Finding the right eCommerce platform can feel overwhelming, especially when you need one that integrates seamlessly with NetSuite. With countless options promising flexibility, scalability, and ease of use, narrowing down the best fit for your business isn’t easy.
If you’re an organization already running on NetSuite and looking for a native solution that delivers tight, real-time integration, SuiteCommerce is designed for you. On the other hand, Shopify appeals to businesses that prioritize a fast setup, extensive design options, and a vast ecosystem of apps.
At APPSeCONNECT, we’re experts in both SuiteCommerce and Shopify integration with NetSuite. Our pre-built connectors and customizable solutions ensure a smooth, reliable integration that supports growth and scalability.
This guide will walk you through the key differences, benefits, and considerations of SuiteCommerce and Shopify, helping you confidently decide which platform best supports your NetSuite-powered operations.
Why choose the right ecommerce platform for NetSuite?
With over 38,000 businesses now utilizing NetSuite to streamline their operations, it’s clear that this ERP system has become essential for mid-market enterprises. On the other hand, ecommerce is also experiencing significant growth.
However, the real challenge arises when both systems are disconnected and working independently. Choosing the right ecommerce platform to pair with NetSuite is critical because it directly impacts how smoothly your online business runs and scales.
Here’s where NetSuite steps in as the linchpin of success:
1. Unified view of your business
NetSuite is a powerful ERP, but without the right ecommerce platform, you’ll struggle with data silos. The right platform ensures that orders, inventory, customer details, and financials sync automatically, providing a unified view of your entire business.
2. Inventory management
Ecommerce businesses often deal with vast and fluctuating inventories. An ecommerce platform that integrates cleanly with NetSuite enables accurate stock updates, real-time order tracking, and consistent pricing.
3. Efficiency & cost savings
Automated integration reduces repetitive tasks like manual order entry, saving time and labor costs. It also prevents costly mistakes like overselling or mismanaging inventory.
4. Scalability for growth
As your business expands to new markets or sales channels, the ecommerce platform should scale without disrupting your NetSuite processes. Choosing the right one now avoids expensive re-platforming later.
5. Customer data management
NetSuite ecommerce integration allows for a unified view of customer data, enabling businesses to deliver personalised experiences and effectively target marketing campaigns.
What is SuiteCommerce?
SuiteCommerce is a complete ecommerce solution developed by Oracle NetSuite for B2B and B2C companies of all sizes. Any business that sells products to customers can use SuiteCommerce.
One of the most fantastic things about SuiteCommerce is that it supports all facets of a retail business, including:
- eCommerce
- In-store shopping
- POS systems
This allows customers to have a seamless experience with your company, whether they’re shopping online or in your store.
However, unlike other e-commerce platforms, you have to have a NetSuite license to use SuiteCommerce, as it connects directly with NetSuite. It isn’t something that can be purchased on its own, which limits its users to NetSuite.
If your business has any online sales component, and you’re already using or planning to use NetSuite, adding SuiteCommerce is a no-brainer.
Features of SuiteCommerce
- Scalable business: SuiteCommerce will continue to grow as your business scales. Whether you’re expanding to new geographies or adding new product lines, SuiteCommerce can handle increased complexity without slowing down performance.
- Advanced customisation: SuiteCommerce provides themes and extensions with complete control of the code. With a modular design, you can build the most complex JavaScript or HTML website.
- Total access to ERP data: SuiteCommerce is built exclusively for NetSuite users. It pairs seamlessly with the NetSuite ERP system to form one unified platform that pulls data in real time.
- Personalization and Marketing Tools: SuiteCommerce lets you segment audiences for personalized promotions, recommend related products, and run targeted email campaigns all using NetSuite’s integrated marketing tools.
- Robust analytics and reporting: Users get built-in dashboards and real-time analytics to monitor ecommerce KPIs such as sales trends, customer lifetime value, and inventory turnover.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is another cloud-based ecommerce platform that provides tools and features for individuals and businesses to create and manage online stores and sell products both online and in person.
It powers over 2,513,618 live stores worldwide and millions of daily active users, making it one of the most used e-commerce platforms globally. Its customers range from aspiring entrepreneurs to global enterprises, and everyone in between.
With Shopify Plus, businesses can handle thousands of transactions per minute and have no restrictions on storage or bandwidth. It also offers unlimited product listings to accommodate businesses with an ever-growing catalog.
Shopify and NetSuite integration streamlines operations across departments. NetSuite acts as the central hub for accounting, inventory management, procurement, and reporting, while Shopify handles the customer-facing storefront and sales.
By syncing the two, businesses can better track stock levels, avoid overselling, and generate precise financial reports.
Features of Shopify
- Themes and customisation: Shopify Theme Store offers 213 themes (including 200 paid and 13 free options) covering a wide range of topics, such as Arts, Books, Pets, Technology, and more.
- App Store: The Shopify App Store provides online merchants with over 8,000 well-tested, highly rated apps for sales channels, order and shipping, product finding, and marketing.
- Inventory management: Shopify inventory management automatically updates your stock levels when you sell, receive, exchange, or return products.
- Integrated payment solutions: Shopify Payments enables merchants to accept major credit cards, digital wallets, and alternative payment methods directly on their site. It also supports third-party payment gateways, giving flexibility in how you collect payments.
- Multi-channel selling: With Shopify, you can sell across multiple platforms—your website, social media (like Instagram and Facebook), and online marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay—all from a single dashboard.
Integration with NetSuite: SuiteCommerce vs Shopify
As a trusted iPaaS provider, APPSeCONNECT understands the importance of integration when choosing the best ecommerce platform for NetSuite.
The integration enables businesses to leverage Shopify and SuiteCommerce’s e-commerce capabilities while benefiting from NetSuite’s extensive management functionalities.
Here’s how both ecommerce platforms integrate with NetSuite:
SuitCommerce Integration
It’s incredibly easy to add SuiteCommerce to your NetSuite solution. The best part about SuiteCommerce is that it provides native integration with NetSuite. This means you don’t need any third-party tools to pull your ecommerce data into NetSuite.
The feature is fully built in; it’s simply a part of NetSuite, just like the CRM and ERP features. You just have to purchase the license for it.
Once the license is activated, you can configure your ecommerce storefront directly within the same NetSuite environment. Product information, inventory levels, pricing, and customer data flow seamlessly across ERP, CRM, and ecommerce modules.
Updates to products or pricing in NetSuite are automatically reflected on your SuiteCommerce storefront, ensuring real-time accuracy and a unified source of truth for your operations.
Shopify NetSuite Connector
Unlike SuitCommerce, Shopify doesn’t provide native integration with NetSuite. Businesses can use iPaaS solutions like APPSeCONNECT, which are explicitly designed to integrate both platforms.
It comes with ready-made workflows for everyday use cases like order synchronization, inventory updates, customer data mapping, and refund handling. Your team sees updates live and acts fast, including:
- New Shopify customers and their details flow straight into NetSuite.
- NetSuite products and prices push to Shopify without extra steps.
- Shipment and cancellation status return to Shopify automatically.
The platform provides all necessary services, so you don’t need to maintain a tech team just to handle the integration. It’s a low-cost, budget-friendly option that offers scalability, flexibility, and strong integration capabilities.
Going with an iPaaS solution like APPSeCONNECT is ideal when you need to orchestrate multiple systems, such as connecting Shopify and NetSuite, while also syncing data with a CRM, marketing automation platform, or third-party logistics provider.
Pre-built connectors typically support only one-to-one data flows, whereas APPSeCONNECT can manage one-to-many relationships and complex workflow automation from a single interface.
Who wins?
Because SuiteCommerce is built by NetSuite for NetSuite, it offers native, seamless integration between the e-commerce front end and the back-office ERP/CRM modules. It might seem like a good option for NetSuite users.
However, the better choice still depends on your business model, scale, and priorities.
Shopify is an excellent choice for small to mid-sized businesses looking to launch their product lines quickly. Its ready-to-use themes and simple admin interface make it perfect. You can start selling within days, not months.
When combined with NetSuite via an integration platform like APPSeCONNECT, Shopify becomes a powerhouse.
Businesses get access to Shopify’s robust storefront and marketing flexibility while relying on NetSuite’s ERP for real-time inventory, financials, and order management.
This “best of both worlds” setup suits mid-market and enterprise retailers that prioritize growth and customer experience but still need a strong backend system.
Customization and design flexibility: SuiteCommerce vs Shopify
When looking for the right ecommerce platform, its functionality to adapt to customers’ needs and business style is crucial. Both Shopify and SuiteCommerce can be as flexible as needed.
Shopify is ideal if you need fast, low-code customization. In contrast, SuiteCommerce provides deep, ERP-level customization and tighter back-office integration, but changes often require SuiteScript developers and longer timelines.
SuiteCommerce
SuiteCommerce offers strong customization and design flexibility for both B2B and B2C e-commerce businesses, but the depth of flexibility depends on whether standard SuiteCommerce or SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA) is used.
Full-Stack customization
Because SuiteCommerce is natively integrated with NetSuite, developers can customize both the front-end design and the backend logic. You can modify templates, add custom modules, and extend existing functionality without needing third-party plugins. This means everything from product pages to checkout flows can be tailored to match your business processes.
Theme and layout control
SuiteCommerce provides responsive, mobile-friendly themes as starting points. There are a total of 6 free themes that are flexible and can be customized to fit your business. Designers can easily adjust color schemes, typography, and layouts using HTML, CSS, and Sass. If you need a completely bespoke look, you can create a theme from scratch or heavily modify the default ones.
Extension framework
SuiteCommerce’s extension framework allows you to add or remove features without breaking core updates. You can create reusable extensions, such as a custom search filter or a new checkout experience, ensuring that future platform upgrades don’t overwrite your custom work.
Shopify
Shopify provides a strong balance between ease of use and deep customization, making it suitable for businesses that want a unique storefront without needing to build everything from scratch. Here are the key aspects of its customization and design flexibility:
Wide theme marketplace
Shopify offers a large collection of professionally designed, mobile-responsive free and premium themes. Each theme comes with customizable settings for colors, typography, and layout, so you can tailor the look and feel to match your brand identity even if you have no coding experience.
Drag-and-drop editor
The built-in Online Store 2.0 editor lets you add, remove, or rearrange sections on any page. You can create custom landing pages or tweak product pages by simply dragging and dropping content blocks, which makes design changes quick and code-free.
Liquid templating language
For deeper customization, Shopify uses its own open-source templating language called Liquid. Developers and advanced users can edit theme files directly, enabling granular control over page layouts, dynamic content, and custom functionality.
App integrations and extensions
The Shopify App Store offers thousands of apps that expand design possibilities, such as advanced product configurators, image galleries, or interactive lookbooks, without requiring custom development.
Who wins?
Shopify offers a rich theme ecosystem with thousands of professionally designed templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. While SuiteCommerce integrates natively with NetSuite, its design customization is tied closely to the ERP backend.
For companies prioritizing creative freedom, fast design iterations, and marketing agility, Shopify clearly wins. Its drag-and-drop tools and robust app marketplace let brands refresh their look or add new features with minimal development effort.
SuiteCommerce remains a solid choice for businesses that need deep, ERP-driven customization and are willing to invest in specialized development. However, for most retailers and D2C brands, Shopify provides a far more accessible and flexible design experience.
Performance and scalability: SuiteCommerce vs Shopify
An IDC report found that the biggest reason business leaders change their ecommerce platform is because of a lack of scalability. To compete in the modern ecommerce market, enterprises need to be able to depend on platforms that can scale with their growth.
NetSuite is designed to scale smoothly as businesses grow in size and complexity. That’s why choosing an ecommerce solution that grows with you is crucial. While SuiteCommerce seems like an excellent option as it’s natively integrated with NetSuite, Shopify cannot be ignored either.
SuiteCommerce
SuiteCommerce best suits mid-sized to enterprise-level companies, with its scalable features, such as support for currencies, taxes/ VAT, multiple languages, international shipping prices, and easy consolidation of multi-subsidiary reporting.
Built on NetSuite’s unified cloud platform
SuiteCommerce operates on the same robust cloud infrastructure that powers NetSuite ERP and CRM. Because the ecommerce platform is natively integrated, all data, such as product catalogs, inventory, and customer records, is stored in one place and processed in real time.
Automatic scalability during peak demand
Whether it’s holiday sales or flash promotions, SuiteCommerce automatically scales server resources to handle sudden surges in traffic. The platform’s elastic cloud environment ensures your site maintains speed and reliability even when thousands of users are browsing or checking out simultaneously.
Seamless global performance
SuiteCommerce supports multi-language and multi-currency operations across different geographies. Global CDN coverage ensures consistent performance for customers worldwide, while localized settings keep the shopping experience smooth and relevant. This scalability allows businesses to expand internationally without sacrificing speed or stability.
Shopify
Shopify provides great tools for small businesses; however, Shopify Plus offers advanced features such as enhanced customization, increased API limits, and dedicated support, catering specifically to large-scale enterprises and businesses eyeing global markets.
High-performance checkout
Shopify boasts robust servers capable of processing up to 6,000 checkouts per minute. Its unlimited bandwidth allows businesses to handle as many as 500,000 hits per minute without breaking a sweat. This scalability enhances daily operations significantly.
Global Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Every Shopify store benefits from a worldwide CDN powered by Fastly. This network caches content across multiple data centers worldwide, reducing latency and ensuring fast page loads for customers no matter their location.
Robust app ecosystem with optimized integrations
The Shopify App Store offers thousands of apps, many of which are designed to work seamlessly without sacrificing speed.
Who wins?
Shopify is a fully hosted platform with a global content delivery network (CDN). This means your storefront loads quickly and can handle sudden spikes in traffic, such as holiday sales or viral marketing campaigns, without extra configuration or added infrastructure costs.
SuiteCommerce is more compelling for enterprises that prioritize deep ERP integration and complex operations over lightning-fast storefront speed.
If your goal is to deliver a smooth, high-traffic shopping experience with minimal technical maintenance, Shopify is generally the stronger choice.
Which Platform Aligns with Your Business Goals?
If you are still looking for answers, you can use the following checklist:
Choose Shopify if you:
- Prefer drag-and-drop tools and out-of-the-box themes
- Need to launch quickly with minimal complexity
- We are starting with a small or mid-sized B2C store
Choose SuiteCommerce if you:
- Need B2B functionality or tailored performance tuning
- Want deep integration between ecommerce and business operations
- Already use or plan to use NetSuite ERP
APPSeCONNECT is a leading iPaaS integration solution provider for NetSuite integration. It offers multiple pre-configured templates, 100+ ready connectors, and multiple integration endpoints for a smooth integration process.
APPSeCONNECT also has a 4.7 rating on Capterra. Thousands of brands trust it from all across the world.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, Shopify Plus can integrate with NetSuite using an iPaaS solution like APPSeCONNECT. However, these integrations may require additional setup and ongoing maintenance, and might not offer the same level of seamless data flow as SuiteCommerce Advanced.
Shopify Plus has a lower starting cost, with plans beginning at approximately £1,500/month. However, additional expenses for apps and integrations can accumulate, potentially increasing the total cost over time.
Yes. It has features like auto-retry of failed syncs, detailed “Sync Info” dashboards, audit logs, and alerts. These help ensure data integrity and fewer manual fixes.
SuiteCommerce Advanced is a native extension of NetSuite, offering seamless integration with ERP, CRM, and inventory management systems. This tight integration ensures real-time data synchronization across all business functions.
