Shopify and Vercel are rebuilding Hydrogen as an open, runtime-agnostic foundation. Hydrogen now dep…
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Replacement 2027: Why 60 Percent of Enterprise Merchants Plan to Move
When a VP of Ecommerce at a North American enterprise sits down to discuss the roadmap today, the same sentence comes up. We love Salesforce as a stack, but our storefront cannot keep up. What looked like the safe choice five years ago is now a brake on growth. Market research shows that more than sixty percent of active Salesforce Commerce Cloud users are actively planning to move on. That is not a fringe story. That is the majority. This post breaks down what is driving the wave and what enterprise merchants can realistically do about it.
The number that changes everything
Recent data drawn from C level interviews with North American ecommerce organizations of more than one thousand employees paints a clear picture. Sixty point eight percent of respondents plan to replace Salesforce Commerce Cloud in the next one to two years. Of that group, almost forty percent are concretely looking at composable platforms like commercetools, BigCommerce or SCAYLE.
What stands out is the composition of that group. It is not the unhappy implementations that are leading the move. It is the established, well invested SFCC customers whose roadmaps no longer match the speed of their platform. Most of them are satisfied with the core functionality. They are also convinced that the next growth phase will not be reached with today's setup.
What is really driving the wave
When you sit down with enterprise teams, five drivers show up in nearly every pitch.
First, cost effectiveness. More than eighty percent of switchers cite pricing pressure as the leading reason. SFCC implementations get expensive over time, in licensing as well as in customization effort.
Second, integration. Sixty two percent want better integration with their existing CRM, ERP and customer data systems. SFCC is part of the Salesforce ecosystem, but integrating into third party systems remains heavy.
Third, performance and reliability. Almost sixty percent prioritize stronger performance. Mobile Core Web Vitals, page load times and scaling under peak load come up repeatedly.
Fourth, scalability. More than half want an architecture that can grow with new markets and new brands without each addition becoming its own project.
Fifth, specific functionality. Search and recommendations stand out as weak spots. The recommendation engine in particular reaches a satisfaction rate of only around twenty five percent. That is by far the weakest score across all core functions.
Three realistic paths forward
If you are serious about a move in 2026, three options are on the table.
The first path is a full platform replacement. You leave SFCC both on the backend and on the frontend. Composable platforms like commercetools or SCAYLE take over the backbone, a dedicated frontend delivers the storefront. This is the most radical and most risky variant. One to two years of migration time is realistic.
The second path is backend only. You keep the customer experience largely intact but replace the commerce core. Rare, because the frontend is usually the bigger pain point in SFCC setups.
The third path is frontend first. You keep the SFCC backend for orders, pricing, promotions and customer data. The frontend becomes a standalone modern layer built for performance, personalization and time to market. Significantly less risky, fastest visible improvements, and aligned with the fact that many merchants are content with SFCC core functions.
Why frontend first is the most pragmatic answer
Studies show that more than fifty percent of SFCC users are satisfied with the core functions. Checkout and payment in particular are strong areas. It would be economically wrong to replace those working components only in order to modernize the frontend.
A Frontend as a Service platform plugs in exactly here. SFCC stays as the backbone, the frontend becomes a dedicated continuously evolved layer. Marketing teams gain speed, engineering focuses on platform stewardship, stakeholders see measurable conversion effects within months.
What you should do concretely
If you sense that your team belongs to the sixty percent, the first step is not a vendor pitch. It is an honest platform audit. Three questions help.
How long does a new feature take in your setup today from concept to mobile production release? If the answer is in months, you have a frontend problem.
How high are your annual SFCC maintenance and customization costs relative to ecommerce revenue? If that number is well above two percent, the comparison is worth running.
How happy are marketing and customer experience teams with the tools for personalization and content? If the answer is a hesitant maybe, your next phase is not continued building on SFCC.
Bottom line
The wave of replacements around Salesforce Commerce Cloud has already started. The more interesting question is not whether you join, but how quickly and with what strategy. Frontend first, backend stable. That logic offers the best ratio of risk, speed and impact for most enterprise SFCC merchants.
If you want an honest assessment for your own setup, reach out. We know the trade offs firsthand and show what the next phase realistically looks like.
More from the Laioutr Platform
Related reading: SAP CC Frontend: Why 1 in 2 Enterprises Plan to Replace It by 2027 and Why Laioutr is the Perfect Replacement for Frontastic.