The sidegrade your Adobe Commerce store actually needs
Keep everything that makes your Adobe Commerce store work. Replace the one thing that is holding it back. A Hyvä sidegrade modernises your frontend without touching your backend, your data, or your integrations.
Not a migration. Not a replatform. A sidegrade.
A sidegrade is a lateral move that improves one layer of your stack without disrupting everything around it. For Adobe Commerce stores, that layer is the frontend. Your AC backend handles your catalogue, your B2B logic, your integrations and your orders. Hyvä replaces Luma, the one part of Adobe Commerce that was never built for modern performance.
You keep your platform investment, your data, your integrations and your Adobe Commerce licence. You replace a frontend that was built before Core Web Vitals existed with one built specifically to pass them. The result is a store that performs the way your backend already deserves, without the risk, cost and disruption of a full replatform.
What the sidegrade actually delivers.
Everything built on Adobe Commerce. Untouched.
B2B module and customer groups
Your Adobe Commerce B2B functionality, company accounts, quote management and custom pricing rules are entirely unaffected. The sidegrade replaces the frontend only.
Page Builder content
Hyvä has a dedicated Page Builder compatibility module. Your existing CMS pages and content built with Page Builder carry over with full frontend support.
Staging and preview
Adobe Commerce Content Staging is a backend feature. It continues to work exactly as before. Schedule campaigns and preview them against your new Hyvä frontend.
All integrations and ERPs
ERP connections, order management systems, payment gateways and third-party integrations all live in the Magento backend. None of them are touched during a frontend sidegrade.
Your product and customer data
No data migration. No reconciliation. Every product, customer account, order and piece of content stays exactly where it is.
Your Adobe Commerce licence
You are not switching platforms. Your AC investment, your licence costs and your relationship with Adobe Commerce remain unchanged. You are simply giving it a frontend it deserves.
Your frontend is yours. Not Adobe's.
Luma is Adobe's frontend. That means it moves on Adobe's schedule, carries Adobe's technical decisions and inherits years of architectural debt you had no say in. A Hyvä frontend is built specifically for your store, on a modern stack your team can actually work with. Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js. No RequireJS, no KnockoutJS, no inheritance chain to unpick every time you need to change something.
A sidegrade process built around your AC setup.
Extension and compatibility audit
We audit your full Adobe Commerce extension stack against the Hyvä compatibility list. Every extension gets classified as compatible, needing a compatible version, or requiring a custom rebuild. Nothing is left to discover mid-project.
Sidegrade scoping and design
We scope the frontend rebuild based on your template count, custom components and extension requirements. Design happens in parallel, working from your brand guidelines and current UX, improving where we can.
Hyvä frontend build
Every template is built from scratch on Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js. No Luma inheritance, no legacy LESS, no dead weight carried over from the old stack. Your live store continues trading throughout.
Performance validation
Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse scores and real-device testing at every stage. LCP, INP and CLS are all measured before we call anything done. We do not launch until the numbers back it up.
Controlled go-live
Your existing store stays live until every aspect of the Hyvä build is signed off. Cutover happens in a controlled window with rollback available. Post-launch monitoring as standard.
Lighthouse 90+ is the floor, not the ceiling.
Adobe Commerce stores on Luma routinely score in the 20 to 40 range on mobile Lighthouse. Not because of server performance or hosting, but because of the frontend architecture itself. Hyvä removes that ceiling. Every build we deliver is validated against Core Web Vitals on real devices before it goes live.
Common questions about sidegrading to Hyvä
A sidegrade means you are staying on the same backend platform, Adobe Commerce, but replacing only the frontend layer. Your catalogue, orders, customers, integrations and business logic are completely untouched. Hyvä replaces the Luma or custom frontend theme with a modern stack built on Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js. It is a frontend replacement, not a platform migration.
Yes. Hyvä is fully compatible with both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce-specific features including B2B, Page Builder, Content Staging and Customer Segments all work alongside a Hyvä frontend. There are dedicated Hyvä modules for Page Builder compatibility and Hyvä Checkout works with Adobe Commerce equally well.
Hyvä has a dedicated Page Builder compatibility module that renders your existing CMS content correctly in the new frontend. We include this as part of the sidegrade scope and test all your existing pages before go-live.
Hyvä has a growing ecosystem of compatible extensions and maintains a public compatibility report. Many popular extensions already have Hyvä-compatible versions available. For those that do not, we either source a suitable replacement or rebuild the functionality as a native Hyvä component. We audit your entire extension stack upfront so there are no surprises later in the project.
For a mid-size store with a standard extension set, typically 8 to 14 weeks. A larger catalogue, complex custom functionality or a significant number of incompatible extensions will extend that timeline. We set a clear scope at discovery and work to it.
Done correctly, it should improve. Faster page speeds and better Core Web Vitals are positive ranking signals. All meta data, structured data, canonical tags and internal linking are verified before launch. We run a full pre-launch crawl to ensure nothing is disrupted during the transition.
The Luma frontend was built over a decade ago around RequireJS and KnockoutJS, neither of which are suited to the performance standards Google measures today. The result is a heavy JavaScript bundle that loads regardless of what the page actually needs. Adobe has not fundamentally replaced this architecture, which is why most AC stores score in the 20 to 40 range on Lighthouse without significant custom intervention.
Yes. While the sidegrade itself is a frontend project, we often identify backend opportunities during the audit stage. If there are extension redundancies, performance-killing server-side processes or integration improvements worth making, we scope those separately alongside the frontend work.
What our customers are saying
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Paul Hambidge
Factory Direct FlooringReady to sidegrade your Adobe Commerce store?
Tell us about your current AC setup, your extension stack and your performance goals. We will scope the sidegrade and give you a clear view of what is involved, how long it takes and what it costs.