Composable Architecture: Lessons from the Magento Monolith

Back in 2018, GraphQL and PWAs were promising a revolution, and “headless” was the new gospel. For those of us running Magento, the pressure to decouple was immediate and intense. But seven years later, Magento 2.4.* remains a solid monolith. It still powers thousands of stores and remains deeply entrenched in eCommerce.

Composable didn’t fail—it just arrived for the few who could afford it.

What’s being sold today as “composable” is really an enterprise playground: multi-million-dollar omnichannel platforms, MACH-certified tech stacks, and a dozen vendors stitched together by systems integrators. Meanwhile, the rest of us have been stuck fighting performance fires and patch cycles while platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Shopware quietly absorbed the low-effort, high-convenience market.

The Decoupling Dream

Composable was introduced like a checklist of must-haves. If you didn’t tick every box—headless CMS, best-in-class search, enterprise ERP—you were labeled as not serious about commerce.

Most Magento merchants aren’t chasing architecture—they’re surviving reality.

I still meet Magento store owners who struggle just to stay patched and stable. Their concerns are grounded: fix performance, keep checkout running, avoid breaking things with every minor update. So instead of chasing MACH compliance, many took a different route. They doubled down on the monolith and adopted Hyvä.

And it worked.

As Magento devs, we’ve become part mechanic, part magician.

We rewire just enough to get the beast running smoothly again—then it’s back on the road until the next security patch.

Why the Monolith Still Has Power

Although composable solutions and headless principles can bring benefits, fighting the Magento monolith is still a reality for most.

After two decades, modules, legacy dependencies, and deeply integrated business logic are just part of the game.

It’s not ideal—but it’s known. Magento’s complexity has become its own kind of stability.

Many of us have learned how to navigate the mess, fix what matters, and keep things moving. And for a lot of businesses, that’s enough.

Composable Architecture can be delivered even to small merchants

Composable architecture isn’t reserved for massive platforms or enterprise budgets.

In my last seven headless projects, two involved delivering a feature outside of Magento—while still fully connected to it.

Composable is not just for enterprises—it’s already viable for six-figure Magento shops.

These weren’t theoretical exercises. They were pragmatic, focused implementations that worked within budget and delivered results.

When done right, composable brings real advantages:

• Reduces Magento’s footprint
• Empowers design teams to move faster
• Minimizes internal code conflicts and regressions

You don’t need to rebuild your stack. You just need to rethink where the pressure points are—and where composable gives you leverage.

Composable as a Foundation for Future-Ready Thinking

What surprised me most wasn’t the tech—it was how composable architecture reframes the problem.

It transforms pain points into opportunities.

You can A/B test entirely outside Magento. You can route traffic to Algolia during peak hours, then fall back to Elasticsearch when things are quiet.

Sure, someone will point out: “But Algolia charges 24/7.” Maybe. Today. But the point isn’t cost savings—it’s flexibility.

Composable architecture lets you design systems around business strategy, not vendor constraints. And when the market shifts? You’re already architected to respond.

That kind of agility is the real promise of composable thinking.