To set up an online business, you need more than just a website.
Building an eCommerce operation means orchestrating multiple channels, payments, inventory systems, logistics, and customer touchpoints, often all at once. As a result, businesses end up juggling separate tools that rarely sync.
Odoo eCommerce offers a different path: one system that handles storefront, stock, payments, and accounting.
We break down how Odoo tackles common eCommerce challenges, and what your business can look like when it all runs from one platform.
Table of contents
eCommerce businesses face a specific set of challenges
Odoo connects all stages of an eCommerce sales cycle
Odoo connects to payment methods, marketplaces & shipping providers
What managing an eCommerce business with Odoo looks like
Retain your customers’ loyalty
Odoo eCommerce integrates with Shopify, Shopware & more via API
eCommerce businesses face a specific set of challenges
Running an eCommerce business involves many processes that need to stay in sync. When this doesn’t happen, companies face a specific set of challenges:
Integration costs & technical issues
Online stores often depend on third-party integrations to connect website, payments, inventory, and accounting.
These setups are expensive to build and require constant upkeep. This brings up technical challenges and makes the setup more prone to errors.
Stock innacurary across platforms
Selling through multiple channels makes keeping track of stock difficult.
Delays or integration errors cause overselling, backorders, or differences between what’s shown online and what’s actually available.
Tax inconsistencies & risks
Taxes are handled differently across systems and countries where an online shop may sell.
This can quickly lead to mismatched rates or rounding errors. A single bug or wrong fiscal position can create compliance issues that create accounting bottlenecks.
Limited scalability in complex setups
The more tools a company adds, the harder it becomes to grow.
Expanding to new markets or product lines often means duplicating settings and maintaining more integrations, which slows down sales.
Odoo connects all stages of an eCommerce sales cycle
Odoo manages the complete eCommerce process in one environment. Every app - Inventory, Accounting, Sales, and the Marketing suite - is centralised in one system, which means that all data is integrated by default.
This helps eCommerce businesses tackle known challenges by keeping all processes in sync.
Here’s how Odoo eCommerce integrates across the entire system:
Odoo Website
Odoo eCommerce is built directly on the Website app.
You can design product pages and checkout flows in the same drag-and-drop website editor.
Themes, templates, and dynamic blocks let you adjust your storefront without coding.
In Odoo 19, AI Fields extend the editor with text generation and translation for product and page content. SEO meta tags can also be automated with AI.
Odoo Inventory
Inventory synchronises automatically with every confirmed eCommerce order.
Product availability on the website reflects real-time stock levels.
When a sale is made, Odoo creates a delivery order and updates quantities across warehouses.
Routes such as dropshipping or cross-docking run from the same workflow used for offline sales, keeping all stock information centralised.
Odoo Sales & CRM
Each eCommerce order is saved in the Sales app, making sure all sales orders are centralised in the same place.
All taxes, discounts, and price lists follow the same configuration used for quotations.
Customer data and order history are visible in the CRM pipeline for ongoing account management.
Odoo Accounting
Accounting records every payment and invoice created by an online sale.
Confirmed orders generate customer invoices directly from the sales order.
Taxes, payment acquirers, and refund rules are handled within the same workflow.
Odoo Live Chat
Live Chat embeds directly into your eCommerce website.
Visitors can contact sales or support while browsing or checking out.
Chats are stored in the database and linked to the visitor’s session or customer record, ensuring context for follow-up.
AI Chatbots can also be added to your website, where the AI Agent can recover all eCommerce-related information.
Odoo Marketing Suite
Odoo Marketing connects campaigns and automations to your online shop.
Marketing Automation, Email and SMS Marketing apps use eCommerce data for targeted follow-ups, abandoned checkout recovery, and performance tracking.
Odoo’s new AI Agents can also help you generate and translate your text to match your campaigns, products, and website content.
Odoo connects to payment methods, marketplaces & shipping providers
While Odoo runs its own eCommerce engine, it also connects with external tools. The system supports a wide range of payment, shipping, and marketplace integrations.
These can already exist in Odoo out of the box, like a range of payment methods and providers, or be integrated via API, like external storefronts and shipping software.
Payments can run through Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Mollie, or Authorize.net. Local methods such as SEPA or wire transfer are also supported. Each transaction lands instantly in the correct accounting journal, complete with currency and fee tracking.
Shipping links to carriers such as DHL, FedEx, UPS out of the box. It also integrates seamlessly with shipping software like ShippyPro and Sendcloud via API. You can print labels, check live rates, and trigger fulfilment directly from Odoo.
Marketplaces such as Shopify, WooCommerce, or Amazon connect via API or partner modules. Orders flow into Odoo automatically, and inventory updates return to the other end.
Warehouse management systems can also be connected via API integrations to manage stock levels and connect with providers for delivery methods like dropshipping.
These integrations make Odoo flexible without breaking its central principle: one system as a single source of truth for eCommerce.
What managing an eCommerce business with Odoo looks like
Managing eCommerce with Odoo means working from a single interconnected system instead of switching between software.
See how an eCommerce operation typically runs inside Odoo.
Set up your web shop
To build your eCommerce business with Odoo, start in the Website app to create the face of your brand.
The drag-and-drop editor lets you design your homepage, build product pages, and structure your menus without touching code.
You can add images, banners, and sections to highlight your key products and their different variants through dynamic product displays.
eCommerce product variants on Odoo Website.
Everything stays live in the same backend that will later process orders. Once your layout feels right, you can preview it in multiple languages, publish your website, and your store will be immediately online.
At this point, you already have a working storefront connected to the Odoo ecosystem, ready to handle products, payments, and customers.
Configure your products
Next comes the core of your shop: products.
You can open the eCommerce app and begin adding items with names, images, and variants. Odoo automatically handles product variants, so you don’t need to duplicate listings.
Within Odoo eCommerce, you can define prices and tax rules, attach descriptions and manuals, and decide whether each item is shipped, made to order, or delivered digitally.
From here, Odoo synchronises everything with your inventory. When stock changes in your warehouse, it updates instantly in your online shop without the need for manual imports or CSV uploads.
Sell across marketplaces
Once your store is live, you can connect external channels.
Odoo already offers various integrated marketplaces, but you can also sync other channels with Odoo through connectors or APIs.
For example, integrating Shopify, WooCommerce, or Shopware lets you manage multi-country or multi-brand websites with high volumes of orders. Connecting marketplace aggregators like ChannelEngine gives you access to almost a thousand marketplaces worldwide.
When a customer places a new order, it automatically appears in Odoo as a sales order. This triggers the delivery workflow in Inventory and posts the transaction in Accounting.
You don’t have to log into multiple dashboards, as every sale lands in one view.
With Odoo as your single source of truth, every aspect of your eCommerce sales process lies in one place: taxes are aligned to invoices, stock levels are monitored based on your configurations, and all data is linked with every other app and external channel.
Retain your customers’ loyalty
To optimise your sales, Odoo eCommerce lets you set up automated rules or email campaigns to help you increase customer retention.
When visitors leave their cart behind, Odoo sends them a reminder automatically. You can follow up with an offer or email sequence using Email Marketing and Marketing Automation.
Returning buyers see personalised recommendations or receive discount codes in their next order. Odoo’s loyalty programme lets customers collect and redeem points for purchases, while gift cards and e-wallets make repeat buying even easier.
Types of Discount & Loyalty Programs in Odoo eCommerce.
Customers who log in to their portal can track deliveries, download invoices, e-wallet credits and loyalty points, or request returns. The Live Chat tool lets them reach you directly from the site if they need help.
Keep your accounts in order
Once an order is confirmed, you can automatically create an invoice in Accounting. Payments made via Stripe, PayPal, or bank transfer appear in your journals, complete with transaction fees and currency conversions.
eCommerce payment methods available in Odoo 19.
When a customer cancels or returns an item, Odoo issues a credit note and updates the relevant accounts.
Your finance view stays clean, with no need for exporting spreadsheets or reconciling between systems. Taxes follow fiscal positions automatically, whether you sell locally or cross-border.
Track your growth
At the end of the week, you open your dashboard to review the results. Odoo’s reports show daily orders, conversion rates, and top-selling items.
You can compare marketplaces, check fulfilment times, and monitor repeat purchases.
AI-generated eCommerce report in Odoo 19, including categories like Website, Product, Product Category, Customer, Customer Country, Status, eCommerce Category, and Order Date.
Because every action happens within Odoo, your insights are immediate, complete and trackable from the first ad click to order payment.
Running an eCommerce business with Odoo feels less like managing tools and more like running a single, connected operation. From first product to first sale, every part of the process is already in sync.
Odoo eCommerce integrates with Shopify, Shopware & more via API
Odoo also connects to external storefronts such as Shopify and Shopware through API integrations.
These integrations let businesses keep their existing online shops while managing operations entirely in Odoo.
Products, stock, and prices are maintained in one system and synchronised automatically with connected storefronts. When a customer places an order, it appears instantly in Odoo, triggering delivery, invoicing, and accounting workflows.
This setup is especially valuable for businesses handling high order volumes or complex product logic, as it combines Odoo’s operational control and integration with the scalability of specialised storefronts like Shopify, Shopware, and more.
Challenges
Running Shopify, Shopware, or other storefront software on their own often leads to disconnected processes behind the storefront.
Orders, stock, and invoices live in separate tools that don’t update automatically.
Inventory data needs manual reconciliation, and accounting reports require exports and imports between systems.
As operations scale across multiple channels or regions, maintaining data consistency becomes more challenging.
Benefits
Integrating Odoo with Shopify or Shopware turns Odoo into the single operational core of your business.
Products, prices, and stock exist once and stay synchronised across every storefront.
Orders flow automatically into fulfilment and accounting, removing the need for manual updates.
Financial data stays reliable, and multi-channel sales stay aligned across warehouses and currencies.
This setup keeps Odoo as the backend engine while specialised storefronts handle the customer-facing experience.
Integrating means one unified process from checkout to delivery.
Set up your online shop with Odoo eCommerce
Talk to our Odoo experts and build an eCommerce setup that connects your storefront, inventory, payments, and accounting, all in one system.