[opensourcedex]

Smartstore is a free, open source e-commerce platforms project written in C# and released under AGPL-3.0. It has 1,520 GitHub stars, 588 forks and 530 open issues, and was last pushed 6 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #28 of 30 tracked projects in E-commerce Platforms, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is Smartstore?

What it is

Smartstore is an open-source, all-in-one eCommerce platform built on the ASP.NET Core ecosystem. It uses ASP.NET Core 10, Entity Framework Core 10, Vue.js, Sass, and Bootstrap to provide a modular storefront, product catalog, content tools, and shop management interface.

The project addresses the problem of running a complete online store without stitching together separate commerce, CMS, marketing, and infrastructure components. It supports multi-store, multi-language, and multi-currency shops, while giving merchants tools for products, promotions, search, media, and content management.

Key capabilities

  • It supports multi-store, multi-currency, and multi-language shops, including right-to-left and bidirectional text.
  • It manages rich product catalogs with unlimited products and categories, variants, bundles, attributes, datasheets, ESD, tier pricing, cross-selling, discounts, and coupons.
  • It provides CRM, CMS, sales, marketing, payment, and shipping tools in one platform.
  • It includes a CMS Page Builder, Liquid template engine for emails and campaigns, HTML-to-PDF converter, Media Manager, and visual Rule Builder.
  • It offers AI-powered text and image generation, image editing, and image composition through leading AI providers.
  • It supports faceted search, output caching, Redis, web farm operation, and Azure deployment for large catalogs.
  • It ships with the Flex theme and a theme engine with inheritance and point-and-click configuration.

Who uses it and how

  • Teams launch single installations that operate multiple stores, languages, and currencies from one administration interface.
  • Developers extend the platform through its modular ASP.NET Core architecture, domain-driven design, and Entity Framework Core data layer.
  • Content and marketing staff build pages, configure campaign emails, define promotions, and manage media without writing code for every task.
  • Operators deploy the application on Windows, Linux, or macOS using Docker, Redis, web farm support, or the Azure Marketplace listing.
  • Catalog-heavy stores use faceted search, product bundles, variants, ESD, and caching to organize and browse large product sets.

Getting started

The README points to Docker support for deployment, an Azure Marketplace listing, and an online trial, along with a developer guide and user guide.

When to use it — and when not to

Smartstore fits teams that want an open-source, self-hosted commerce platform with modular .NET components and built-in content, marketing, and catalog tools. It may not fit organizations that require a fully managed service, because self-hosting means operating the application, database layer, caching, and deployment infrastructure. The AGPL-3.0 license and 530 open issues are practical considerations for teams evaluating long-term maintenance and modification obligations.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline



Ready. Sell. Grow.

A modular, scalable, and ultra-fast open-source all-in-one eCommerce platform built on ASP.NET Core 10.

Try Online ∙ Developer Guide ∙ Forum ∙ Marketplace ∙ Translations



Smartstore is a cross-platform, modular, scalable, and ultra-fast open-source all-in-one eCommerce platform built on ASP.NET Core 10, Entity Framework Core 10, Vue.js, Sass, Bootstrap, and more.

Smartstore includes all the essential features to create multi-language, multi-store, and multi-currency shops, with built-in AI capabilities for text and image generation powered by the world's leading AI providers — targeting desktop and mobile devices alike. It enables SEO-optimized, rich product catalogs with support for an unlimited number of products and categories, variants, bundles, datasheets, ESD, discounts, coupons, and much more.

A comprehensive set of tools for CRM & CMS, sales, marketing, payment, and shipping makes Smartstore a powerful all-in-one solution that meets all your needs.

Smartstore delivers a beautiful and fully configurable storefront out of the box, built with a high-level design approach using Sass, Bootstrap, and other modern components. The included Flex theme is modern, clean, and fully responsive — giving shoppers the best possible experience on any device.

The state-of-the-art architecture — with ASP.NET Core 10, Entity Framework Core 10, and a domain-driven design approach — makes Smartstore easy to extend, extremely flexible, and a pleasure to work with.

 

Technology & Design

  • State-of-the-art architecture with ASP.NET Core 10, Entity Framework Core 10, and domain-driven design
  • Cross-platform: runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS
  • Docker support out of the box for easy deployment
  • Composable, extensible, and highly flexible through a modular architecture
  • Highly scalable with full-page caching and web farm support
  • Powerful theme engine for creating or customizing themes and skins with minimal effort, thanks to theme inheritance
  • Point & Click theme configuration
  • Liquid template engine: highly flexible templating for emails and campaigns, with auto-completion and syntax highlighting
  • HTML-to-PDF converter: generates PDF documents from standard HTML templates, greatly simplifying PDF output customization
  • Consistent use of modern components such as Vue.js, Sass, and Bootstrap across both frontend and backend
  • Intuitive shop management through a modern, clean UI

 

Key Features

Smartstore Screenshots

  • Multi-store support
  • Multi-language with full RTL (right-to-left) and bidirectional text support
  • Multi-currency support
  • Product bundles, variants, attributes, ESD, tier pricing, cross-selling, and more
  • Sophisticated marketing and promotion capabilities (gift cards, reward points, discounts of any kind, and more)
  • AI-powered features for text and image generation, image editing, and image composition
  • CMS Page Builder: create compelling, sales-driving content without any coding, using a powerful WYSIWYG editor with a CSS grid system
  • Reviews and ratings
  • Media Manager: powerful, lightning-fast media file explorer
  • Rule Builder: visual business rule creation with dozens of predefined rules out of the box
  • Search framework with faceted search support — ultra-fast results even with millions of items
  • Extreme scalability through output caching, Redis, and Microsoft Azure support
  • Tree-based permission management (ACL) with inheritance support
  • Comprehensive import/export framework (profiles, filters, mapping, projections, scheduling, deployment, and more)
  • Blog, forum, polls, custom pages, and HTML content
  • CMS Menu Builder: visual manager for all menu types — modify existing menus or create your own and place them anywhere
  • Modern, clean, SEO-optimized, and fully responsive Bootstrap-based theme
  • Hierarchical SEO slug support, e.g. samsung/galaxy/s22/32gb/white
  • Trusted Shops pre-certification and full EU GDPR compliance
  • 100% compliant with German law
  • Sales, customer, and inventory management
  • Comprehensive CRM features
  • Powerful layered navigation
  • Numerous payment and shipping providers and options
  • Wallet: supports full or partial order payment via credit account
  • TinyImage: achieves ultra-high image compression rates (up to 80%) with WebP support
  • Preview Mode: easily test themes and stores before going live
  • RESTful Web API

 

AI Features

Smartstore comes with a built-in AI framework that brings generative AI directly into the merchant workflow — no third-party plugins required.

Capabilities

  • Text generation: AI-assisted creation and optimization of product descriptions, meta tags, category texts, and other shop content
  • Image generation: Create product and marketing images from text prompts directly within the backend
  • Image editing: Modify and enhance existing images using AI (background removal, retouching, style transfer, and more)
  • Image composition: Combine and merge multiple images into a single, cohesive result

Supported AI Providers

Smartstore integrates with all major AI providers through a unified, provider-agnostic abstraction layer. Switch or combine providers at any time without changing your workflow:

Provider Text Generation Image Generation
OpenAI / ChatGPT ✔ ✔
Google Gemini ✔ ✔
Anthropic Claude ✔ —
DeepSeek ✔ —
Ollama (self-hosted) ✔ —

 

Getting Started

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems
  • Windows 10 or higher / Windows Server 2016 or higher
  • Ubuntu 18.04+
  • Debian 11+
  • macOS 10.11+
Supported Database Systems
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Express or higher
  • MySQL 8.0+
  • PostgreSQL 11+
  • SQLite 3.31+

Upgrading from Smartstore.NET 4.2

Smartstore 5+ is a port of Smartstore.NET 4 — based on the classic .NET Framework 4.7.2 — to the modern ASP.NET Core 10 platform. Existing instances based on classic ASP.NET MVC can be upgraded seamlessly. To upgrade, simply replace the application files on your server (keep the App_Data directory intact) and all your data will be migrated to the new system automatically. See the documentation for detailed installation and upgrade instructions.

:information_source: Upgrading from versions earlier than 4.2 is not supported. Please migrate to Smartstore.NET 4.2 first, then upgrade to Smartstore 5+.

Visual Studio

  1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/smartstore/Smartstore.git and check out the main branch.
  2. Download Visual Studio 2026 (any edition).
  3. Open Smartstore.sln and wait for Visual Studio to restore all NuGet packages.
  4. Set Smartstore.Web as the startup project and run it.

Repository Structure

Project Description
Smartstore Common low-

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is Smartstore free to use?

Smartstore is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Smartstore do?

A modular, scalable and ultra-fast open-source all-in-one eCommerce platform built on ASP.NET Core 10

What is Smartstore written in?

Smartstore is primarily written in C#. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/smartstore/Smartstore, and it has 1,520 GitHub stars.