Are MACH and composable commerce the same in ecommerce?
In sales decks “MACH” and “composable” often collapse into one story, but for a CTO they sit at different levels: MACH is a technical pattern, composable is how you buy and wire best-of-breed services together.
What is MACH in one sentence for a product team?
MACH stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless. In ecommerce it means the commerce core and domain services stay separate from the storefront, everything integrates through APIs, and infrastructure is built for elastic scale and cloud delivery (for example AWS ECS and Docker).
It is not a product badge. You can buy a “composable” bundle that breaks a MACH pillar, or implement a MACH-shaped system mostly on open source instead of ten different SaaS contracts.
What is composable commerce and why does it sound like MACH?
Composable commerce is a buying model: you pick specialised services (search, CMS, personalisation, payments, OMS) and wire them with APIs instead of one monolithic suite.
A serious composable plan names the system of record for price, stock and orders, spells out integration SLAs, and covers observability when five to eight vendors form a chain.
At GMI Software, with 16+ years in market and 120+ delivered systems, we often anchor on MedusaJS v2 for orders and catalogue, then add composable vendors only when there is measurable upside (search, PIM), not to tick RFP buzzwords.
MACH vs composable: a decision table
MACH answers “how we engineer the platform”. Composable answers “how many vendors deliver the capabilities”.
A common failure mode is five composable cards without a shared data model: integration work eats 40-60% of engineering time and every promo needs three vendor tickets.
Pure DIY microservices without a mature commerce core can cost more to run than MedusaJS v2 plus a single SaaS for marketing content.
What does the composable “integration tax” cost?
Every new API boundary needs schema contracts, monitoring, retries, idempotency keys and regression coverage. In GMI Software B2B deliveries, a first serious ERP-to-headless integration often lands around three to six team-weeks; each additional major vendor tends to add two to four weeks without reusable adapters.
That is why pricing on gmi.software after DDT includes an integration map, not only storefront screen counts, and why we offer a fixed-price guarantee after DDT to avoid an endless “one more block” spiral.
How does MedusaJS v2 map to both ideas?
MedusaJS v2 is an open-source Node.js headless core with domain modules, events and extensions. It fits MACH because it separates commerce logic from Next.js storefronts and React Native apps.
You can also treat Medusa as the first composable brick and add search, CMS or PIM vendors when KPIs justify the integration surface.
The SFD app delivered by GMI Software shows that resilient APIs and headless separation matter when community traffic spikes several times above baseline during promos.
What should you do before signing a composable stack deal?
Define the minimum flows (B2B checkout, returns, split shipments, contract pricing) and assign each step to a system of record. Without that, integrators ship pretty diagrams that fail in the first operational quarter.
If you want a partner that runs DDT workshops, ships MedusaJS v2, NestJS and mobile channels together, contact GMI Software - we often return a first estimate within 48 hours.
Frequently asked questions
- Is every composable store automatically MACH?
- Not necessarily. Composable can sit on one large core with plugins or on hosting that is not cloud-native. MACH expects consistency across all four pillars, not only vendor logos on a slide.
- Can MACH work without composable buying?
- Yes. You can implement MACH mostly on open source (MedusaJS v2, NestJS, PostgreSQL, Redis) and your own microservices with a single integration partner. The composable surface stays thin while flexibility stays high.
- How does GMI Software limit integration risk?
- We start with DDT: domain map, API contracts and failure drills. Then a fixed-price quote after DDT, observability (logs, metrics, tracing) and feature-flagged releases for campaigns.
- How long is the first MedusaJS MACH release?
- Usually three to six months to a first production MVP, depending on ERP/PIM integrations and B2B rules. The exact timeline is set after DDT workshops.
- Do I need separate vendors for mobile and web?
- No. GMI Software ships Next.js and React Native against the same MedusaJS APIs, which shortens time-to-market versus two siloed teams and two data models.
Content updated: April 8, 2026