In the age of agents, argues Orium CEO and MACH Executive Board Member Jason Cottrell, platforms become infrastructure.
Commerce is entering a new phase defined not just by channels or customers, but by intelligent agents acting on their behalf. These software agents are rewriting the dynamics of digital business, from automated purchasing decisions (agent-as-shopper) to continuous internal optimization (agent-as-employee).
In this emerging landscape, two commerce platforms are pulling ahead: Shopify and commercetools. They’re not merely adapting; they are structurally suited to thrive. Think of them not as rivals locked in a zero-sum game, but as elite racehorses. They’ve been bred for different tracks, and they’re each capable of being piloted by increasingly intelligent jockeys— autonomous agents tuned for speed, precision, and scale.
The outcome isn’t binary. Both are likely to dominate, but for distinct reasons. Their trajectories help us see not just where commerce is going, but what kinds of infrastructure will be required to support it.
Strengths: Network Effects, Simplicity, and Conversion Infrastructure
Shopify excels where speed, standardization, and seamlessness matter most. In the world of high-frequency, low-friction consumer purchases—apparel, accessories, beauty, wellness—the winning strategy is about surfacing the right product, trusted checkout, and rapid fulfillment. Shopify’s ecosystem delivers on all three:
And now, Shopify is formalizing its agent-native ambitions. The Summer ’25 Edition, codenamed Horizons, introduces a suite of features built specifically for agent enablement and MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration. Notable among them:
Where today’s customer might ask Siri or Google Assistant for a gift idea or product recommendation, tomorrow’s agents will execute entire buying flows—from research to reorder—without ever surfacing the interface. Shopify becomes a clearing layer for those agent-led transactions, making it critical infrastructure for the agentive future of B2C commerce.
The next generation of commerce won’t be built around channels, it will be built around intelligence: surfacing the right product at the right moment, and executing seamlessly.
Strengths: Modular Architecture, Enterprise-Grade Orchestration, and B2X Mastery
Where Shopify dominates with velocity, commercetools wins with control. It thrives in the messy, multi-actor domains that characterize modern enterprise: B2B, B2B2C, multi-brand, and multinational ecosystems where buyers aren’t always humans and transactions rarely follow a straight path. This is where agents become business operators. The use cases go well beyond checkout:
While some of this sounds futuristic, early prototypes are emerging. In the B2B space, pilot projects are already exploring agents that monitor contract compliance, recommend order consolidation, or trigger RFPs. The direction is clear: agents that handle the messy middle of enterprise commerce.
commercetools’ headless, microservice-first architecture is ready for it. Its modular design and event-driven extensibility allow agents to plug into discrete systems—product, pricing, promotion, inventory—without heavy integration overhead.
At Elevate 2025, commercetools went further by introducing Commerce MCP and an AI Hub built for this exact future.
The result is a platform built not just to support agent orchestration, but to accelerate it across complex domains. In short, if Shopify aggregates volume, commercetools aggregates capability. It’s designed for environments where agents don’t just buy, they negotiate, reconcile, govern, and iterate.
Both platforms can claim scale, but it’s scale of differing natures.
Shopify scales consumer reach through network effects. Its aggregated product catalog, embedded checkout, and branded front-ends make it a natural fit for agent-to-market transactions at speed and volume.
By contrast, commercetools scales enterprise capability through modularity. Its infrastructure supports granular workflows across teams, divisions, and brands, giving agents the building blocks for high-value orchestration.
It’s executional scale vs. compositional scale. And agents will need both.
While Shopify and commercetools are clearly ahead, others remain in the race:
These players are still in the race. But going back to our horse race analogy, they’re running a few lengths behind. As agent-based commerce use cases mature—and they will—the platforms ready to plug into those patterns will break away.
Shopify and commercetools aren’t trying to win the same customers, but they are trying to win the same future.
That future isn’t omnichannel. It’s agent-native. And the stakes are high: platform dominance, market orchestration, and the very infrastructure of digital commerce.
In this world, the platforms that power agents—consumer-facing and enterprise-operational alike—will become the invisible operating systems of modern trade. They won’t just run websites. They’ll run decisions.
That’s the race. And right now, with Shopify’s agent-ready frontend and commercetools’ backend extensibility, these are the horses to bet on.
Jason Cottrell
Founder and CEO, Orium
Jason Cottrell is the CEO & Founder of Orium, the leading composable commerce consultancy and system integrator in the Americas. He works closely with clients and partners to ensure business goals and customer needs are being met, leading the Orium team through ambitious transformation programs at the intersection of commerce, composability, and customer data.