It’s Time to Upgrade Your SFRA Ecommerce Code Base

Here’s the thing about the adage, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: sometimes the reactionary move of waiting for something to break is more costly than the proactive fixing, both in money and other key factors. That’s the case in ecommerce, at least. 

When it comes to a company’s ecommerce platform code base – like Salesforce Commerce Cloud – many businesses won’t go through the hassle of upgrading the code base without a reason. But here’s the thing: if your business is planning to grow in 2025, this should be a top priority, and now is the time.

We are in the development stage of the year for those in the ecommerce business, with the chaos of the holiday season behind us and months to go before the next one ramps up. New features, upgrades, bug fixes, and other initiatives are being strategized and executed during the spring months. 
Here’s why you should upgrade your reference architecture (specifically SFRA 7.0) before the next holiday season.

A More Secure Platform

We’ll get to the features in a bit, but the biggest reason to upgrade your SFRA is for security. The new SFRA provides better compliance and security for your platform, which is in itself worth the investment. Upgrading can feel like a pain, and it seems like you just got your instance running smoothly, but when you risk a security breach that can be devastating to your business the costs and effort are a solid investment. 

What are the key items you get with an upgrade? There are two main ones:

Upgrade to Node.js 18: SFRA 7.0 has been updated to utilize Node.js 18, which includes the latest security patches and performance improvements. This upgrade ensures that the build processes benefit from enhanced security features inherent in the newer Node.js version. 

CDN Security Management via APIs: The release introduces CDN Zone APIs, allowing for more efficient management of Content Delivery Network (CDN) security settings and certificate configurations. This feature enables administrators to programmatically handle security configurations, ensuring that data transmission remains secure and certificates are up-to-date.

A Foundation for Scalability

The commerce experience contains so many more channels and components across marketing, service, and fulfillment than even a few years ago. Just look at subscription services – which everyone is trying to capitalize on in some capacity – or loyalty programs, as brands try to build their tribe of followers. Not to mention the tie-in to physical stores that companies are still in the process of implementing, such as buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) and reserve online, pick up in store ROPIS). 

These are all features that require multiple integrations and put a lot of stress on a code base to hold up. Stress that older versions of SFRA aren’t designed to handle as well. They’re also strategies that your brand is going to be using for years to come. There’s a good chance you won’t upgrade your SFRA again for a few years. This is the opportunity to set a foundation for a new strategy that will last the next 4-5 years. 

How to Be Successful

Necessary as it may be, upgrading your SFRA is not a simple switch, especially if you are like many of the companies that buy a version and then immediately customize heavily on top of it. But there are ways to make the process less painful.
If you don’t have a large internal team, having a third-party evaluation of your code base against best practices is massively important. A code review provides a read-out of what's going on in your code base, customization points, opportunities for organization, and any integrations that you need to address. Make sure you're doing the research to know what exactly is needed and what it will take. 

This is also a chance to clean up the deployment process, organize your cartridges, and make your code base viable so that if you decide to upgrade in another three years, it’s not a nightmare. 

For more about what comes with SFRA 7.0 and how to go about upgrading your code base, check out our Salesforce SFRA Upgrade solution.