What is frontend-as-a-service?

Frontend-as-a-service (FaaS) is a productized delivery model for the storefront layer of a headless commerce project. The merchant licenses a pre-built, production-ready frontend instead of building one from scratch, then customizes it for their brand. The provider maintains the underlying codebase as a product. A FaaS product ships the pages every ecommerce site needs — home, category, product detail, cart, checkout, search, account — along with a CMS, pre-wired integrations for payment, shipping, search, and CRM, and the server-side rendering and structured data needed for SEO. The merchant pays a subscription for the license and runs a fixed-scope setup project to connect the backend, apply branding, and go live. FaaS sits between a platform theme (fast to launch but constrained) and a fully custom headless build (flexible but expensive). Most FaaS projects launch in 6 to 12 weeks compared to the 4 to 9 months a fully custom build typically takes. Alokai and Frntkey are the two leading FaaS products in the European market. For the deep-dive covering delivery timelines, what FaaS is not, and when a custom build is a better fit, see the frontend-as-a-service pillar post. ## Related terms Headless commerce · Ecommerce frontend · Headless CMS