Heroku Connect Alternative for E-commerce & Retail Teams

E-commerce & Retail operations break when data lags. See how high-growth e-commerce & retail companies eliminate API limits, sync failures, and integration debt with an event-driven engine built for real-time inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment.
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Heroku Connect was built for analytical syncing

not for e-commerce & retail environments where inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment demand sub-second updates across services and operational workflows
This page shows how e-commerce & retail organizations migrate off Heroku Connect into a real-time, bi-directional sync architecture that keeps inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment perfectly aligned across all systems.

The 4 operational failures that break e-commerce & retail platforms

You can’t scale reliably when your data falls out of sync
API limits throttle daily sync volume for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, delaying critical workflows, causing incomplete records, and creating operational blind spots.
Engineering teams lose 30–50% of their time debugging brittle integrations for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, reducing velocity and slowing roadmap delivery.
Heroku Connect's polling model can't support real-time e-commerce & retail workflows, causing stale states, inconsistent data, and fragmented environments.
Stale data across Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery creates customer-visible errors, broken inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, misaligned metrics, and major support overhead.

Modern e-commerce & retail environments require real-time operational sync, adaptive API management, deterministic error handling

  • Real‑time, bi‑directional operational sync, not batch jobs
  • Smart API usage that prevents Salesforce throttling
  • Developer‑friendly workflows that fit CI/CD and SQL‑based pipelines
  • Automated workflows that trigger instantly when events change

How scaling e-commerce & retail companies eliminate polling delays, API limits, and integration debt

A mid-market e-commerce & retail company (100-1,000 employees) synced millions of records daily, but Heroku Connect hit API limits every morning. Critical inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment failed, workflows were delayed, and support tickets surged when states fell out of sync.

Switching to an event-driven sync engine aligned Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery in real time with sub-second accuracy.

Engineering teams interacted with CRM data via SQL while RevOps automated workflows without touching API code.

They eliminated nearly all integration maintenance, stabilized operations, and achieved prevented overselling and streamlined fulfillment.

A proven migration framework for e-commerce & retail teams

1. Audit Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery objects and data models
2. Identify high-volume, high-frequency sync workflows for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment
3. Design relational mappings for large event streams (50,000 to 50M+ records)
4. Implement adaptive rate-limiting and event routing
5. Run parallel syncs with production-grade validation
6. Use rollback, retries, and safe-migration staging patterns

The Capabilities That Unlock Real Operational Scale

Fast-growth e-commerce & retail teams need reliable, real-time operational sync that scales with their business — not more dashboards. Stacksync reduces API failures, stabilizes inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, and eliminates integration maintenance overhead.

Real‑time bi‑directional sync engine

Keeps all inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment aligned in real time across Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery — enabling accurate operations, tracking, and automated workflows.

Smart, adaptive API management

Adaptive API orchestration protects e-commerce & retail teams from Salesforce rate limits, even during high-volume spikes in inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment.

Enterprise‑grade reliability with rollback + retries

Enterprise-grade reliability with automated retries, rollback, and deterministic sync behavior — essential for e-commerce & retail platforms syncing 50,000 to 50M+ records.

SQL‑first developer experience

SQL-first developer experience allows engineers to read and write CRM data via SQL for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, reducing integration development time by 90% and preserving CI/CD workflows.

See why teams switch to Stacksync for real-time sync that scales

Stacksync gives you more speed, more flexibility, and more control, without the limits of a single-system connector.

Heroku Connect

What you had

Stacksync

What you get
Real-Time Bi-Directional Sync
10-minute polling introduces stale states in inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, delays critical updates, and breaks workflows that depend on real-time CRM or database changes.
Real-time bi-directional sync ensures inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment flow instantly across Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery with sub-second latency.
200+ Connectors
Only supports Salesforce–Postgres, forcing e-commerce & retail teams to build and maintain complex glue code for Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery.
Connects Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery in one unified pipeline — no more building custom glue code for every system.
Works with Any Postgres
Requires Heroku Postgres, forcing e-commerce & retail teams using AWS RDS, GCP Postgres, or private DBs to re-architect or migrate.
Supports any Postgres: cloud, on-prem, VPC, private networks — matching the hybrid stacks common in e-commerce & retail organizations managing 50,000 to 50M+ records.
Visibility & Monitoring
Minimal visibility for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment; sync failures often surface only after customer complaints or broken workflows.
Minimal visibility for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment; sync failures often surface only after customer complaints or broken workflows.
Scalability
Polling breaks under high frequency in e-commerce & retail environments, and API caps make it fragile for 50,000 to 50M+ datasets.
Polling breaks under high frequency in e-commerce & retail environments, and API caps make it fragile for 50,000 to 50M+ datasets.
Workflow Automation
Lacks event-driven architecture for inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment, delaying automation and risking incorrect operational states.
Instant workflows: trigger inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment automation, enrichment, sync, and operational actions as events occur in real time.
Security & Compliance
Basic compliance only; not suitable for e-commerce & retail teams requiring secure data pathways or regional processing guarantees.
SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, private networking, and secure VPC peering — critical for e-commerce & retail platforms in regulated markets.
Cost
Pricing increases sharply with inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment volume and object count; scaling your e-commerce & retail operations becomes expensive fast.
Predictable pricing based on record volume (50,000 to 50M+) — e-commerce & retail teams commonly save $20K–$40K annually compared to Heroku Connect.

Modernize your e-commerce & retail data pipelines

Get a migration plan tailored to your Shopify, NetSuite, Salesforce, Postgres, BigQuery architecture and inventory, orders, customer data, and fulfillment workflows
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“We’ve been using Stacksync across 4 different projects and can’t imagine working without it.”

Alex Marinov

VP Technology, Acertus Delivers
Vehicle logistics powered by technology