weeks at a fixed, agreed cost.
What ecommerce businesses get when they work with us
- Ecommerce and retail businesses served across 8+ markets
- 20+
- Week delivery for ecommerce platforms
- 10-16
- Software products shipped
- 100+
- Cost delivery
- Fixed
When the platform becomes the ceiling
Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento cover standard ecommerce well. They handle product listings, a standard checkout, basic promotions, and a handful of payment gateways. The ceiling appears when the business model requires something the platform wasn't designed to support -- complex product configurations with dozens of interdependent attributes, B2B pricing tiers per account, multi-vendor marketplace logic with seller-specific fulfilment and split payouts, subscription mechanics with custom box curation, or a catalogue size that pushes the platform's performance and API rate limits. At that point, the choice is maintaining expensive developer workarounds that break on every platform update or building a system designed for the actual business model from the start.
We build ecommerce software for businesses at this decision point -- and for businesses that have already reached it after launching on a standard platform. We have built custom ecommerce platforms, multi-vendor marketplaces, headless commerce frontends, subscription commerce systems, and B2B ordering portals. We understand the operational requirements specific to ecommerce: catalogue attribute flexibility, checkout conversion, inventory accuracy across locations, payment processing reliability, and the integration landscape between the ecommerce platform, warehouse management, ERP, and 3PL systems. These are designed into the system from the start, not retrofitted later.
Problems we solve in ecommerce
- 01
Product catalogue complexity forcing custom development work every time a new attribute or variant type is added
SaaS ecommerce platforms define a fixed catalogue structure with a standard set of product attributes and variant types. When the product range includes items with attributes that don't fit the standard structure -- configurable dimensions, interdependent options, custom engraving fields, or industry-specific classification data -- every new product type requires developer involvement to work around the platform's data model. A custom catalogue built around the actual product range removes that constraint and gives merchandising teams the flexibility to add new product types without developer effort.
- 02
Checkout abandonment from a checkout flow built for average buyers rather than your specific customer and order type
Standard checkout flows are designed for a single buyer purchasing a standard product with a standard delivery address and a standard payment method. When the actual customers are B2B buyers on account terms, subscription customers managing recurring orders, or buyers configuring complex products with multiple options, the standard checkout creates friction at the point of purchase. A checkout built for the actual buyer type and order model reduces abandonment and removes the step where the platform's assumptions about the customer don't match reality.
- 03
Inventory and order data split across the ecommerce platform, warehouse system, and ERP with no single source of truth
When an order placed on the ecommerce platform has to be manually entered into the warehouse management system, and the fulfilment status has to be manually synced back to the platform, and the financial data has to be reconciled against the ERP at the end of the month, the process is slow, error-prone, and produces a different version of the truth in each system. An integrated order management layer that connects the ecommerce platform, warehouse system, and ERP gives every team a single accurate view of stock, orders, and fulfilment status in real time.
- 04
B2B customers ordering by phone or email because the ecommerce platform cannot handle account pricing and approval workflows
When B2B customers have negotiated pricing, credit terms, minimum order quantities, and multi-user approval workflows, and the ecommerce platform cannot configure any of these per account, the sales team handles every B2B order manually by phone or email. A B2B ecommerce portal with account-specific pricing, purchase order terms, and buyer approval workflows moves the ordering process online without losing the account-level commercial relationship.
Our ecommerce software development services
Custom ecommerce platforms
What you get
- Custom product catalogue with configurable attributes and variant logic
- Checkout with your specific tax, shipping, and payment rules
- Order management with warehouse and fulfilment integration
- Customer account and order history
- Promotions and discount engine
- Admin for merchandising teams without developer involvement
Best for
- Retailers whose product configuration or catalogue logic cannot be modelled in Shopify without apps
- Businesses replacing WooCommerce or Magento with a maintainable custom platform
- Brands with complex bundle or subscription mechanics that SaaS platforms can't support cleanly
Multi-vendor marketplace development
What you get
- Seller onboarding and verification workflow
- Product listing and catalogue management per seller
- Commission and fee structure configuration
- Order routing to the correct seller
- Split payment and payout automation
- Buyer and seller dispute management
- Marketplace analytics for operators
Best for
- Businesses building a marketplace where multiple sellers list and fulfil independently
- Platforms adding a marketplace model to an existing ecommerce operation
- Industry-specific marketplace operators who need category-specific catalogue structures
Headless commerce architecture
What you get
- API-first backend (commerce engine, product catalogue, cart, checkout) decoupled from the frontend presentation layer
- Custom storefront built in Next.js or another framework of your choice
- Content management integration for marketing teams to update pages without code
- Performance-optimised frontend with fast page loads and Core Web Vitals scores that support organic search
Best for
- Brands with high design and performance requirements that SaaS storefronts cannot meet
- Businesses running multiple storefronts (B2C and B2B, multiple regions) from a single commerce backend
- Retailers whose SEO performance is constrained by their current platform's page speed
AI personalisation and recommendations
What you get
- Product recommendation engine trained on purchase and browse history
- Personalised homepage and category page product ranking
- AI-powered search that handles natural language queries and returns relevant results
- Dynamic pricing recommendations by customer segment and demand signal
- Abandoned cart and browse abandonment recovery with personalised content
Best for
- Ecommerce businesses with enough catalogue depth and traffic that personalised recommendations materially increase conversion
- Retailers whose search returns poor results for non-exact queries
- Businesses using generic email automation that sends the same content to every subscriber
Subscription and recurring commerce
What you get
- Subscription plan management with fixed and build-your-own box options
- Recurring billing with multiple payment methods and smart retry for failed payments
- Subscriber portal for pause, skip, swap, and cancellation self-service
- Churn intervention workflow triggered before a subscriber cancels
- Subscription analytics covering churn rate, lifetime value, and cohort retention
Best for
- Subscription box businesses with box customisation and curation workflows
- DTC brands adding a subscription model alongside one-off purchases
- Businesses with high reorder rates who want to convert repeat buyers into subscribers
B2B ecommerce portals
What you get
- Account-based pricing with customer-specific price lists and discount tiers
- Quote request and approval workflow for large or custom orders
- Minimum order quantity and bulk discount configuration
- Purchase order payment terms including net-30 and net-60
- Multi-user account management with buyer roles and approval limits
- Integration with ERP for inventory and order data
Best for
- Manufacturers and distributors moving from phone and email ordering to a self-service portal
- B2B brands with complex pricing tiers that consumer ecommerce platforms cannot configure
- Businesses with large account customers who need their own pricing, terms, and approval workflows
How we work with ecommerce clients
- 01
Discovery
Map the product catalogue structure, the checkout and fulfilment requirements, the integration landscape (ERP, warehouse, 3PL, payment gateways), and the operational workflows that the platform needs to support. Identify where the current approach -- whether a SaaS platform with workarounds or manual processes -- creates the most friction. Agree scope and produce a fixed-price specification before development begins.
- 02
Architecture
Design the data model around the actual product range and business model: the catalogue attribute structure, the order and fulfilment workflow, the pricing engine (including B2B account pricing if needed), the integration architecture between the ecommerce platform and connected systems, and the admin layer for non-technical teams. Performance requirements for catalogue search and checkout are factored in before code is written.
- 03
Build
Two-week sprints with working software at each checkpoint. Core catalogue, checkout, and order management ships first. Marketplace seller flows, subscription mechanics, AI personalisation, and third-party integrations follow in subsequent sprints. The merchandising admin is built alongside the customer-facing product so both can be tested with real data.
- 04
Launch and Optimisation
Phased go-live starting with a controlled product range or customer cohort before full launch. Monitoring configured for checkout failures, payment errors, inventory sync issues, and order routing problems. Post-launch optimisation covers conversion rate, search relevance, recommendation performance, and integration reliability as order volume grows.
Frequently asked questions
Shopify and WooCommerce handle standard ecommerce well and are the right choice for most businesses launching a direct-to-consumer store with a standard product range. Custom software becomes the right choice when the product catalogue requires attribute types and variant logic the platform cannot model, when B2B pricing tiers and account terms cannot be configured per customer, when the business is building a multi-vendor marketplace with seller-specific fulfilment and commission structures, when subscription mechanics require box customisation the platform cannot support, or when the ecommerce platform's API rate limits and performance characteristics are constraining catalogue size or integration architecture. The decision usually comes at a specific complexity or volume threshold rather than at the start.
Yes. Multi-vendor marketplace development is one of our core ecommerce capabilities. We build the seller onboarding and verification workflow, the per-seller product catalogue and inventory management, the order routing logic that sends each order to the correct seller, and the split payment and payout automation that distributes buyer payments to sellers after commission deduction. We also build the operator admin layer for managing sellers, categories, commission structures, and disputes. The architecture is designed so sellers operate independently -- listing their own products, managing their own inventory, and fulfilling their own orders -- while the marketplace operator has a single view of the entire operation.
Headless commerce decouples the storefront presentation layer from the commerce backend. The frontend is a custom application -- typically built in Next.js -- that fetches product, cart, and checkout data from an API rather than rendering pages through Shopify's or another platform's templating system. The result is a storefront with full control over performance optimisation, page structure, and content management, which typically produces significantly better Core Web Vitals scores than a theme-based storefront. The cost premium over a Shopify theme depends on the scope -- a headless frontend on top of an existing Shopify backend typically runs $25,000 to $60,000 depending on the number of page types and content management requirements, while a full custom headless platform (backend and frontend) sits in the $40,000 to $90,000 range.
A B2B ecommerce portal with account pricing, quote workflow, and ERP integration typically runs $35,000 to $75,000. A custom ecommerce platform covering catalogue, checkout, order management, and fulfilment integration runs $40,000 to $90,000. A multi-vendor marketplace with seller onboarding, commission management, and payout automation runs $60,000 to $120,000. A full ecommerce platform with AI personalisation, recommendation engine, and subscription commerce runs $100,000 to $250,000 or more depending on catalogue size, integration complexity, and the depth of the personalisation layer. Fixed cost is agreed before development starts.
What clients say
What our ecommerce clients say
Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.
Dr. J. Ayo Akinyele
President, Co-Founder
I was pleased with RaftLabs team quality, consistency and execution.
01 / 02
Case studies
Related services
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- Custom Software Development -- Custom ecommerce platforms, marketplace systems, and checkout experiences built for your exact catalogue and revenue model