What frontend should I use with frappe?

I want to build an eCommerce website for a car workshop, similar to https://gomechanic.in. My aim is simple, don’t reinvent the wheel and smartly utilize the already available resources out there. If you feel just vanilla js is enough for my application, please let me know.

At a very basic level, I need the following things

  • landing page with an intro to the workshop and the services they offer
  • a page with a detailed list of services and an option to book them
  • a cart and payment page
  • each user would have an account and can get email/Whatsapp updates

I was thinking of using frappe just as it offers so many things out of the box.

However, I’m a complete beginner at web dev and had the following questions

  • I assume that I would need a frontend framework like Vue or React? I saw that Vue is compatible, but is Next Js compatible with frappe?
  • Is frappe even recommended for my application? If not, what alternative would you recommend?
  • has anyone here tried to integrate Vue storefront with frappe?

Right now, my aim is to use the Vue storefront and somehow integrate it with the frappe backend. I saw a discussion about using FrappeJS, but I guess FrappeJS is wip right now.

Thanks for reading, any help will be widely appreciated!

ERPNext has ECommerce built in, you could try that.

Then go with VanillaJS. Frappe provides Jinja templates out of the box.

You can use any frontend tech you wish!

Yes it is good, however if all you want is ecommerce, you can use Shopify or Woocommerce or Bagisto.

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One thing to keep in mind: if you’re a beginner, designing an e-commerce front end is not a trivial task. Although Frappe would offer some built-in functionality, without the ERPNext application, it doesn’t offer much in the way of pre-existing e-commerce features.

You would need to design the following, pretty much from scratch:

  • A product and pricing catalog
  • Shopping cart management
  • Order database
  • Customer database
  • Payment processing functionality
  • Sales Tax calculations
    etc. etc.

Unless there’s a compelling reason to start with Frappe, I would take scmmishra’s suggestion and probably use an existing shopping cart solution. There are several good open-source options out there designed specially for e-commerce, in addition to the commercial ones.

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ERPNext has ECommerce built in, you could try that.

  • wow, I didn’t know ERPNext does not have an e-commerce module, I’ll check it out.

Then go with VanillaJS. Frappe provides Jinja templates out of the box.

yeah, but I was wondering how could I reduce my workload, that’s where frontend frameworks help, right?

You can use any frontend tech you wish!

great then

Yes it is good, however if all you want is ecommerce, you can use Shopify or Woocommerce or Bagisto.

Shopify is too expensive. Woocommerce/Bagisto are pretty cool tho. I’ll check them out.

Thanks a lot for answering :smile:

Yeah I currently am considering the following

  • ERPNext
  • Woocommerce
  • Bagisto

Do you know any other open source e-commerce platforms?

Thanks for answering :smile:

There are several open-source shopping carts…you can always check out Wikipedia for some comparisons:

As far as integrating with Frappe, please remember these shopping carts will have their own–usually proprietary–database schemas that might not play well with Frappe.

As far as I know, Frappe databases options are Mariadb (fork of Mysql) and Postgresql (mostly compatible).

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Thanks a lot for your reply. I forgot to reply somehow.

In case someone has a similar question as mine, I found these two solutions to fit my use case better.

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Hi @rohanrajpal,
Could you share how you integrated saleor/vendure with Frappe?
Cheers

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Any updates here, guys?

Could you please enlighten us on the integration process?