Developer for TeamSystem Commerce (formerly Storeden): what you can customize and what you can't

If you're looking for a Storeden developer, now TeamSystem Commerce, you've probably already noticed there aren't many. It's an Italian SaaS platform, used by shops that chose not to run a server. I work on it as Fractional CTO for EcoToGo, an eco packaging e-commerce for the food business, and this is the piece I wish I'd read before starting.

What you can actually change

The theme. Nearly everything starts there: layout, product page, cart, static pages. For EcoToGo I rewrote the product page from scratch and restructured the cart, because the previous version had sat untouched for years and lost orders at the most trivial steps. You don't need anyone's permission: it's theme code, and if you can write frontend you can work on it.

Then there are custom plugins and scripts. When the platform lacks a feature, in many cases you add it yourself on the client side or with an external service that talks to the shop. Orders, for instance, can be read from outside: that's how a script picks up EcoToGo's orders every day and sends them to logistics, and when a second logistics provider came along I integrated it the same way.

What you don't control

The server. You don't see it, you don't install anything on it, you don't choose the version of anything. The core of the checkout, response times, the technical cookies the platform sets on its own: those are the vendor's decisions. When a client asks me "can we do X?", the first thing I do is figure out whether X lives in the theme, in a script, or inside the closed box. In the third case the honest answer is no, or yes but through an external service that costs maintenance.

This limit isn't a flaw. It's the reason a small shop can stay online without a sysadmin. But it has to be said clearly before signing a quote, otherwise you argue about it afterwards.

The ERP is half the job

TeamSystem Commerce and Danea Easyfatt belong to the same group, and nearly every shop I see uses them together. The problem is rarely the connector; it's that the data isn't aligned before switching it on. Different item codes, variants handled by hand on one side and as a price list on the other, stock nobody updates. I wrote a separate piece just on this.

How I work on this platform

• –First an hour inside the admin and the theme, touching nothing. I work out what's been customized and by whom.
• –I keep theme changes versioned outside the platform, so an update doesn't wipe out months of work.
• –External scripts run on hosting picked for the job, with logs. If something breaks at 6am, I know before the client does.
• –A quote per job, or a monthly fee when the work is ongoing, as with EcoToGo.

If you have a TeamSystem Commerce store that's stalled, or a theme nobody wants to touch anymore, write to me. In one call I'll tell you what can be done and what can't, before we talk money.