Oracle vs commercetools: Technical comparison

On this technical document, we specifically focus on two providers at different ends of the spectrum.

On one hand, Oracle Commerce, which at one point was recognized as a market leader by Forrester and Gartner, but has lost that distinction and is now reaching the end of its life.

On the other hand, there is the innovative composable commerce solution offered by commercetools, which has risen in the rankings among analysts and reviewers, and now holds leadership positions in the digital commerce space on both the Forrester Wave™ and the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™.

Licensing

Oracle: Core-based licensing. A software licensing model where the cost of the software is based on the number of processor cores in the computer system where the software will be installed and run.

commercetools: Usage-based licensing. A software licensing model where the cost of the software is based on the amount of usage or consumption of the software. In this licensing model, the software vendor typically charges the user based on metrics such as the number of users, the number of transactions processed, or the amount of data stored or transferred.

Operations

Oracle: Multiple application and database nodes are necessary to run and store application data. A node can be a physical or virtual server that runs an instance of an application or database and communicates with other nodes to ensure the entire system runs correctly.

commercetools: Run and scaled by commercetools; only frontend hosting is an external cost.

Updates

Oracle: Mandatory manual updates several times a year.

commercetools: Continuous integration, new features implemented daily, non-disruptiveAPI changes. Ideal for keeping up to date without assuming high costs, resources, or time.

Customization

Oracle: Experienced Oracle Commerce developers needed to customize the user experience.

commercetools: Developers work with well-documented APIs, making the learning curve faster.

Technology

Oracle: Only available in Java, JSP, XML configuration.

commercetools: Language-agnostic, SDKs available for Node, Java, PHP, .NET and others.

Deployment Architectura

Oracle:Multi-tier, alto nivel de dependencia entre capas.

commercetools:Microservicios, desplegables y escalables individualmente.

Runtime envieronment

Oracle: Application, synchronous execution.

commercetools: Asynchronous processing, event-driven communication.

Read/write operations

Oracle: Large distributed transactions in the application, database locking at the row level.

commercetools: Separation between read and write stores (CQRS), event sourcing.