Your storefront is an absolutely critical component of your ecommerce application, and BigCommerce offers two paths for building your front-end experience: Stencil and Catalyst.
These two officially supported storefront implementations represent different approaches to architecture and developer experience, but each offers a fully built shopper experience, set up within minutes, which you can then fully customize to achieve the branding and functionality you need.
With its API-first design principles, BigCommerce also gives you all the tools you need to integrate the platform with your own custom, composable front-end using any tech stack you choose.
Stencil is BigCommerce’s traditional, integrated theme engine. Stencil theme packages are centered around server-side HTML-based templates, which are handled directly by the BigCommerce back-end to serve the core storefront experience.
The officially maintained, open-source Cornerstone theme is an optimized, responsive, and fully functional starting point for your custom theme development. Cornerstone is the default theme applied on every new Stencil storefront.
Catalyst is the open-source, modern composable storefront officially engineered and maintained by BigCommerce.
Built and optimized on a best-in-class tech stack, Catalyst is a truly decoupled front-end that offers a fully functional ecommerce experience out of the box, while also giving you the power to integrate and customize according to your needs.