I Tried Making Payload CMS’s Official E-commerce Template Production-Ready. Here’s What I Learned.

A short, very short story before I actually get to the core motive of this blog.

I love Payload CMS, and I have been using it for almost all of my projects. Recently, a new client project came in requesting an e-commerce website. The client had a very minimal budget, and the fact that they were looking for something that wasn't a WordPress WooCommerce-based website. WooCommerce designs often look very similar, and the client wanted to add a personal touch to the website while avoiding any extra plugin costs.

He also wasn't looking for Shopify. While Shopify almost did the job for him, the actual features he was looking for required several paid plugins to achieve. Plus, he wanted to fully own his data along with the website.

So, he was looking for a solution that falls right in between: a one-time build with all the features he needed—and that’s it. No recurring fees for plugins, just a fast, reliable website.

I didn't have many options left. Since I have very good muscle with Payload CMS, I decided, why not try their e-commerce extension? Because the budget was low, I didn't want to build every single feature from scratch. So, I decided to give it a try.

1. Many things are great about the Payload e-commerce template, the first being Payload CMS itself and the ability to create blocks and map custom UI with ease. That is what I love about it anyway, even without the e-commerce extension. But the real benefit here is that you get some basic blocks to start creating your pages. They aren't perfect, and I don't think anybody would launch using only those basic blocks, but it is a great starting point. The whole idea of these basic blocks is to help you understand how to start creating your custom blocks by reutilizing the e-commerce features.
2. The Customer Account Section is already designed and works perfectly without any issues. The account section contains Recent Orders, Manage Address, and basic Account Settings to change a name and email if required. The great thing is that the basics are ready, and you can directly go to production with this, unless you want additional customer services added to the section.
3. The Cart is functional, and you can also track if someone has added products to their cart and left the website without placing the order. You can easily create a new feature that reminds the customer about their cart items via email or WhatsApp. The basic foundation is already there.
4. The product upload section syncs with the website without any issues. The architecture is well-designed, and anyone can start customizing and adding custom feature fields if they want to. The product section also includes variant control, variant-based pricing, and the ability to change the main gallery image based on the selected variant.
5. The checkout and payment section is already designed, and payment integration with Stripe is officially part of the Payload CMS template.
6. The Shop page is pre-built with filters and search functionality, which is another huge plus.
7. The Product page is pre-built with a solid base foundation to start with.
8. It is excellent for SEO in terms of how your data reaches search engines. Because the data is pre-rendered on the server, the client side always gets ready-made content. This means the server pushes the data along with the functions, so when the first page is loaded, the RAW HTML already contains the data. Search engines love this.

1. Very limited blocks to start with. Basically, you'll have to start designing the required blocks—like product lists, featured products, and others—as per your specific needs.
2. The default price is in USD, and this is where the problems started kicking in. I wanted the price in INR, as the shop was for my Indian client. However, simply changing the currency from the admin panel did not solve the problem. The priceInUSD variable was hardcoded in many places, which I had to track down manually and replace with priceInINR. After a lot of fixing, it finally started working. This is something that should have never been hardcoded into the website, but I got around it. I hope a future update fixes this problem.
3. The login system for both admin and customers is not very safe out of the box. First, it lacks 2FA. Another problem I faced was that the customer login and registration had no verification system to decide if a legit customer had registered or not. The public endpoint to create an account was open, and literally anyone with an email and password could register, meaning there was no way to verify if the customer used a real email. It needed a major correction because auth is a very important thing to consider before launching a store. I find this to be the major area where Payload CMS e-commerce falls behind. But don't worry—if you are a developer, getting a Google Auth login system up and running won't be a very difficult task. Still, having this feature by default would have made this plugin worth millions.
4. The product search feature was not working properly and had bugs, which required a few 2-line fixes. For example, the search was based on product descriptions as one of the parameters. However, the official plugin directly calls product.description, which is basically a Lexical object. The GraphQL query expects plain text, not an object, which caused the search engine to fail. This was something I was not expecting from an official plugin. Even though it was a quick fix, it was still an annoyance.
5. No Blog post page feature. Yes, Payload E-Commerce does not come with a blog feature, so you'll have to design it yourself.
6. The SEO for the product page was also lacking in a few areas. For instance, the product description was not rendering properly—again, due to the same Lexical object issue, as the SEO field was expecting plain text.
7. No customer rating and review system for products. This is something else you need to build yourself. It should have been a part of the plugin, but never mind.

I'll be honest: I'm using Payload E-Commerce myself. Even though I talked about several "Not Good" things, at the end of the day, those missing features can be added within about 10 days of development. If you do things right, that is all you need to do, and for any future project, you can reutilize the same repo again. From a customization point of view, Payload CMS is unbeatable.

If you want to save a huge amount of money, this is the best fit. You do not have to pay just to use silly, small feature plugins like "track my package" or merchant features. You can just build them! I'm not saying building is free, but if the infrastructure is ready, it won't take too much time either, and in return, you get lifetime-free features. For a startup with a very little budget, this is the best overall option—provided you are looking for something non-generic that breaks away from WordPress WooCommerce and Shopify.

My recommendation is based entirely on the assumption that you are a developer with a good knowledge of Next.js and Payload CMS. If not, then it's going to be a difficult route, and going with WordPress WooCommerce or Shopify is your best option. But if you really want to learn and start with Payload CMS E-Commerce to unlock all its perks, then you should definitely try it. Even someone coming from a pure React.js background can grasp the concepts very quickly. The learning curve totally depends on who is actually learning it. It might take 1 month, or it might take 6 months.

Please note that this review, including the specific bugs and hardcoded variables mentioned, is based on @payloadcms/plugin-ecommerce version 3.85.1. If you are reading this in the future, hopefully, some of these issues have already been patched!

I hope this blog helped you understand my personal experience with Payload CMS E-Commerce a little bit better. Go ahead and give it a try!