The 2026 Commerce Stack: What to Keep, What to Kill, What to Build Natively

Your marketing isn’t failing. Your systems are. Your tech stack is bloated, fragile, and impossible to govern effectively. If your team is managing orders, refunds, and subscriptions across more than a dozen apps, you already know the pain. Sync issues create duplicate records, missed revenue, and integrations that break with every quarterly API update. It’s a constant state of repair.

This complexity is a liability. By 2026, the duct-taped approach to commerce will no longer be viable. The turning point is here: teams must stop integrating disparate systems and start consolidating into a native commerce ecosystem. This isn't about adding another tool; it's about fundamentally rethinking your architecture to build a commerce-powered CRM that drives growth instead of creating friction.

The Problem With the “Everything-as-an-Integration” Tech Stack

The promise of a composable tech stack was flexibility. The reality for most businesses is a fragile web of connectors that drain resources and obscure the truth. Every new integration adds another point of failure, contributing to a system that is perpetually on the verge of breaking.

This approach creates painful, recurring problems:

Sync Delays and Data Mismatches: When your order system and CRM don’t speak the same language in real time, your data is always out of date. Marketing campaigns target customers who just requested a refund, and sales reps operate without a clear view of a customer’s purchase history.
Manual Reconciliation: Hours are wasted each week manually cross-referencing data between platforms. Your finance team is forced to reconcile payment records from one system with order data from another, a process that is as inefficient as it is error-prone.
No True Revenue Visibility: With revenue data fragmented across multiple apps, getting a single, accurate view of business performance is impossible. Forecasting becomes guesswork, and strategic decisions are based on incomplete information.
API Failures and Expensive Middleware: Your entire operation hinges on third-party APIs that can change without warning. To keep these fragile connections alive, many businesses invest in expensive middleware, adding yet another layer of complexity and cost just to maintain a broken system.

Integrations are not a scalable solution for 2026. They cannot handle the volume, speed, or data integrity required for modern commerce. As your business grows, the cracks in this architectural model will only widen, holding back your ability to adapt and compete.

The New Model: Unified Commerce Inside HubSpot

The architectural shift required is a move toward radical simplification. The goal is one CRM, one commerce layer, and one source of truth for all customer and revenue data. This isn't about connecting Shopify to HubSpot through a series of apps and middleware. It's about building a streamlined stack: a light storefront connected directly to HubSpot, with a native commerce engine like CommercePro at its core.

CommercePro provides the missing native commerce layer inside your HubSpot portal. It manages the entire revenue lifecycle directly within the CRM, eliminating the need for external systems and problematic syncs.

With CommercePro, your commerce operations become native to HubSpot:

Native Orders, Payments, Subscriptions, and Refunds: Every transaction, from initial order to final refund, is processed and recorded inside HubSpot.
Native Customer Lifecycle Events: Critical events like "Subscription Created" or "Payment Failed" exist as native HubSpot timeline events, available for real-time automation.
Event-Based Automation: Because all commerce events are native, you can trigger workflows instantly without waiting for a data sync. A failed payment can immediately trigger a sales notification and a customer email, all from within HubSpot.
Real-Time Revenue Intelligence: With all revenue data unified in one place, you gain complete and accurate visibility. Dashboards reflect the true state of the business, enabling precise forecasting and confident decision-making.

This model transforms HubSpot from a system of record into a unified commerce CRM. It’s the engine that powers your entire revenue operation, from quote to cash, all within a single platform.

The Audit Framework: Keep, Kill, or Build Natively

As the end of the year approaches, businesses across ANZ are entering "systems season"—a time for cleaning up tech stacks, killing unused apps, and rebuilding processes for the new year. To navigate this, you need a clear framework for auditing your tools. Every app in your stack should be categorized into one of three buckets: Keep, Kill, or Build Natively.

Keep (External but Connected)

Some systems serve specialized, non-revenue-critical functions and should remain external. These are typically systems of record for finance or logistics that benefit from their own dedicated environments. They integrate with HubSpot but are not replaced by it.

ERP Systems: Enterprise Resource Planning platforms manage core business processes beyond the scope of a CRM.
Accounting (Xero, MYOB, NetSuite): These platforms are the financial backbone of the business and the ultimate source of truth for accounting.
Warehouse Management Systems (WMS): Specialized WMS platforms handle inventory, fulfillment, and logistics with a level of detail that a CRM is not designed for.
Product Information Management (PIM): A PIM centralizes product data, ensuring consistency across all channels.

These systems hold a necessary place in your architecture. The key is to ensure their integration with HubSpot is clean and serves a specific, well-defined purpose.

Kill (Tools Creating More Debt Than Value)

This category includes any tool that adds more friction, cost, and fragility than the value it provides. These are the apps and connectors that exist only to patch holes in a broken architecture. It's time to be ruthless.

Examples of what to kill:

Limited Shopify - HubSpot Connectors: If your connector only syncs a handful of fields and requires constant maintenance, it’s creating tech debt.
Subscription Apps That Don’t Sync Billing Info: A subscription tool that doesn’t provide a complete, real-time view of billing events and history inside your CRM is a liability.
Middleware Platforms: If you’re paying for middleware solely to keep your integrations from breaking, you’re paying to maintain a flawed system.
Complex Custom Automations: Multi-step workflows built to compensate for broken data are a clear sign that your underlying architecture is wrong.

Removing these tools simplifies your stack, reduces costs, and eliminates major points of failure.

Build in HubSpot (via CommercePro)

Anything that directly touches customer revenue belongs inside your CRM. These are the mission-critical processes that determine customer experience and business performance. By building them natively in HubSpot with CommercePro, you create a seamless, event-driven system.

Build these workflows natively:

Quote-to-Order and Order-to-Billing: Automate the entire process from quote acceptance to order creation and invoicing.
Refund Workflows and Subscription Lifecycles: Manage refunds, upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations with workflows triggered by real-time events.
Customer Portals: Give customers a self-service portal to manage their subscriptions and view their order history directly within your HubSpot-powered ecosystem.
Renewal Automation and Payment Events: Proactively manage renewals and respond instantly to payment events like failures or disputes.
Forecasting and Revenue Dashboards: Build dashboards that provide a real-time, accurate view of revenue, churn, and customer lifetime value.

The rule is simple: if it’s critical to revenue, it belongs inside HubSpot.

The CommercePro Advantage: Your 2026 Native Architecture

Adopting a native commerce architecture with CommercePro isn't just about simplification; it's about unlocking new capabilities. By replacing a fragmented collection of external apps, CommercePro unifies your entire revenue operation within a single data schema inside HubSpot.

CommercePro replaces:

App-Based Subscription Billing: Manage all subscription logic natively.
External Checkout Logic: Control the entire checkout experience from within HubSpot.
Sync-Based Order Management: Process and track orders in real time.
API-Reliant Refund Tracking: Handle refunds as native HubSpot events.
Fragmented Customer Visibility: Gain a complete, 360-degree view of every customer.

This unified approach unlocks powerful advantages:

Real-Time Revenue Forecasting: Base your forecasts on clean, complete, and up-to-the-minute data.
Clean, Event-Driven Automation: Build powerful workflows that react instantly to customer actions.
Accurate Attribution: Finally understand which marketing efforts are driving actual revenue.
Faster Fulfillment: Shorten the time from order to fulfillment by eliminating data sync delays.
Fewer Systems to Manage: Reduce your SaaS spend and the operational overhead of managing multiple platforms.

The New 2026 Commerce Stack

The contrast between the old and new commerce stacks is stark. One is complex and fragile; the other is simple and powerful.

Old Stack (12+ Tools):
Storefront → Apps → Billing Platform → Subscription Tool → Middleware → CRM → Service Platform → Finance Software

New Stack (3 Tools):
Storefront → HubSpot + CommercePro → ERP/Finance

This streamlined architecture is not a distant vision; it is achievable today. It represents an inevitable shift toward a more intelligent and efficient way of managing commerce.

How to Architect Your Native Stack

Transitioning to a native commerce architecture is a strategic process. Follow this sequence to ensure a smooth and successful migration:

Audit Your Integrations: Use the "Keep, Kill, Build Natively" framework to categorize every tool in your current stack.
Map Your Revenue Critical Workflows: Document every step of your quote-to-cash process, identifying all associated data points and systems.
Define the Data Contract: Determine exactly what data needs to flow between HubSpot and your essential external systems (like your ERP or WMS).
Establish HubSpot as the Commerce Brain: Position HubSpot as the central hub for all customer and revenue data.
Rebuild Order and Billing Flows Natively: Use CommercePro to reconstruct your core commerce workflows directly within HubSpot.
Remove Apps One by One: As you replace functionality with native workflows, decommission the corresponding external apps to systematically reduce complexity.
Align Reporting Across the Business: Build unified dashboards in HubSpot that serve as the single source of truth for sales, marketing, service, and finance.

Your Stack: Liability or Leverage?

The choice facing every business is clear. Your tech stack is either a liability that drains resources and slows you down, or a point of leverage that accelerates growth.

Teams that cling to a fragmented, integration-heavy model will spend 2026 maintaining broken connectors and struggling with inaccurate data. They will be outmaneuvered by competitors who have already made the shift.

Teams that go native will scale faster, spend less, and forecast with confidence. They will operate with the clarity and agility that only a unified commerce CRM can provide. Your technology should be a competitive advantage, not a handicap. It’s time to build it that way.

Book a demo

Simplify your commerce operations today