Odoo ERP integration with headless ecommerce - Steersman vs Alokai/Vue Storefront

We know of two Odoo solutions that are integrating a headless ecommerce frontend to Odoo for improved performance and scalability:

• Odoo integration with Vue Storefront (recently renamed to Alokai) by ERPGAP
• Steersman’s ecommerce microservice for Odoo

This article will attempt to compare the two integrations. For disclosure, our information on the Odoo integration with Vue Storefront and how that setup works is based on publicly available descriptions and videos posted by ERPGAP, so our knowledge is likely incomplete.

Vue Storefront integrated with Odoo by ERPGAP

Let’s start with the benefits of connecting the Vue Storefront with Odoo for a headless ecommerce setup via ERPGAP’s integration.

• The setup is intended to work for the community versions of the software, meaning that a company with this setup can own and manage it independently, provided it has the internal resources to manage the mixed set of technologies involved.
• ERPGAP claims that the Vue front end can utilize Odoo’s existing payment gateways. However, it would be logical that each gateway may require some development work for the website to pass the information between the website and Odoo backend (or to the gateway directly).
• ERPGAP also claims that the passing of orders between Vue and Odoo can be done in two ways: either the cart is created and stored on the Vue Storefront side all the way until final checkout, or Odoo’s SO functionality can be used to leverage Odoo’s existing functionality for the order. However, it appears that the latter is not an available feature, at least not yet.
• The Vue Storefront is used with Odoo specifically for increased performance and SEO compared to out-of-box Odoo (performance comparisons are below).

Differences between Steersman’s ecommerce setup and Vue Storefront for Odoo via ERPGAP’s integration

Here is some information on comparisons between Steersman’s high-performance ecommerce setup and the Odoo integration with Vue Commerce.

• Steersman uses OpenSearch (formerly Elasticsearch) for website page/catalog data, replacing the use of Redis by ERPGAP in its setup. Both systems are intended to cache data for fast loading, searching, and filtering. Steersman uses Redis as well, just not for catalog data caching.
• Whereas the Vue Storefront setup intends to utilize all of Odoo’s existing payment gateways (with at least some already working for web orders), Steersman opted to develop its own gateway integrations for web, phone, and retail terminal payments (Braintree and NMI).
• Steersman utilizes Odoo’s existing sale order back-end functionality to manage shopping carts, pricelists, availability, and other information, whereas the Vue Storefront setup, at least for the time being, appears to store the cart in Vue Storefront until final checkout is finished. Steersman’s approach allows easier online customer support via access to their carts in Odoo, as well as a more robust storage of data, avoiding data replication across two systems. Note that ERPGAP may intend to add the same type of setup in the future.

Live websites on the two technologies

Check out the websites ERPGAP promotes as running on their implementation of Alokai (formerly named Vue Storefront) and Odoo. We could only find two, and given that the integration is very new, it is possible that there aren’t more yet:

• gevenhout.nl
• greenmind.dk

See Steersman’s websites running on Odoo and our high-performance ecommerce service here:

• legionsafety.com
• irontite.com
• oldanibrothers.com
• sciencix.com
• tidistributors.com

Performance scores and other technical measurements

For a comparison of performance, accessibility, SEO, and the use of web development best practices, we ran the Lighthouse audit available via the Google Chrome browser on various product category pages on these sites, and here are the results.

• Measuring category pages, as those tend to be among the most valuable for SEO, and where customers browse to find the product they want, applying filters that need dozens (or more) products to load.
• Tests are run using the most up-to-date Google Chrome browser as of November 10, 2023.
• All are set to run emulating a mobile device, in default mode.
• All Lighthouse tests were run twice, and the best result is shown.

ERPGAP’s sites running Alokai / Vue Storefront with Odoo

If any of our readers can send more websites on Vue Storefront integrated with Odoo, please do so via our Contact page.

Steersman’s websites, with backend on Odoo as well

Based on the Lighthouse tests, Steersman’s website technology performs better except for the PWA. Our only missed test line for the PWA is “Manifest doesn’t have a maskable icon”, which will likely be added as soon as one of our live clients requests it.

Finally, some results for an average-rated website with what appears to be Odoo’s out-of-box setup and custom theme

An alternative way to measure would have been the PageSpeed Insights test from Google; however, that test has a known bug that affects its ability to measure accessibility on Steersman’s sites (bug is described on GoogleChrome Github here).

If you’d like to do your own tests via the Lighthouse on your Chrome browser, it would be best to run tests on all the sites and compare them. Lighthouse via Chrome runs locally and can be affected by factors such as your internet connection, other programs running on your computer, and numerous other variables. Therefore, a proper comparison would be between your different site tests, rather than comparing the results of a single test you run with one of the result sets in this article.

Steersman’s data management tools

Aside from the highest performance, SEO and quality scores possible with any ecommerce front end technology, Steersman also provides its advanced product information management (PIM) application, pricing engine for large catalogs, CPQ with a front end and dynamic BOM generation for multi-level complex BOMs, sales tax automation via TaxJar, and many other technologies for technical catalogs and distribution/retail business, including a setup for automotive parts ecommerce and retail distributors.