Introduction
What is Vantemo and how does the platform architecture work?
Introduction
Vantemo is a modern, multi-tenant e-commerce platform designed for developers who want absolute control over their storefront without the infrastructure complexity. It provides a complete backend — products, orders, payments, inventory, carts, checkout, and more — accessible through a clean REST API.
Architecture
Vantemo follows an API-first design. Every feature is available through the REST API before it appears in the admin dashboard. The platform consists of four core services:
| Service | Purpose | Technology |
|---|---|---|
| API | REST endpoints for storefront + admin operations | Node.js, Express, PostgreSQL |
| Admin | Merchant dashboard for managing stores | Next.js App Router |
| Web | Headless storefront rendering engine | Next.js App Router |
| Worker | Background jobs (email, cart recovery, webhooks) | BullMQ, Redis |
Multi-Tenant Isolation
Every Vantemo shop is a tenant. All data is isolated at the database level using
shop_id scoping — no data ever leaks between tenants. When you authenticate with an
API key, all queries are automatically scoped to your shop.
API Surface
The API is organized into two main areas:
- Storefront API (
/v1/storefront/*) — Public endpoints for building customer-facing storefronts. Products, cart, checkout, customer auth, reviews, wishlists, and more. - Admin API (
/v1/admin/*) — Authenticated endpoints for managing your store. Products, orders, customers, inventory, coupons, analytics, and settings.
Both APIs are documented in the API Reference section, which is auto-generated from our OpenAPI 3.1.0 specification.
Key Features
- Headless storefronts — Build your frontend with any framework. We provide a Next.js Storefront Kit to get started fast.
- Stripe payments — Global payment processing with automatic tax calculation, multi-currency support, and PCI compliance handled for you.
- Cart recovery — Automated email and SMS flows to recover abandoned carts.
- Product options & variants — Flexible option/variant system with auto-generation (up to 3 options, 100 variants per product).
- Webhooks — Subscribe to platform events with HMAC-signed payloads and exponential backoff retry.
- API keys — Scope-based access control with per-key rate limiting.
- Type-safe contracts — All API schemas are defined with Zod and published as TypeScript types.
Next Steps
- Quickstart — Make your first API call in 5 minutes
- Authentication — Understand API keys and scopes
- API Reference — Browse the full API documentation