Commerce Solutions

Forrester merged its two commerce scorecards into one for the first time, and the merged report is already out: The Forrester Wave: Commerce Solutions, Q3 2026 published in July 2026.

The merge was not an editorial decision. It was the market's.

The merge the market made

Forrester evaluated B2B and B2C commerce separately for six years, then combined them in one Wave. The reason is sitting in the firm's own survey data. Per Forrester's Industry- And Customer-Supporting Software Survey, 2026, 70 percent of B2C and 60 percent of B2B software decision-makers say they are not planning to change their current commerce provider.

A split scorecard makes sense when buyers switch. A combined one makes sense when they stay.

The 2024 B2C edition had already telegraphed the turn. That Wave, the last separate one, left its Leaders ring empty. Scores were lower across the board, and one major retailer told Forrester: "I can't justify the costs and the business case to replatform." The report read more like a retention guide than a buyer's guide.

The combined edition takes the logic one step further. "Consolidating or reducing the overall number of solutions in our ecosystem" is now the second-highest customer-facing tech priority for strategy decision-makers in manufacturing, production, retail, and wholesale. Modernizing legacy tech is third. And retail and wholesale digital business leaders list "small tech changes rather than large replatforming projects" as their fourth priority.

The merged scorecard is what consolidation looks like on the analyst's side.

The first combined scorecard: The Forrester Wave: Commerce Solutions, Q3 2026

Principal analyst Emily Pfeiffer announced the results on July 22, 2026 in a blog post with a frank opening: "we combined them for the first time." The evaluation, published July 2026, scores ten providers against 33 criteria, down from the two separate fields that preceded it.

The combination had been telegraphed. The Commerce Solutions Landscape, Q1 2026 was already a single report covering both halves of the market. The Wave followed six months later.

Two details from the blog are worth holding onto. First, the report ships with preset filter buttons for B2B and B2C specialty views, because as Pfeiffer puts it: "the top-three vendor list looks very different for B2B than it does for B2C!" Second, the advice is pointedly pro-buyer: negotiate hard on contract terms, on SLA-breach concessions, and on rates that adjust downward as well as upward. In a market this settled, the renewal negotiation is the whole game.

The Leader who wins on what comes after the sale

KIBO announced a Leader placement on July 22, 2026, and the detail of its scorecard says more about the category than the tier does.

KIBO scored 3.68 of 5 in Current Offering and 3.80 of 5 in Strategy, with the highest possible score in 15 criteria. Read the list: Store Fulfillment. Post-Purchase Customer Support. Subscriptions. Reporting and Analytics. Product Data. Practitioner UX. Cart and Checkout. The maximum scores cluster after the checkout.

Forrester's positioning quote makes the point explicit. KIBO is "a best fit for B2B and B2C digital businesses that value unified operations features alongside commerce functions on a single platform." And the vision citation: "Kibo establishes a superior vision in the market with its focus on operational functionality within commerce."

The commerce scorecard is now scoring the after-sale. KIBO is also the only Leader in this Wave who was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Order Management Systems, Q1 2025. That crossover is not a coincidence. It is where the market moved: the storefront is bought, and the operations layer around it is where the differentiation lives now.

The field in public, five of ten

Ten providers were scored. Five have surfaced publicly.

Shopware announced a Strong Performer placement, with Forrester calling it "a best fit for B2B organizations seeking strong core commerce functionality" and crediting a strong roadmap with consistent delivery against announced timing. One background detail matters: PayPal raised its stake in Shopware from 11 percent to over 40 percent in late 2025. A payment giant does not take 40 percent of a commerce vendor without a view on the market.

BigCommerce came in as a Contender with maximum scores in three criteria: B2B product catalogue, B2B pricing, and B2C payments. Forrester noted it "demonstrates strength across several B2B and B2C functionalities." A Contender with three perfect scores is exactly the scenario Pfeiffer's blog warns about: the right fit may sit down and to the right, with a narrower but better-matched feature set.

commercetools and Intershop are confirmed in the field but have not published placements. The remaining five have not surfaced publicly, and this article will not invent them.

The honest limitation of this scorecard is the same as the honest limitation of the market it describes: the full picture is only partly public. What is public, though, is enough to read the direction. Two platforms that run the same storefront differently would have justified a split. The combined scorecard rewards one platform that runs both halves and the operations between them.

How the two scorecards became one

The split era began with the Q2 2020 editions: The Forrester Wave: B2C Commerce Suites, Q2 2020 scored ten vendors on 31 criteria, and The Forrester Wave: B2B Commerce Suites, Q2 2020 scored thirteen on 29. Adobe and Salesforce led both. Adobe, on the back of Magento, was the only vendor to score 3 or higher in every criterion across both Waves, and Salesforce took its first B2B Leader placement that year.

By 2023 the name had changed from suites to solutions, and the split held. The Commerce Solutions For B2B and For B2C Landscape reports published in Q4 2023. The Q2 2024 Waves followed, one for each half. The B2C edition, as noted, left the Leaders ring empty. The B2B edition put Optimizely in the Leader tier on the strength of native testing and optimization, an innovation score, and a dual SaaS and PaaS model.

Then the merge. A combined Landscape in Q1 2026, a combined Wave in Q3 2026. The two separate halves now exist as history, and each half's published scorecard from Q2 2024 is its own story, covered on its own terms. The name on this scorecard is the whole market under one title.

The fine print on the AI pitch

The combined Wave arrives at a strange moment for commerce technology: the answer engines. LLMs crawl and scrape commerce sites, which makes the commerce platform the accidental source of truth for product data, delivery data, and inventory data. The website stopped being only a store. It became the training ground for every AI that answers a shopping question.

Forrester's caveat follows from that. The genAI tools vendors now ship can generate comparative charts, recommend actions, and build custom apps. They cannot add a feature that is not there. The report's advice is concrete: demand to see AI-generated work visible and adjustable inside the interface, not in a demo script.

That caveat matters more in a combined scorecard than it did in two split ones. A platform selling hybrid B2B and B2C breadth is exactly the kind of platform that will pitch AI as the bridge between the two halves. The scorecard says: the bridge is only as strong as the features underneath it.

And the feature gaps now carry real cost. "If the upgrade is that resource-intensive, we might as well shop around," one buyer told Forrester. When 70 percent of a market plans to stay put, the vendor's job is to make staying feel like progress.

What to ask before you renew instead of replatform

Which of your requirements sit after the checkout? The combined scorecard rewards operational functionality. If your pain is post-purchase, the ranking reads differently than if it is catalogue depth. Run the comparison with the report's B2B and B2C filter views, because the top three differ between them.

Show me the AI-generated work inside the interface. Not in a demo. If a generated chart, app, or recommendation cannot be seen and adjusted by your team in the UI, treat it as a roadmap slide.

What does the renewal look like if we stay? The market has given you the leverage. Ask for SLA-breach concessions and rates that can adjust downward as well as upward. In a market this settled, the renewal negotiation is the whole game.

Forrester does not endorse any vendor named here, and tier placement should not be read as a recommendation to buy.

The natural next comparison is Point-Of-Service Solutions: forrester let this category sit unscored for six years, and it came back with a finding that the store checkout stopped being a cost center and became the last mile of the unified commerce promise.