Why Ari is the biggest thing happening to Magento right now

Every Magento merchant knows the trade-off. The platform can do almost anything, and the ecosystem around it has an extension, a theme or an integration for nearly every need. Each one of them also needs a developer to install it, configure it and keep it working through the next upgrade. The money that goes into that work is money that never reaches marketing.

Magento is a very capable system, and merchants still have to choose. They can use everything its ecosystem offers and pay for the development that takes, or they can spend that money on bringing in customers. We are building Ari so they no longer have to choose. With Ari, merchants can finally put their budget into customer acquisition.

Kristaps Gailitis, co-founder of Ari

Extensions in a few clicks

Installing an extension has usually meant a ticket, a quote and a slot in a developer’s calendar. With Ari you ask for the extension in chat. Ari installs it on a copy of your store and sets it up, and it asks you only what a developer would have to ask you anyway, such as which social networks a login extension should offer. Keys and passwords never pass through the chat, so you paste those into the admin yourself.

Then you open the preview store, click through the change and release it. An extension install uses 50 to 150 task credits, which is about €2.50 to €7.50 on the €99 plan with its 2,000 credits a month.

We already work with more than 20 extension and technology partners, and new ones sign up every day. Each partner that joins makes its extension one more thing a merchant can install in a few clicks.

Kristaps Gailitis

Partners work with us on how Ari installs and configures their extension, so every store sets it up the way the vendor’s documentation says. The current list is on the partners page.

Upgrades and Hyvä without the project

The same goes for the jobs that used to need a project plan. A Magento version upgrade has usually meant hundreds of developer hours. On the public demo store, one sentence in chat took Magento from 2.4.6 to 2.4.9, sorted out three extension conflicts and finished in 44 minutes. Upgrades and security patches work this way on your store too.

A move to Hyvä follows the same pattern. Ari carries your design over to the new theme and takes the old JavaScript out, and you check the result on the preview store before anything changes for shoppers.

Your team stays in charge

Ari works on a private copy of your store that scandiweb hosts. It has no access to your servers, your pipeline or your live database. Every change comes back as a pull request with the full diff, and your team reviews and releases it the way it releases any other change. Security and access covers the details.

What we saw at Mage Camp

On October 14, Mage Camp brought the Magento community to Manchester for a day, and scandiweb was there as a sponsor with Ari running live at the stand. Kristaps Gailitis and Elizabete Taurina ran the demos, and the reaction told us we are building the right thing. People were excited to see store changes that usually wait in a backlog happen in chat.

What comes next

Every new partner adds an extension that installs in a few clicks, and every store that connects shows us another change worth making easier. If you make an extension or a theme, become a partner and we will work out together how Ari installs it.

To see Ari work on a real store, join Alfreds Genkins and Glebs Vrevsky in the first Ari webinar on October 28, or connect your store and try it on your own backlog.