Commerce Cloud

Commerce Cloud is Salesforce's e-commerce platform that enables businesses to create seamless shopping experiences across web, mobile, social, and in-store channels. It comes in two flavors: B2C Commerce (formerly Demandware) for consumer-facing storefronts and B2B Commerce for business buyer portals with complex pricing and account hierarchies.

Commerce Cloud (descending from the Demandware acquisition) is Salesforce's e-commerce platform - but really it's two products under one name. B2C Commerce powers consumer-facing storefronts (the Nike.com pattern: catalog, cart, checkout, mobile-first). B2B Commerce powers business-buyer portals (the wholesale pattern: account-specific pricing, contract-aware catalogs, bulk reorder). Both run on the same Salesforce platform, share customer data with the rest of the CRM, and benefit from Einstein-powered personalization.

The reason it's worth understanding the two flavors as separate is that the buying patterns are genuinely different. A consumer doesn't need a contract; a B2B buyer doesn't need an Instagram-style product feed. Picking the right Commerce Cloud edition for the actual business model is the most consequential decision in any Commerce implementation; mismatching the tool to the audience produces a project that misses on both dimensions.