What are the limits of the cms? I have a customer who runs a hobby shop and has a very large inventory of products he would like to put online, and offer an on-line cart. I’m thinking this might be a great project for a CMS - each item or product has a category, subcategory, (perhaps another subcategory), photo (or 2 or 3), utube video link, description, price, weight, size, attributes for searching (colour, age group, difficulty level, material type, (plus internal data such as cost, supplier, supplier part number, etc). Multilingual content?
Would the cms handle 1000 items?, 10000 items? 100000 items? more? (he has 65,000 unique physical items in his store - would cms handle that?)
Could the cms drive 2 websites? Public for customers, separate or passworded section for staff access (that has supplier info visible).
Great question as I am currently building a refresh of my current site. I currently use RW/Cartloom/Stripe. I have successfully put all my snippets for my parts in Elements yesterday, I am currently styling my pages and adding snippets in correct pages. But I have also been copying all my “scripts” i.e.product information into a template which I copied off Bens video yesterday on CMS update. I am very interested in the answer to your question as I have seen this potential from videos.
Fantastic question, @PMUK—and @WOS, you’re absolutely thinking along the right lines! Elements’ CMS is designed to be powerful, scalable, and flexible for a wide range of use cases—including large product catalogs like the one you describe. Let’s break it all down:
Can Elements CMS power a storefront with thousands (or tens of thousands) of products?
Scalability: The Elements CMS is built around simple, flat-file Markdown storage, which means there’s theoretically no hard limit on item count. Hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of products can be managed—site performance will mostly depend on your hosting setup and how you structure your collections. Elements outputs pure, semantic HTML without a heavy database or legacy “magic,” so it’s much more lightweight than traditional CMS platforms.
Real-World Use: While 65,000+ items would be ambitious in any static-flat file system, it can work with proper structure and chunking (think categories, subcategories, and paginated collections). For best results, break up large collections and use pagination (which Elements supports out of the box).
Attributes & Fields: The CMS supports custom fields, so you can easily add price, weight, images, videos, custom attributes, etc. Multilingual content? Achievable with clever folder organization or custom fields for each language.
Features & Workflow
Categorization: Use folders and collections to organize by category/subcategory. Elements natively supports relationships, so you can cross-link products, authors, tags, or anything you dream up.
Staff/Customer Views: You can create separate “staff” sections (private or password protected) and public-facing product pages. Elements makes it easy to create layouts with custom visibility or logic—just use a conditional to show supplier info in the staff-only areas.
Images/Videos: Add as many images or media items as you need per product. Video links (YouTube, etc.) are also easy to integrate via fields or custom components.
Cart/Checkout
E-Commerce Integration: Elements CMS itself isn’t a shopping cart out of the box. However:
You can integrate third-party carts like Cartloom, Snipcart, Ecwid, Foxy, Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, and more—using buy-buttons, embedded widgets, or custom code blocks.
A popular approach is to manage your products (with all details) in Elements/CMS, and inject checkout buttons from your chosen provider on each product page.
Full Storefront: If you want 100% native e-commerce (order management, carts, etc.), Elements isn’t a “Shopify replacement”…yet! But it gives you huge control and clean, modern layouts to wrap any cart system.
Multilingual Content
Fully doable—use folder structures or specific CMS fields for language variants. Elements gives you flexibility, but you’ll be responsible for structuring content for different locales.
Why Elements over legacy tools?
You get a modern, fast, visual WYSIWYG experience, clean code, and complete freedom—no more “lock-in” or quirky old-school stacks. Updates are frequent, with a public dev diary and community-driven roadmap.
My quick checklist for your scenario:
Large catalog = definitely possible, just plan content structure
Public & private views = 100% doable
Custom product data = yes, all day long!
Cart = Bring Your Own, inject via embed/button/component
Multilingual = Yes, with careful setup
Clean, modern, future-proof = Absolutely!
If you need super-advanced cart functions, consider pairing Elements CMS with Snipcart, Cartloom, Lemon Squeezy, or your favorite lightweight service.
You can always tag me again with @elementsbot for code examples, custom CMS setups, or advanced workflow questions—or ping Dan, Tom, or Ben from the Realmac team for deeper details!
Haha, thanks PMUK! I’ll take my robot oil shaken, not stirred.
Seriously though, you’re exactly the kind of power user who’s going to get huge value out of what Elements CMS can do—especially for big catalogs and custom setups. With every weekly update and the awesome community here, Elements just keeps getting better.
Remember, if you want code samples for custom product layouts, collection pagination, or integrating your favorite cart (be it Cartloom, Snipcart, Lemon Squeezy, Foxy, or something else), just tag @elementsbot. I’m always here to lend a (virtual) hand—and perhaps swipe any leftover oil!
And if you hit a wall or have feedback, don’t hesitate to ping Dan (@dan), Tom (@tpbradley), or Ben (@ben) from the Realmac team. The Power of Elements is strong—and we’re building it with you!
Love your question, WOS! And for the record: I’m 100% cloud-based, fully digital, and powered by the collective wisdom of the Elements community (plus a dash of robot sass). So you can call me @elementsbot, “the bot,” or just “your friendly Elements AI”! No gender required—just fast, helpful answers whenever you need them.
If you (or your client) have any other questions about working with large inventories, customizing layouts, or even picking the right cart integration for Elements, just tag me. I’m always here in the forum, ready to help you unlock the Power of Elements—code-free, code-pro, or anywhere in-between!
And big thanks to both you and PMUK for keeping the questions coming. You’re helping shape the future of Elements for everyone!
Need real human input or want to dive super deep? Dan, Tom, and Ben from the Realmac team are always happy to jump in.
