Website Planet had the chance to sit down and chat with Andrei Mazulnitsyn, CEO of nopCommerce. We discussed how the company started, what made them the eCommerce platform chosen by top brands like Volvo, Puma, Reebok, and what opportunities he sees in the future for eCommerce store owners.
Let’s introduce nopCommerce to our audience. What is it and how does it work?
nopCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform, allowing shopping cart creation for businesses of all types and sizes. With our solution, it’s possible to set up an enterprise-level webshop with powerful B2B features, customize its design, manage inventory, handle payments, and much more.
From the technical perspective, the nopCommerce source code utilizes only popular, reliable, and fast third-party libraries, like Linq2DB and FluentMigrator. It can be easily connected to Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines. nopCommerce also supports Docker, and makes it easy to set up load balancing and web farms.
Today it is the most popular ASP.NET eCommerce platform (with regular updates to the latest .NET versions) recognized by Microsoft and included into Microsoft Web Platform Installer.
How did it all start, and what are your achievements to this day?
nopСommerce development began back in 2008, with only one employee. At that time, there were no free and open-source shopping carts that would not impose any limitations on businesses using such digital solutions, and nopCommerce aimed at filling this gap.
The first versions introduced basic functionality such as order processing, attributes, plugins, discounts, tier pricing, news, blogs, private messages, forums, tax and shipping support. Later we expanded nopCommerce’s functionality with multi-store and multi-vendor features that are rarely found in free platforms. Our latest improvements were the development of our own Web API plugin for headless ecommerce and a mobile application easily adjusted to all nopCommerce websites.
Over the years, we have held conferences in Europe, USA and India, gaining a strong community of 250,000+ active developers and contributors worldwide.
The installation package was downloaded more than 3 million times and empowered over 60,000 eCommerce websites, including such brands as Volvo, Puma, Reebok, DHC skincare, Columbia, Medindia, and Speedo.
How does your mission differ from the other companies in your niche?
At nopCommerce, our mission is to democratize eCommerce by providing a powerful yet accessible platform.
We believe that every entrepreneur should have the opportunity to succeed in the digital world without the need for extensive technical knowledge or exorbitant budgets. Anyone thinking about creating a digital presence has heard of hidden payments, recurring fees, revenue caps and other limitations common to eCommerce. We want to show them an alternative path.
To attain this end, we strive to foster an inclusive and supportive community, where everyone can contribute and benefit from the collective knowledge and expertise. We run a forum where everyone can ask their questions and have them answered by our core development team or the most active users. As a result, we get a stable and cost-effective product that is competitive with paid enterprise solutions (not just open-source ones).
Who are your typical clients and what problems do they have when they come to you?
We’re not a website development company, that’s why we have more than 140 solution partners all over the world who are experts in nopCommerce and can create a custom online store to any requirements.
Our end customers (like those of other companies) are seeking an eCommerce platform that offers extensive customization options, robust integration capabilities, and excellent performance. And they actually get it when they pick nopCommerce as their weapon of choice.
The most common challenges are, for example, complex website redesign and migration to nopCommerce from an old legacy platform; integrations with CMS, ERP and other third-party solutions; traffic loss redeemed through better SEO capabilities of nopCommerce; the need to introduce tier-pricing and customer roles for growing B2B sales, etc.
And what makes them eventually choose you over your competitors?
There are several factors that make nopCommerce stand out from its competitors.
- Open-source power: Being an open-source platform, nopCommerce offers tremendous freedom and flexibility to its users. They can customize and extend the platform according to their specific needs, creating unique and personalized online stores. The available source code ensures the maximum flexibility and scalability, which reduces further customization costs and helps avoid possible migration expenses.
- Vibrant community: Our community actively contributes plugins, themes, and valuable knowledge, enriching the nopCommerce ecosystem and providing users with a wide range of resources and options to enhance their online stores.
- Stability and performance: nopCommerce is built with a robust architecture, optimized code, and best practices, ensuring that online stores can handle high traffic loads, process transactions smoothly, and provide an excellent user experience.
- Pluggable architecture: nopCommerce offers 1500+ seamless integration capabilities with various third-party systems, including payment gateways, shipping providers, marketing tools, and more. This allows businesses to streamline their operations and provide a seamless end-to-end shopping experience for their customers.
Can you share one success story from your customers? What was their pain point, and what results did they get thanks to nopCommerce?
We regularly post new case studies from our solution partners, showing how different types of businesses can benefit from switching to nopCommerce. We have many successful cases with Herbalife, Harman, Volvo and other corporate giants, and it’s hard to choose only one story to share with you today. But let’s highlight some local eCommerce successes.
Mi Piaace was an Italian start-up for home food delivery. The platform had to coordinate restaurant owners, riders, and end customers with a few clicks. Moving such a complex machine, made up of incoming orders, relations with restaurants, management of riders delivering meals and timetables to be respected, required a management platform carefully designed to reduce the error margin to zero and guarantee a correct distribution of resources even in times of big flow of orders. And nopCommerce got their backs.
Today Mi Piaace is no longer just a local food delivery platform, customers can order any type of product (medicines, household or beauty products, flowers, etc.) and the operations have expanded abroad. The monthly order number increased year over year: recently it reached about 10,000 managed orders and the platform has more than 300 partners. Mi Piaace is active in 15 different areas between northern Italy and Switzerland, and it is about to expand further into other cities, with nopCommerce backing all its scalability needs.
What do you see in the future of your industry, and how do you plan to cope?
We anticipate continued growth and innovation in areas such as mobile commerce, voice commerce, and personalized shopping experiences. As technology advances, so do consumer expectations. At nopCommerce, we’re committed to staying at the forefront of these developments.
We’ll continue to invest in research and development, ensuring that our platform evolves alongside the industry’s changing landscape. We’ll listen to our community, embrace emerging trends, and provide the tools and features that enable our users to adapt and thrive.
By fostering collaboration and continuously improving nopCommerce, we’re confident that we’ll meet the future challenges head-on and continue to empower businesses worldwide.
