Swell

What Swell is

Swell is an ecommerce platform that works in 2 modes. You can run a store from its visual dashboard and theme editor, or you can treat it as an API-first backend and build your own storefront in the framework of your choice. The homepage calls it "your personalized commerce dashboard, with deep customization" and groups its strengths as API-first, customize everything, intuitive dashboard, radical data flexibility, visual store builder and sell anywhere. It is written for merchants who want subscriptions or an unusual data model without leaving a managed platform, and for developers who want to change how the store behaves.

What you build and how

Visual store and themes. The features page says you can "Customize store content without code. Use Swell's default theme, build your own, or use a Shopify theme." The developer page adds Liquid themes with "compatibility for Shopify theme tags, filters and objects, supported by our visual theme editor". Custom domains are set up "in seconds without ever leaving the Swell dashboard". Multi-level navigation menus can carry images, promos and links for headers and footers, and they are also available through the API.

Headless storefronts. For teams that want to write their own front end, "Build and host your own storefront and connect it to Swell effortlessly using your language and framework of choice." The developer page describes storefront apps "hosted by Swell on the Cloudflare Network" and says frontends for storefronts and admin workflows can use any framework.

Subscriptions. Subscription commerce is a headline feature and the help center says you "Sell subscriptions natively on Swell". The features page lists the pieces:

• Flexible order schedules, monthly, yearly or custom.
• Separate invoicing from fulfillment, so you can bill on one interval and ship on a different recurring order schedule.
• Upgrade or downgrade of plans with custom invoices.
• Flexible checkout, either subscription products added to a cart or a custom checkout flow.
• Automatic retry and dunning for failed credit card payments.

Data and logic. The developer page describes building data models, enhancing ecommerce models, expanding the database and customizing the dashboard. Serverless functions "sync data and connect with external APIs", and apps can add controls so users configure settings from the dashboard. A partner program is listed in the help center: "Build apps and earn revenue as a Swell partner."

Orders, tax and shipping. The dashboard manages products, orders, discounts, subscriptions and reports. Tax configuration works through rules or integrations that calculate region-specific tax groups and shipping options from one dashboard. The help center also covers marketing and promotions, metrics and reporting, privacy and security guidance for operating a store, an Online Store section for storefronts, checkout and custom domains, and integrations that connect third-party services, including a question about using the payment processor of your choice.

International selling. The homepage says you can "Price and localize your product catalog in 230 currencies and 170 languages". The features page adds price rules per currency on products, shipping services and discounts, manual and automatic currency conversions, and multiple locales configured through the admin or the API. Tax can be calculated at checkout through integrations like TaxJar or Avalara.

AI coding agents. The homepage section "Commerce infrastructure for AI" says "AI coding agents usually work from memory and guess. Swell's skills let Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex look up how your store is actually set up before they write anything." It lists 3 skills, swell-app, swell-backend and swell-storefront, installed from the swellstores/skills marketplace.

What the pages say about plans and proof

Pricing is published and scales with annual sales and team size. Each plan is quoted per month, billed yearly.

• Starter, $29: up to 2 admin users, annual sales up to $50K, basic reports. "Get started with the essentials to launch your store."
• Basic, $79, marked most popular: up to 5 admin users, annual sales up to $250K, basic reports. "Everything you need to launch and grow an new online store."
• Standard, $299: up to 15 admin users, annual sales up to $1M, advanced reports and international price lists available. "Priority support and time-saving features for larger teams."
• Unlimited, $2250: unlimited admin users, annual sales up to $5M, advanced reports, with role-based permissions and developer support listed as available. "Unlimited scalability, granular control, and better volume rates."
• Custom: "Priority technical support and negotiated pricing, ideal for merchants doing over $10M in sales annually."

The pricing table calls the sales figure a revenue ceiling "Based on a 12-month trailing period on sales in USD". Every paid plan carries a "Start free trial" button. Past the revenue ceiling, the table lists a percentage fee on sales that falls from 2% on the lowest tier to 0.4% on the highest. Usage is metered too: overage is billed at $5 for each extra 100,000 API requests, $5 for each extra 100,000 function calls and $5 for each extra gigabyte of data storage. The pricing table also lists a "Guaranteed 100% uptime service level agreement", and a company article ties the 100% uptime SLA to the Unlimited plan, adds that pricing carries "no surcharge for external payment gateways" and says enterprise plans above $10M include custom SLAs.

Support: the pricing table says email and chat support "is offered to all plans", with priority support and developer support for API and integration help on higher tiers, and the help center says to "open a chat from your admin dashboard". There is a community and developer documentation. Customer stories on the site include Spinn Coffee, Smashing Magazine and Infinitas Learning.

Who it suits and who it does not

Swell suits a subscription business that has outgrown a plugin on a general store, or a brand that wants a managed backend with its own storefront code. Teams with a developer can use Liquid themes, serverless functions, custom models and the API, and the dashboard handles products, orders, discounts and reports.

It is heavier than a drag-and-drop shop builder. A solo founder with a handful of products and no subscriptions will find the data and developer tooling beyond what they need, and the Starter plan's 2 admin users and $50K sales ceiling mean a growing store hits a plan change early, since Standard is $299 a month. Headless storefronts need developer time. Advanced reports start at the Standard plan, and role-based permissions are listed on the Unlimited plan, so a larger team pays for the controls it needs with a bigger plan.