scandiweb open-sources Expedio to speed up Magento stores

scandiweb has open-sourced the core of Expedio for Magento merchants. The software is designed to help retailers speed up existing Magento stores without moving to Shopify.

Expedio changes how Magento builds storefront pages on the server and uses Liquid, the open-source templating language used in Shopify themes. The first release is built for stores running Hyvä, while cart and checkout remain on Magento.

The launch targets a pressure point in the eCommerce software market, where site speed has become a factor in platform choice. Merchants considering a move from Adobe's Magento ecosystem to Shopify can instead use Expedio to improve performance while keeping their existing store design, admin systems, catalogue and data, scandiweb said.

Magento has lost more than a third of its live stores since 2022, according to Store Leads, the company said. It argued that replacing an established eCommerce platform can force retailers to rebuild links to warehouses, payment systems and customer accounts, while also recreating custom features developed over several years.

How it works

Expedio sits beneath the theme layer and changes how Magento assembles pages before they are delivered to shoppers. Modern themes such as Hyvä have improved browser-side performance, while Expedio is designed to address server-side page generation, scandiweb said.

Because templates keep the same markup, merchants can retain the appearance of their storefronts while changing the underlying page-building process, according to the company. Stores can also move to Expedio one page type at a time rather than switching the whole site in a single step.

That phased approach may appeal to retailers looking to limit disruption to trading operations. For many merchants, a full replatforming involves a broad technical project across payments, fulfilment, customer accounts and bespoke integrations.

Benchmark results

A benchmark on a real merchant's Magento store showed Expedio responded at least twice as fast on every page type tested at peak traffic and 6.4 times faster at the median, scandiweb said. With all caches emptied, category pages responded 3.2 times faster, it added.

The figures were based on one merchant store, and results will depend on each store's implementation and hardware. Even so, the performance claims address a longstanding concern among Magento users over speed and infrastructure demands.

By releasing the core as open-source, scandiweb is making the software available to merchants, developers and agencies without an upfront licence fee. Users that want extra help can also buy support and updates, a review of their setup, or a full implementation, the company said.

Support options

scandiweb also tied the release to Ari, a chat-based tool it describes as the first agent for Magento. Teams can connect a store to Ari and ask it through chat to set up Expedio on a copy of the store before any changes go live, the company said.

The business has deep roots in the Magento market. It has worked with Adobe's Magento platform since its launch in 2008 and has delivered more than 2,100 eCommerce projects for brands including PUMA, The New York Times and Samsung, according to scandiweb.

scandiweb said it has more than 600 specialists and 894 Adobe certifications, and that stores it supports process more than USD $4 billion in sales each year. Those figures underline the scale of its presence in a market where agencies often play a central role in implementation, maintenance and performance tuning.

Expedio's use of Liquid is also notable because it brings an architectural element closely associated with Shopify into the Magento ecosystem. That may draw interest from developers who want a different approach to storefront performance without abandoning Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source installations.

For Magento merchants, the practical question will be whether open-source access and incremental deployment can provide a cheaper and less disruptive answer than a full migration. "We've spent years making Magento faster for our own clients. Now any Magento store can have it," said Antons Sapriko, Executive Chairman, scandiweb.