Virto Commerce Versus Optimizely B2B Commerce — Comparison of .NET eCommerce Platforms

Both ASP.NET Core platforms, Virto Commerce and Optimizely B2B Commerce (formerly InsiteCommerce product), target the B2B segment with a focus on enterprise and mid-sized manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. If you’re looking for a comparison review of the development roadmap and key features of these two platforms, look no further because you’re in the right place.
This comparison is specifically for the Optimizely B2B Commerce version, since it’s a product that targets the B2B sector like Virto Commerce. There is also an Optimizely B2C Commerce version, which is not covered here.

No One eCommerce Platform Is Ideal All Around, but Each Is Good in Its Own Way

As a preface, I will say that any comparison of B2B ecommerce platforms that you find on the internet will be subjective in one way or another. The set of features, their implementation, the availability of themes and content editors, access to AI services, and more for each platform form a collective bouquet that presents the development path and the vendor management’s vision for the future of ecommerce.

So first, a few words about the development journey traveled by the Virto and EpiServer teams.

The core Virto dev team (currently named Virto DevLabs) was formed in the early 2000s. From the very beginning, its members were engaged in the custom development of large ecommerce projects. In particular, they made the MediaChase e-Commerce Framework platform, which was bought by EpiServer in 2012. In fact, the modern cloud platform for Episerver Commerce (now renamed Optimizely B2C Commerce) in some parts is still based on the early solutions of the Virto team.

In 2011, when some Virto team members who worked for Episerver left, the two companies’ approaches to product roadmap development diverged. So today, Virto Commerce and Optimizely B2B Commerce are very different platforms with a different set of functionality and interface features.

Virto’s Product Roadmap Vision Focuses on Technical Excellence

Virto’s development philosophy reflects traceability and code inheritance from previous versions to new ones to follow a unified architectural concept. Key developers have been with the company for a long time and help newcomers get up to speed with the product philosophy so they can create new versions quickly and efficiently. Then the product line takes on a tree-like appearance, where there is a basic product and its versions for specific types of customers and those focused on specific industries.

Today, Virto Commerce has a strong product line, including version 3.xx to be hosted in the cloud and on-premises, as well as a ready-to-launch Virto SaaS version, the Virto Marketplace version to create marketplaces, and Virto Start, which features a launch and customization done by Virto Professional Services for clients according to their requirements.

Episerver’s Choice for Wall Street Way

Episerver’s strategy has been acquiring companies with pre-built solutions. Over the past decade, Episerver has acquired almost ten companies that mainly focus on digital content. The EpiServer company has been buying up various businesses to strengthen its content-oriented digital experience.

In 2015, Episerver merged with Ektron (development in CMS), then acquired Peerius in 2016, known for personalizing users’ webpages using data analytics techniques.

The acquisition of InsiteCommerce in 2019 strengthened its ecommerce product line, providing the EPiServer Commerce solution with the many marketing tools of InsiteCommerce. Finally, 2021 saw Episerver change the company name to Optimizely after acquiring this digital experimentation company.

Because of the acquisitions, Optimizely now owns an ecosystem of products that are likely strong within their scope and look nice on marketing web pages, but could have limitations when you use them together.

For example, there are two Optimizely ecommerce products: B2C Commerce (Episerver develops) and B2B Commerce by Insite (formerly InsiteCommerce). This is not convenient and is economically unjustified, because if you trade in both B2C and B2B segments, you will have to purchase, customize, and support two different ecommerce platforms.

Digital Experience Software and CMS Are the Strengths of Optimizely

Optimizely offers a suite of digital marketing and sales management products that they call their DXP (Digital Experience Platform). Along with the Optimizely B2B Commerce application, this DXP product suite also includes other useful digital marketing applications, listed below.

• Asset management is a content management-related functionality for managing digital assets, including images, videos, and audio files.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In the context of digital assets, DXP tracks customer data to build long-term relationships with the CRM app, packaged in a marketing wrapper.
• Analytics and intelligence. DXP provides analytics and insight into the workflow of user behavior. In general, this belongs to a class of products called a PIM, which stands for Product Information Management.

Strong Integration Capabilities Are Virto Commerce Strengths

Although Virto Commerce does not have its own CMS, CRM, or PIM as separate products, the company responds to the Optimizely DXP with a strong ability to integrate best-in-breed products from third-party vendors.

Virto Commerce has the best integration capabilities on the market, and that’s the strength of its ecommerce platform.

Thanks to Virto’s composable architecture and its atomic-like structured components, any client-owned or best-of-show software can be seamlessly integrated into the Virto Commerce platform.

Each approach — having your own CRM, CMS, or PIM or integrating third-party ones — has its strengths and weaknesses. However, Virto’s approach is more flexible because if you do not like a particular vendor’s application, it can be replaced with any other solution on the market without damaging the main functionality of the ecommerce platform.

Technology Stacks for Virto Commerce and Optimizely B2B Commerce

Regarding technology stacks for Virto Commerce and Optimizely B2B Commerce, they both use ASP.NET Core for web storefront. There are some differences in the versions of ASP.NET Core they use.

The following technologies are used in the development of Virto Commerce.

Back end:

• .NET Core 6.0 and as a base web API platform
• EF Core as primary ORM
• ASP.NET Core Identity for authentication and authorization
• GraphQL

Front end:

• ASP.NET Core 6.0
• Vue 3.0 — Progressive Java Script framework

The Virto Commerce tech stack is an open-source, truly headless, API-first, modular architecture, highly scalable, high performance, cloud-native ecommerce platform with rich possibilities for extensions. Visit Virto Commerce’s repository in GitHub for more info on the product technology stack.

Next are technologies used for Optimizely B2B Commerce:

• Web platform: ASP.NET Core 5.0
• Admin: AngularJS
• Storefront/CMS: React, TypeScript, Redux
• ORM: Episerver Business Foundation, Episerver Metadata Plus, Entity Framework
• Supported databases: Microsoft SQL Server
• Search engine: Elastic Search
• Caching: Custom implementation

Optimizely B2B Commerce is not open-source, but it is still an open platform. Optimizely APIs, integrations, and SDKs with pluggable components give developers sufficient control over the network activity and integration with analytics pipeline, business intelligence, and collaboration tools.

To learn more about Optimizely B2B Commerce technologies and architecture, visit their documentation portal.

Virto Commerce Advantages and Disadvantages

If you run a B2B business in retail, distribution, or manufacturing and are looking for an efficient way to manage your transactions, then Virto Commerce is the perfect platform. The large number of B2B scenarios and seamless integration with back-office systems make this software extremely versatile. It can be used by businesses ranging from manufacturers to distributors and retailers of enterprise and mid-size levels.

Virto Commerce Advantages

• Modularity — Features are easily extensible or adjusted simply by installing a set of modules. The partners’ and clients’ development teams benefit from the enhanced productivity associated with the harmonious, logically understandable Virto Atomic Architecture™.
• Headless design — Rich, omnichannel capabilities and integrations abound
• Extensibility — A plug-in-based extension model and a large number of out-of-the-box extensions and integrations are included.
• Cloud-native — Features rich integration with Azure cloud services and is optimized to run in Azure cloud.
• Upgradability — Developers withstand backward compatibility in new versions. If you follow the rules of extensions, you can easily get updates.
• High scalability — Flexible architecture and support for multiple databases allow the environment to scale effortlessly.
• Modern tech stack — Regularly releases new versions of the software keeping up with the on-edge tech stack, presently .NET 6.0 and Vue 3.0.
• Composable, enterprise feature set for sophisticated use cases; architectural flexibility and general versatility allow you to initiate various scenarios, integrate Virto Commerce into existing solutions, and implement a large number of business scenarios.
• Cross-platforming — Allows running applications on different Windows/Linux platforms.
• Open-source — Enables developers to quickly develop and understand the logic of the platform or make changes to the project without depending on the vendor team.

Virto Commerce Disadvantages

• Cost — The platform is only free for businesses with annual sales below $1M under certain terms and conditions.
• Limited Web CMS features — Uses proprietary PageBuilder CMS to manage content from the administrative area, but it’s possible to integrate any third-party CMS and PIM software.
• The documentation updates do not always match the speed of releases and updates. In such cases, the help of the Virto team is required.

It takes a rather long time for developers to initially learn the software, i.e., there is a steep learning curve, but the platform’s composable extensibility makes up for it.

Optimizely B2B Commerce Advantages and Disadvantages

Optimizely B2B Commerce is a popular .NET 5 ecommerce platform. The main scope of the platform is its ability to create and get to the operation of online stores. The platform is focused on a B2B business model with a rich ecosystem for marketing, productivity, and CMS functionality.

Optimizely B2B Commerce brings necessary ecommerce functionality, such as catalog, customer, and order management, combining the powerful content publishing and display features of a CMS with advanced back-end web shop management. Be aware that the platform is not easy to start — it requires a specific installation and license.

Optimizely B2B Commerce Advantages

• Personalized CMS experience based on a company’s needs.
• Robust marketing features. For example, the engine allows a marketing department to categorize customers and offer a variety of discounts to targeted customers at specific times.
• Offers A/B testing, which is helpful for trying out new content ideas and tracking the results.
• Plug-in-based extension model prepared for customization and a large number of ready-made plug-ins and widgets.
• Support for front-end themes allows you to easily change the appearance of your stores, along with a large number of ready-made themes from partners, which significantly contribute to the speed of development and changes.
• Technology stack is based on ASP.NET Core 5.

Optimizely B2B Commerce Disadvantages

• The legacy monolithic architecture of the Optimizely solution does not prepare it for modern requirements and flexible scalability of cloud infrastructure.
• Has expensive initial hardware requirements.
• Only allows you to run your application on Windows platforms.
• It is not possible to horizontally scale the database, which means there will always be a performance bottleneck.
• Users are not permitted to customize the original platform — you have to make changes to the original platform code only via plug-ins, which significantly complicates the process and provides limited functionality.
• Requires direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues.
• Developer documentation. As with any platform, this area is continually being improved.

Summary

You’ve read a brief comparison of Virto Commerce versus Optimizely, but I invite you to visit our blog for an extended review. Here you’ll also find feature lists for both platforms and a comparison table.

Among the major advantages of Virto Commerce are its atomic-like modular architecture, using ASP.NET Core 6 framework, and multiple versions for private cloud, SaaS, and marketplace.

Customers have the opportunity to make the most comprehensive comparison by themselves. Request a demo setup of both the Optimizely B2B Commerce and Virto Commerce ecommerce platforms and then try out the features critical to your B2B segment.

Using the redesigned and updated InsiteCommerce ecommerce product, now branded as Optimizely B2B Commerce, might be a good choice if this product had a dedicated B2B roadmap for the future. But we don’t know about that, and it’s possible that the company will decide to merge Optimizely B2B Commerce and Optimizely B2C Commerce into one solution. If that happens, then customers will need to replatform, which is always a difficult and expensive process.

You’re also welcome to read my blog post, The Most In-Depth Review of Top 2 .NET eCommerce Platforms: Virto Commerce vs. nopCommerce, where I break down the features of two of the most popular ASP.NET ecommerce platforms, their advantages, and their weaknesses.

Author:
Oleg Zhuk