Catalyst is a composable, Headless starter kit released by BigCommerce in early 2025. It is built on Next.js and utilizes React Server components, and can be easily integrated with whatever best-of-breed solutions your team needs. With the click of a button, Catalyst stores can be launched in minutes from the BigCommerce backend. Catalyst webstores are typically hosted on Vercel, allowing for industry-leading performance.
What came before Catalyst?
Previously, the majority of BigCommerce stores were built with the following architecture:
- Product catalog is managed in BigCommerce
- Orders flow through BigCommerce’s checkout
- Blog and content pages are created using BigCommerce’s native Page Builder
- The storefront that customers see is built on a Stencil theme
This is an example of monolithic architecture because all components of the store experience are housed within the silo of BigCommerce (the front-end, content, and commerce experience).
How is Catalyst different?
A composable, Headless architecture differs by allowing you to ‘decouple’ your front-end web experience from your content and commerce experiences. With Catalyst, a BigCommerce store architecture can look like this:
- Product catalog is managed in BigCommerce
- Orders flow through BigCommerce’s hosted checkout to maintain PCI compliance
- Blog and content pages are created using Makeswift or another 3rd-party CMS
- The storefront that customers see is built on Catalyst and de-coupled from the BigCommerce backend
This architecture allows merchants to choose best-in-breed solutions without worrying about whether they ‘fit’ into a BigCommerce silo.
Via BigCommerce
Why did BigCommerce make Catalyst?
Before Catalyst, it was certainly possible to create a Headless store on BigCommerce. In fact, 4000+ merchants did so between 2017 and 2024. The cost of developing a Headless storefront was high, however, because there was not a starter kit available. This meant that the burden of integrating BigCommerce’s APIs for product data, navigation, filtering, etc. was all on the BigCommerce developer.
Lucky for you, BigCommerce leveraged the experience of these 4000+ merchants who were brave enough to pursue a Headless build without a starter kit to make Catalyst – a fully optimized kit of components that are pre-integrated with BigCommerce’s APIs. This means that the cost of developing a Headless site on BigCommerce has come way down.
BigCommerce’s GM of B2C put it this way:
“The adoption of composable commerce has been slow due to the time and resources needed to build a solid, integrated and scalable framework. Historically, this has prevented too many brands and retailers from taking advantage of the flexibility, speed and other benefits that a composable approach provides. With Catalyst, BigCommerce has flipped the script on composable and opened the market, making it easy and fast to launch a storefront that delivers incredible customer experiences and can scale with the business.”
How fast is Catalyst?
As far as BigCommerce implementation timelines go, early adopters of Catalyst have reported very fast development timelines: “sometimes days, commonly weeks, never more than 3 months so far” (Nathan Booker, Senior Director of Product Management, BigCommerce)
As far as website performance goes, Catalyst can’t be beat. It boasts a Google Lighthouse score of 100 out the gate, and is regression tested against this standard with every release.
Does Catalyst have Themes?
Catalyst does not have Themes in a traditional sense (a monolithic batch of templates and stylesheets representing a full e-commerce website). Rather, Catalyst is designed to integrate with VIBES, ‘an open-source theming engine for composable marketing and commerce sites.’ A VIBE is a ‘theme that includes a set of React UI components and styles.’ Think of VIBES as pre-styled React component libraries, rather than an inflexible, fully structured Theme. Catalyst is designed with creativity and best practices in mind, meaning that you can swap out vibes for your favorite component library or bring your own styles and branding as your needs demand.
Currently, Catalyst offers a VIBE called Soul as the starting-point for further component additions/style modifications. It is likely that BigCommerce will offer other VIBES with unique components as starting points for further design modification.
From VIBES
How much does Catalyst cost?
The upfront cost of developing a Catalyst webstore is comparable to a build on Stencil. With such aggressive improvements in Headless accessibility, cost is no longer a meaningful barrier of entry for most companies. Catalyst builds start around $50,000 for basic implementations.
Why choose to build on Catalyst?
Early adopters of Catalyst cite the following reasons for choosing the solution:
“Catalyst offered a well-engineered foundation, making it superior to building a solution from scratch. Its plug-and-play design streamlined essential tasks, like cart-to-checkout integration and customer account management, reducing development effort. Onboarding to Catalyst was relatively quick, and the overall process was smooth…”
Daniel Burrow, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at UPLIFT.
“…We chose BigCommerce because it will provide us with reliable, out of the box features and still allow us to customize our e-commerce experience, thanks to its strong API framework. This gave us the best combination of time to market and product flexibility to support our internal resources.”
Simon Neale, Chief Technology Officer at Mountain Warehouse
“Amidoro’s desire for innovation led us to using BigCommerce's latest offering, Catalyst, and Next.js with it. Not only did that significantly improve performance, it also added customization capabilities that aren’t possible with Stencil.”
Amandeep Singh, President at Cronix (Development agency)
“On Burrow’s existing Next.js site, we’ve been able to migrate our storefront to utilize Catalyst over time, starting with our most highly trafficked pages, such as our product listing pages. At each step, we’ve seen developer productivity gains and our site performance increase dramatically.”
Kabeer Chopra, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Burrow
“Thanks to BigCommerce’s flexibility and robust API integrations, we’ve built a platform that not only meets our customers’ needs but exceeds their expectations.”
- Marco Guillermaz, Digital Product Manager at Testbusters
What is Makeswift?
Makeswift is a powerful visual editor that allows marketers to create beautiful, no-code content on Catalyst webstores. It allows for easy collaboration between team members, localized content, easy integration with 3rd-party CMS, the addition of custom React components, and blogging. A Makeswift account is automatically connected when you create a Catalyst storefront, allowing immediate access to powerful content creation tools.
From Makeswift
Got stuck on a step in this article?
We like to update our blogs and articles to make sure they help resolve any troubleshooting difficulties you are having. Sometimes, there is a related feature to enable or a field to fill out that we miss during the instructions. If this article didn't resolve the issue, please use the chat and let us know so that we can update this article!
BigCommerce Certified Partner, Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner
As both a BigCommerce Certified Partner and an Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, Anchor Group is ready to handle BigCommerce and NetSuite projects alike! Whether you already have one platform and are looking to integrate the other, are considering a full-scale implementation of both platforms or simply need support with ongoing customizations, our team is ready to help answer any questions you might have! Get in touch!
