I've had my eye on Swell for quite a while, and glad that they made it to Appsumo. Imagine getting a lifetime deal on Shopify way back in the day. This is one of those opportunities that is too good to miss...and oh yeah, I maxed out the tiers, because it's too good not to.

While the product is young, the product is not. Out of the box, they have several features that improve and build upon experiences that I actually hate in Shopify. First of all, you get access to your checkout and metafields in an unobstructed manner. The have literally given you a blank canvas to go an build your store how it works best for you. Selling subscriptions? It's baked into the system...no apps needed. Want to change the behavior of something? They have a powerful API.

If you are not technically inclined, they have a basic storefront design, that resembles the experience on Shopify. The design is basic, but you can also use Builder.io, NexttJS, Shogun, or design from scratch.

While you might not want to migrate some of your existing stores just yet, they are releasing new feature and integrations. If you are good with tech, this tool should be your go to for starting a new ecommerce store. If you are not technically inclined, it still has potential. I'm not technically inclined, and over just a few hours yesterday and today, managed to get a 1500 item catalog uploaded, and almost ready to go live.

Yes there will be growing pains, but support is working around the clock it seems. I had asked about a few of the bugs (lack of chat features), and got an email at 2AM. I received another this morning telling me it was fixed.

I feel that Swell is going to be my secret weapon, once they build out their marketplace. As a truly headless system, there are no limits. The roadmap has all of the necessary integrations and marketplaces/sales channels that I need for now, and if not we can just build it with the API. I'm already dreaming up how Swell can place nicely with VBOUT, Syncspider, and other recent deals.

The storefront that they have is just ok, but if you are just looking at this for the storefront, then you are limiting yourself. There is a lot more power under the hood if you take the time to unlock it.