What is SuiteCommerce?
SuiteCommerce is NetSuite’s built-in eCommerce platform. It allows customers to implement a full shopping, checkout, and account management experience for both B2B and B2C businesses. It is highly customizable both from the look and feel and functionality point of view. There are two main types of storefront solutions available: SuiteCommerce (formerly named SuiteCommerce Standard) and SuiteCommerce Advanced.
A third option is SuiteCommerce MyAccount, which offers a self-serve website for customers to do basic account management, like viewing and updating basic account information, paying their online invoices, viewing their transactions and account balances, and managing support cases and online quotes. This option does not include any shopping or checkout functionality.
The following article will cover the similarities and differences between SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced.
Similarities Between SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced
From a user point of view, a SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced webstore will look the same and have the same types of features. These include:
Secure shopping, checkout, and account management
Multi-language and multi- currency support
Configurable product search and filtering
Responsive design optimized for tablet and mobile browsing
Themes and Extensions to allow look and feel and custom functionality implementation
Content delivery network (CDN) caching for improved performance
Marketing tools like upsells, related products, and product reviews
SEO tools
Customer-specific catalogs
Business insights in the form of dashboards and reports and analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
SuitePayments and SuitePromotions
Differences between SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced
Access to Source Code
Both SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced include themes and extensions, which allow you to customize the webstore look & feel as well as functionality.
SuiteCommerce Advanced goes one step above and provides you with complete control over the source code of the webstore, which you do not have in SuiteCommerce. While this may appear necessary for all complex customizations, do not underestimate what is possible with theme customization and extensions. For example, it is possible to customize the Checkout to allow address filtering and automatic selection of shipping methods based on the Customer’s shipping address. This can be accomplished using only extensions and theme customization.
Some customizations may only be possible with SuiteCommerce Advanced, especially if it involves fundamentally changing a core webstore functionality. For example, allowing users the ability to edit their orders in My Account after placing them is only possible with a source code change.
Version Updates
SuiteCommerce will include automatic updates to new releases because it is offered as a managed bundle. This means that SuiteCommerce will automatically receive updates as they are available (twice a year). With SuiteCommerce Advanced, you need to manually migrate to a newer version.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both:
SuiteCommerce – Automatic updates mean you can leverage new features as they are made available. The downside is that if there are a lot of major customizations on the webstore, there is a risk of them not working properly following automatic updates.
SuiteCommerce Advanced – Manual migrations mean you can decide exactly when to migrate to a newer version and gives you all the time you need to properly test the customizations on the site. However, manually migrating to a newer version of SuiteCommerce Advanced requires more time and effort.
Regardless of whether you choose SuiteCommerce or its Advanced counterpart, it is important to test all customizations in Sandbox or Release Preview, before any sort of update (automatic or manual).
Domains
SuiteCommerce includes two secure domains, whereas SuiteCommerce Advanced includes five secure domains.
Microsites
Microsites can be used for many purposes; for example, providing a customized site to some of your main B2B customers, with their own branding, logos, and products. Microsites are typically available as a subdomain of your main site. SuiteCommerce Advanced supports microsites, while SuiteCommerce does not.
Can I Upgrade from SuiteCommerce to SuiteCommerce Advanced?
Yes! If you initially implemented SuiteCommerce, you could later upgrade to SuiteCommerce Advanced. This involves migrating configuration and customizations and redeploying them to your new SuiteCommerce Advanced site.
If you have any questions about SuiteCommerce or SuiteCommerce Advanced, book a discovery call with our experts to learn more about how Sky High can help you optimize and improve your experience with NetSuite.
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