SHSelfHostIndex

Cartridge vs Reaction Commerce

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted e-commerce platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
CA Cartridge Django shopping cart for the Mezzanine CMS VS RE Reaction Commerce Headless GraphQL commerce microservices platform
FeatureCartridgeReaction Commerce
CategoryE-commerce PlatformsE-commerce Platforms
LicenseBSD-2-ClauseApache-2.0
LanguagePythonJavaScript
Setup difficultyMediumHard
Min. RAM256 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentbare-metal, sourcedocker, kubernetes, source
GitHub stars★ 712★ 12,400
First released20102013
ReplacesShopify, WooCommerceShopify, commercetools

Why pick each one

Choose Cartridge if…

  • Simple and minimal
  • Good for content-driven shops
Cartridge details

Choose Reaction Commerce if…

  • Cloud-native design
  • Highly scalable
Reaction Commerce details

Frequently asked questions

Is Cartridge or Reaction Commerce better?

Neither is universally better. Reaction Commerce has the larger community, while Cartridge is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Cartridge and Reaction Commerce free and open-source?

Yes. Cartridge is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Reaction Commerce under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Cartridge and Reaction Commerce with Docker?

Cartridge: check the project docs for container support. Reaction Commerce: yes.

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