How to launch Saleor.io shop instance within 40h

Problem

Mag-moto is a niche store for motorcyclists. We have been maintaining our client since 2015. What’s intriguing about it is that the first version of this shop was built with the Saleor monolith software where Saleor had less than 1000 stars on the github (today Salor has more than 13000 stars). During the years between 2015-2021 the shop was working perfectly. Client had a lot of products and orders. Our role was to take care of servers and backups with small improvements from time to time. Then, something bad happened… Our cloud service provider had an accident where millions of websites have lost their data. Irrevocably. (More information from Reuters here). We were one of these OVH clients.

At this point, we needed to face the problem: how fast we are able to restore our client’s shop.

The first thought was to run this project from the backup. However, we had to wait for OVH updates regarding their recovery process. Eventually, we figured out three options:

1. To wait for OVH and run the application from the backup
2. To move our clients catalog to Shopify instance
3. To run the store from scratch based on the newest at that time Saleor version (2.1)

Solution

Decision wasn’t so easy because with the first option we didn’t know how much time we would have to wait for the OVH. The second option was not accepted by the client who wanted to have his own shop. Finally, we decided to choose option three. Why? Because:

1. Today's Saleor is a very light and modern software dedicated to developers. It means that is highly customizable
2. We have experience with a different implementations based on the newest Saleor (2.1)
3. Client has not expected to rebuild the whole frontend parts. We could use Saleor Storefront out-of-the-box
4. We had our offline payment plugin which we have coded in a different project and which our client wanted to use
5. It was a big chance to replace the legacy software with the newest version

After a small brainstorming the final decision was made. Based on our previous implementations we knew that default setup is not so hard to do. We assumed that we would have five days to build this project from scratch. The plan was to:

Day 1: Setup a new VPS environment and Saleor default implementation

Day 2: Give access for the client to administration panel (Client was able to learn a new Saleor)

Day 3: Add necessary customizations and configurations (Stripe, Offline payment, Mail, Monitoring)

Day 4: Tweak storefront with small improvements (mainly on checkout page)

Day 5: Assembly everything together and launch on client’s main domain

Result

Since June 2021 Mag-moto store has been working perfectly. Client is really happy with our delivery. Why? Read more here: Clutch.co

Our full-stack development team has spent 40h on this project. Half of this time was to tweak some shop parts and behavior (e.g. offline payment) and testing, as well.

Summarizing: We’ve learned one important lesson: As a professional service company we want to give our customers the best options and help them choose. Last thing is that thanks to our approach and cooperation with the client we turned around the problem into success which is the best thing that we could do.

If you’re not sure that Saleor is a Software for you, call us and get a consultation which helps you to make correct decisions.

FAQ

1. How many hours did you spend on this project? Up to 40h
2. How many developers did you require? A one full-stack developer
3. What is the cost of a VPS server for this implementation? Around $ 20 USD monthly
4. What is a server specification? Minimum 4GB RAM, 2 processors, 80GB SSD, Ubuntu LTS
5. How much time did you spend to write a custom plugin? Up to 8h
6. What was the biggest challenge you faced? Saleor Storefront modifications (we’re building our own storefront based on Vue3 and Tailwind)

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