Luckily, today isn’t the first of April, so this isn’t a typo or a trick. As of today, the only e-commerce solution that has been solely focused on making e-commerce easier for everyone is now open source – free for everyone to download, use, and deploy as their online store.
Why Are We Open Source Now?
Our journey began well over 4 years ago, even before anyone knew we were about to launch our flagship product. We had one single goal – to make e-commerce easier for EVERYONE on your team. Your team includes not only developers and designers, but also store owners, those charged with managing the store, and even your customers visiting your site.
We’ve been relentlessly working towards that goal over the years. In doing so, we’ve realized that if we embraced a more collaborative business model, we could do even more to fulfill that vision. By working openly on the product with you, our community – we could all share in this product roadmap as a single, unified team. The idea of open source is far from new, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter with you all to help grow adoption of Hotcakes even more, and accelerate the innovation we’ve already started.
The bottom line…? We’re about to change the e-commerce world together, starting today, with the announcement of the open source e-commerce CMS known as Hotcakes Commerce. Enterprise-ready e-commerce CMS capabilities will now be more accessible for companies of all sizes and verticals – everyone.
If you’re curious about the difference between an e-commerce solution and an e-commerce CMS, you can download it or try a hosted trial anytime.
http://mmmcommerce.com/Resources/Downloads
http://mmmcommerce.com/Services/Free-Trial
What Does this Mean for You?
In short, the sky’s the limit. Many of us here at Hotcakes have been saying for years that when you use Hotcakes, you’re only limited by your creativity. As of today, that idea has never been truer.
This new open source Hotcakes solution is primed for taking the e-commerce industry by storm. It’s no longer just an e-commerce solution. It’s an open source e-commerce CMS, ready to cultivate new businesses and enterprises alike. Never before has your e-commerce toolbox been so robust and ready to grow with your company.
If you’re a developer or designer, you can still implement amazing Hotcakes sites, but you’ll now also be able to directly touch the product code and contribute your innovative ideas to the solution for everyone to benefit from.
If you’re not a developer or designer, you can still help us all grow through community participation, creating issues, discussing enhancements, and so much more.
We’re incredibly happy that you’re all now part of our team. Speaking of – you should take a look at the amazing tools we’ve recently released in our community.
http://mmmcommerce.com/Community
Final Thoughts
This journey has been an amazing and rewarding one so far. Everyone that’s worked with Hotcakes over the years has been instrumental to us making it this far. We can’t thank each of you enough. We’re honored to have worked with everyone on the commercial product, but we’re far more excited to see where our collective ideas take us in the future.
In closing, there’s no way we could write this announcement and include every possible detail here. So please feel free to take a look at our FAQ below.
https://hotcakescommerce.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002848686-Version-3-0-FAQ-s
If you have any follow-up questions, we’d be happy to answer them. Feel free to create a new forum post in our community.
http://mmmcommerce.com/Community
Thank you all again for everything you’ve done with us in the past, and for everything we’ll do together in the future. The horizon has never before been so bright for e-commerce.