FAQ

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What is unchained.shop?

Unchained Engine is a omni-channel multi-language multi-country ecommerce platform that allows you to create amazing professional online shops that are perfectly embedded in your websites, apps or other embedded devices. Unchained can be connect through various ways with your company's core systems like SAP easily. Unchained.shop is the core maintainer and owner of Unchained Engine and provider of various professional services and documentation around their open-source offerings.

When do I need unchained.shop?

You will need unchained.shop in 2 cases: First, whenever you want to integrate order/payment functionality into native platforms (like native iOS apps, teller machines, coffee machines, etc.), ERP systems like SAP or blockchain based services. Second, if you want to create a completely custom storefront that delivers the best possible user experience for your product. If a SaaS shop like Kickshops or Shopify is all you need, you will not need our platform.

What is the difference between Magento and Unchained?

The main difference is headless/non-headless. While Magento can be used as a headless system using a custom storefront, it leads to a lot of headaches. This is because the API is built on-top of Magento 2 and most of the Magento Plugins can not be used in a custom environment because of missing APIs. Unchained on the other hand is built-for-headless; the platform is built around the GraphQl API. That means that every feature and plugin always will have to provide an API, as it is the only way to communicate with the user interfaces. Technologically Unchained is built with Node.js + MongoDB instead of PHP + MySQL which makes our platform more scalable in general. From a feature quantity perspective, Unchained lags behind but can be adopted to needed features extremely fast.

What are the costs?

The Unchained Platform is OSS and is available for everybody. It is possible to build a complete online shop with Unchained free of charge:

  • Host the Unchained Engine and the database
  • Hack the Unchained Engine with existing or tailored plugins
  • Develop and host your own storefront or integrate the e-commerce capabilities of Unchained into your existing user interfaces.
  • Configure and manage Products & Orders through the default Unchained Admin UI or your own solution

On Github you will find the Unchained Engine, the unchained.shop website and various plugins on Github. For businesses and agencies who want to run the Unchained Engine in production, we provide paid services like developer support, operational services, e-commerce consulting and project support.