Commerce tooling is structurally broken.
We’ve built the alternative.
Most platforms sell you a tool that does one thing. You stitch several together, none of them talk, and the cost compounds quietly. Vendably is the response. Six capabilities, one feedback loop, one price.
Most merchants are paying twice for the same data.
Six tools. Six bills. Six logins. Six sources of data.
One platform. One bill. One login. One source of data.
A typical online merchant runs four separate tools: one for feed management, one for analytics, one for email, one for CSS. Each of them sees one slice of the same product catalogue. Each of them charges for storing it. None of them talks to the others usefully. The merchant pays four bills, reconciles three reports, and still cannot tell which channel produced the result.
The cost is not just the licences. It is the time. It is the reports that do not quite agree. It is the gap between your ad platform saying one number and your accounting saying another, and nobody knowing why. Fragmentation has a tax. Most merchants pay it without noticing.
The platforms got that way because each one solved a real problem when it launched. Each tool stayed in its lane, and the lanes never merged. The result is that the merchant becomes the integration layer, every week, in a spreadsheet.
“If your weekly reporting requires a spreadsheet, the tooling has failed you.”
Vendably starts from a different premise: the data is one thing, and the platforms that handle it should know about each other. Not as bolted-on integrations, but as one platform with shared infrastructure underneath.
Five things we hold to be true.
Each belief shaped a structural decision. Each is testable against any future call we have to make.
Tools that don’t talk to each other should not exist.
The merchant is not the integration layer. Vendably’s six capabilities share one feed, one identity model, one event bus.
Built one platform, not six SaaS products.Agencies were here first. They deserve better.
One authorisation carries across every client. Wholesale billing means agencies keep margin without invoicing complexity.
One login, every client, decided 2024.Intelligence isn’t a dashboard. It’s the platform’s nervous system.
Every capability reads signals from every other. Cross-signal analysis finds opportunities a single-channel tool structurally cannot.
Intelligence built into every capability, not bolted on top.CSS should be free, forever.
The regulatory mechanism that lets merchants pay 20 to 30% less for Google Shopping should not be a paid feature. It is an entry point, not a tier.
Free CSS for life, no SKU limit, no card.Open APIs are non-negotiable.
Merchants and agencies should be able to leave with their data intact, integrate against the platform, and build on it. Closed platforms are how lock-in happens. We refuse that path.
Public REST and webhooks, open to all.● These five beliefs are the test. Any decision that violates them gets revisited.
Intelligence compounds. Tools don’t.
Connect a single channel and you save some money. Connect several and the savings add up. Connect several into a system that reads from all of them and writes back to all of them, and the savings compound.
Your performance data teaches your content strategy. Your product quality scores teach your bidding priorities. Your competitor tracking informs your merchandising. Each new signal makes every other signal more useful. That is a structural property of the platform, not a feature you turn on.
Every capability reads from every other.
The network is the product.
Five things we won’t build, ever.
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Per-feature pricing.
Every capability is included at every SKU stop. Splitting capabilities into tiers creates internal lobbying battles about which tier each feature lives in. We refuse to play that game.
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Token hostage tactics.
If you leave Vendably, your Google Ads, your Merchant Centre, your email platform, and your marketplace accounts come with you. We do not run campaigns through proprietary infrastructure that disappears when you cancel.
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Closed marketplace platforms.
Agencies and developers should be able to extend Vendably without our permission. APIs are public. Webhooks are public. The marketplace is open.
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Dark patterns in the trial flow.
No card to start the trial. Cancel any time, no notice required. No unsubscribe-buried-in-the-footer email tactics. The merchant’s attention is the precious thing, not their lock-in.
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Claiming features we don’t have.
Capabilities flagged Built are in production. Capabilities flagged Partial are honestly described as such. Capabilities flagged Intent are roadmap, never claimed as live. Status flags appear in the docs and on the changelog.
● These refusals shape every decision. They’re written down so we can be held to them.
Built in the UK. Independent. Funded by users, not VCs.
Vendably was started in 2017, built and founded by people with years of merchant and agency experience watching the same merchants pay the same fragmentation tax over and over. The bet was simple: if you built one platform that did the job of six, merchants would pay one bill instead of four.
We are independent. Funded by users, not by venture capital. That is not a brand position; it is a structural choice. Independent funding means we ship what merchants need, not what shareholder timelines require. It also means we move slower than VC-backed competitors. Both are deliberate.
We are a small team building for a long time horizon. The changelog is public. The roadmap is public. If you want to see what we are working on this week, the changelog page tells you.
● Founded 2017 · Self-funded · Independent
Now see what we built.
If the manifesto holds, the proof should be obvious in the platform itself. Start with free CSS. The rest follows or it doesn’t. We won’t pressure either way.