81 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
81 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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id: homepage
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title: Overview
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description: 'What is Medusa?'
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slug: /
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hide_table_of_contents: true
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---
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Welcome to Medusa, the open source Shopify alternative!
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Medusa is an open-source headless commerce engine that enables developers to create amazing digital commerce experiences.
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:::tip
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Get started with Medusa in a few minutes with our [Quickstart guide](./quickstart/quick-start.md)!
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:::
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## Features
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Medusa comes with a set of building blocks that allow you to create unique digital commerce experiences, below is a list of some of the features that Medusa comes with out of the box:
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- **Headless**: Medusa is a highly customizable commerce API which means that you may use any presentation layer such as a website, app, chatbots, etc.
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- **Regions** allow you to specify currencies, payment providers, shipping providers, tax rates, and more for one or more countries for truly international sales.
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- **Orders** come with all the functionality necessary to perform powerful customer service operations with ease.
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- **Carts** allow customers to collect products for purchase, add shipping details, and complete payments.
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- **Products** come with relevant fields for customs, stock keeping, and sales. Medusa supports multiple options and unlimited variants.
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- **Swaps** allow customers to exchange products after purchase (e.g. for incorrect sizes). Accounting, payment, and fulfillment plugins handle all the tedious work for you for automated customer service.
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- **Claims** can be created if customers experience problems with one of their products. Plugins make sure to automate sending out replacements, handling refunds, and collecting valuable data for analysis.
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- **Returns** allow customers to send back products and can be configured to function in 100% automated flow-through accounting and payment plugins.
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- **Fulfillment API** makes it easy to integrate with any fulfillment provider by creating fulfillment plugins.
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- **Payments API** makes it easy to integrate with any payment provider by creating payment plugins, we already support Stripe, Paypal, and Klarna.
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- **Notification API** allows integrations with email providers, chatbots, Slack channels, etc.
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- **Customer Login** gives customers a way of managing their data, viewing their orders, and saving payment details.
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- **Shipping Options & Profiles** enable powerful rules for free shipping limits, multiple fulfillment methods, and more.
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- **Medusa's Plugin Architecture** makes it intuitive and easy to manage your integrations, switch providers and grow with ease.
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- **Customization** is supported for those special use cases that all the other e-commerce platforms can't accommodate.
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## Where to Get Started
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### The Medusa Server
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You can follow our [quickstart guide](quickstart/quick-start.md) to install and run a Medusa server.
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It's also recommended to learn how to [set up your development environment](tutorial/set-up-your-development-environment) with the requirements tools and services to run a Medusa server, then [configure your Medusa server](usage/configurations.md).
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### The Medusa Admin
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The Medusa Admin provides you with a lot of functionalities and configurations such as Product Management, Order Management, Discounts and Promotions, and more.
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You can install the Medusa admin in 2 steps by following our [Medusa Admin quickstart guide](admin/quickstart.md).
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### The Storefront
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The final step is to set up a storefront to sell your products.
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Medusa provides 2 starter storefronts, one built with [Next.js](./starters/nextjs-medusa-starter.md) and one with [Gatsby](./starters/gatsby-medusa-starter.md), that you can use to quickly set up your store and start selling.
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Alternatively, you can build your own storefront with any frontend framework of your choice just by connecting to your server with the [Storefront REST APIs](https://docs.medusajs.com/api/store/collection).
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## What’s Next 🚀
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- Customize your Medusa server by creating your own [endpoints](./advanced/backend/endpoints/add-storefront.md), [services](./advanced/backend/services/create-service.md), and [subscribers](./advanced/backend/subscribers/create-subscriber.md).
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- Check out guides under the Integrations section to install plugins for [CMS](./add-plugins/strapi.md), [Payment](./add-plugins/stripe.md), [Search Engines](./add-plugins/algolia.md), and more.
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- Deploy your Medusa server in seconds on [Heroku](./how-to/deploying-on-heroku.md), [Qovery](./how-to/deploying-on-qovery.md), or [Digital Ocean](./how-to/deploying-on-digital-ocean.md).
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## Open Source Contribution
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As Medusa is an open source platform, contributions to improve it and its documentation are welcome. In the GitHub repository here’s where you’ll find the different components you can contribute to:
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- The core of the Medusa server resides in [`packages/medusa`](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/tree/master/packages/medusa).
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- You can also find all existing plugins under [the `packages` directory](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/tree/master/packages).
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- The documentation content resides in [`docs/content`](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/tree/master/docs/content). The code for the documentation website is in [`www/docs`](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/tree/master/www/docs).
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You can find more details about contributing in [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md).
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## Community & Support
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If you need any support during your development with Medusa, you can join our [Discord Server](https://discord.gg/medusajs). You will get help directly from our core team as well as our community.
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By joining our Discord Server, you’ll also have the chance to participate in many events such as Bug Hunts and showcase your work with Medusa. |