Alpha Digital · 5 November 2026
What a headless Next.js storefront does and does not solve
Medusa stays the engine, Next.js becomes the shop window. When that difference matters, and when a theme is simply enough.
Written by Tom Rijs, founder of Alpha Digital
Headless is a worn-out word. In our work it means one thing: Medusa remains the engine for products, prices, cart and orders. Next.js renders the pages a customer sees. Two codebases, one agreement about which system holds the truth.
What it does solve
Your own storefront solves three practical things.
The design belongs to the brand, not to a starter theme you share with everyone who clicked the same demo. Category, product, account and a B2B "quick reorder" screen can look different from the default, without having to beg a platform to open up its checkout.
The page can be ready on the server. A visitor and a search engine get content, a title and a canonical, not an empty screen that fills up with JavaScript later. Headless is only an SEO problem if you build it that way.
And you can change the storefront without rewriting the commerce rules. A campaign page belongs in the storefront. A pricing rule belongs in Medusa. That boundary keeps the project readable. How we build it is described under headless storefront in Next.js.
What it does not solve
A faster storefront does not make sloppy product data true. A model or a nice template does not fill in missing sizes, wrong stock or a price that differs between the ERP and the shop.
Headless does not make the project smaller either. You maintain a backend and a frontend. That is the bill that comes with the freedom. If you do not want that bill, and your needs fit a theme, do not start a headless project. Maintenance is then not an afterthought but a choice you make before go-live.
When a theme is enough
The standard Medusa theme is an honest starting point to check whether the backend is right. It is also enough if the design may resemble a starter and there is no second brand, no heavy content layer and no unusual B2B screens.
A new Medusa webshop starts with that question, not with the stack. First: what must a customer be able to do. Only then: whether the storefront needs its own code.
The platform question underneath (Shopify, WooCommerce or Medusa) is covered in Shopify vs Medusa. The storefront does not choose the platform. The process does.