Integration with Magento 2 — Stability, Failure Handling, and Queuing

Every advanced Magento development involves integration. After all, your business operates within a much larger business ecosystem. Sales are not everything! Managing deliveries, orders, customers, products, and more is equally important. If you’re using multiple systems, you’ll have to face integration with Magento 2 challenges. Moreover, there’s a high chance that your past experiences with integration were not particularly pleasant.

What Could Have Gone Wrong? Here Are a Few Examples:

• Someone poorly designed the scope of the Magento integration, causing critical data to stop transferring between systems for some time. Later, this had to be corrected.
• Data synchronization took too long, delaying order fulfillment.
• A system failure occurred, and after recovery, it turned out that some data had become inconsistent between systems.
• Employees constantly notice discrepancies between systems, so they keep checking both manually.

I could go on all day.

Magento Integrations – A New Series

We’ve previously taken over Magento stores “at the last minute” because someone had designed the integration so poorly that orders went to the wrong place, processes got stuck in loops, and the entire store crashed. That’s not the kind of news you want to hear when you start your workday.

The same risks apply when integrating Magento 2 with your company’s systems. These are exactly the problems you need to avoid.

That’s why, with this article, we’re kicking off a series that will help you learn:

• How to plan system integration properly
• Which data should be synchronized and to what extent
• How to ensure integration stability
• How to prevent system synchronization from taking forever
• What to consider when choosing an agency
• How to avoid implementation mistakes

Stay tuned as we dive deeper into Magento 2 integration best practices!

Magento Integration – With What and How?

Let’s start with the basics—understanding what you can integrate Magento with. The range of integrations available for e-Commerce implementations is vast, and the integration methods vary significantly.

Here are the primary ways you might integrate Magento with other systems:

• Code snippet embedded in the website – This is how integrations like Google Analytics work. It’s one of the simplest methods, often requiring little programming knowledge. Many services even provide ready-made Magento plugins.
• File-based integration – Data synchronization occurs via export/import in a specified format (e.g., CSV files) and structure. These operations can be automated. This method is often used when other integration options are unavailable.
• Direct database integration – Data is written directly into another system’s database. This approach is fast but carries a higher risk of data inconsistency.
• Middleware integration – A third-party system acts as an intermediary, fetching data from one API and sending it to another. This method enhances flexibility and scalability.
• API-based integration – Many systems, including Magento, provide APIs for sending and retrieving data (e.g., order details). This method is the most secure since it follows established programming standards and includes error-handling mechanisms.

Another crucial aspect of Magento integration is determining which systems must be connected. This largely depends on your business model, but here are the most common systems involved in Magento integrations:

• WMS (Warehouse Management System) – Typically used to synchronize inventory levels to display product availability. It can also automate stock reservations and warehouse document processing (though another system often handles this).
• POS (Point of Sale) – If you’re implementing an omnichannel strategy, data synchronization with your POS system is essential. While POS is usually part of an ERP system, there are cases where Magento handles order collection from physical stores.
• CMS (Content Management System) – While Magento includes content management features, some businesses integrate it with external CMS platforms, such as WordPress for blogging.
• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) – The most commonly integrated system, as most businesses already use an ERP. Whether your store uses Comarch, InsERT, SAP, a custom solution, or a SaaS platform, your Magento store will likely need ERP integration to manage inventory, finances, and orders.
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) – ERP systems often lack advanced customer relationship management features, such as visit tracking, personal notes, and activity history. If you require these, integrating a CRM is a must.
• PIM (Product Information Management) – Businesses with large product catalogs or dedicated product teams often integrate a PIM system. Solutions like Akeneo are becoming standard in advanced e-commerce operations.
• Affiliate Systems – If your business runs loyalty or affiliate programs, synchronizing account balances and activity history with Magento can improve customer experience.
• Courier and Shipping Systems (DPD, DHL, Poczta Polska, InPost, etc.) – While ERP systems often handle shipping logistics, Magento can also automate courier orders, label printing, and shipping cost calculations.
• External Search Systems (e.g., FactFinder) – Magento’s native search capabilities are not the best, even in Magento 2. Fortunately, Magento 2.3 includes Elasticsearch, and third-party services can further enhance product search functionality.
• Recommendation Engines (e.g., QuarticON) – Magento does not natively automate product recommendations (though modules exist). However, integrating external recommendation services can significantly improve conversions.
• External Sales Channels (e.g., eBay, Amazon) – Integrating Magento with marketplaces ensures seamless product listing and order synchronization if you sell on multiple platforms.
• Marketing Automation (e.g., SALESmanago, Mautic) – Marketing automation is a hot topic, and integrating Magento with such platforms allows user behavior tracking, enabling personalized marketing campaigns.

Magento Integration with a Wholesale Supplier

Yes, this type of integration is essential! Of course, you could place orders with your suppliers manually—or worse, by phone—but why go through all that hassle when you can automate the entire process?

Integrating Magento with a wholesale supplier is crucial for businesses looking to streamline order processing and inventory updates. A well-designed integration allows for real-time product data, pricing, and stock availability synchronization, eliminating the need for manual offer management.

With this integration, you can:

• Automatically synchronize stock levels – Prevent selling out-of-stock products by ensuring inventory is always up to date.
• Update prices in real time – Keep your prices aligned with supplier changes to reflect accurate market conditions.
• Support dropshipping orders – Magento can automatically forward orders to suppliers, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency.

A well-planned Magento integration with a wholesaler boosts operational efficiency, enhances customer experience, and eliminates human errors caused by manual data entry. It’s a game-changer for scaling your e-Commerce business! 

Magento Integration – In Which Direction?

From the previous discussion, it’s clear that there can be many connection points in an e-Commerce ecosystem. It’s not just about what to integrate with but also in which direction the data should flow.

There’s no universal answer, but here are some key principles:

1. Minimize the number of integration mechanisms – The fewer moving parts, the fewer potential points of failure.
2. Use event-driven communication when possible. If you need to sync order statuses from an ERP, you can either poll the ERP constantly for updates or let the ERP notify Magento only when changes occur (the latter is more efficient).
3. Prioritize systems with APIs – API-based communication is more secure and reliable than direct database interactions.
4. The stronger system dictates the integration. For example, if you integrate Magento with a product supplier, you will likely have to adapt to their system, not vice versa.
5. Ensure visibility and control—We’re building a Magento panel that tracks process statuses better than relying on a background daemon running on a server.

Magento REST API: A Powerful Integration Tool

Good news! Magento has a built-in REST API, allowing you to integrate virtually any external system with your eCommerce platform with near-unlimited flexibility.

For detailed API documentation, visit: Magento REST API Docs

What Can You Do with Magento’s Default API?

Using Magento’s default API, you can read, add, modify, and edit key system objects, including:

• Products
• Customers
• Orders
• Shopping Carts
•  …and much more!

One of the main challenges developers face when transferring user sessions to the API is session management. However, with the right approach, this can be efficiently handled.

Magento Integrations via Middleware

Another highly effective approach is middleware-based integration. This method deserves special attention because it ensures a clean and structured integration process.

Why Use Middleware for Magento Integration?

• Reduces Load on Systems – Your eCommerce platform and external systems don’t have to process API calls directly, improving performance.
• Easier to Add More Systems – New systems can be integrated without affecting existing ones.
• Data Transformation – Middleware can convert data formats between different systems.
• Handles Different Versions & Formats – Ensures compatibility between legacy and modern applications.

Downsides?

The biggest drawback is that middleware adds an extra layer that must be managed and maintained. However, you can think of data integration software (e.g., an ESB – Enterprise Service Bus) as being for Magento & ERP and what PIM is for product data management—it centralizes and simplifies integration.

Monitoring the Operation of Magento Integration

Regarding integration, the worst-case scenario is when nothing works, and no one knows why.

As I mentioned earlier, I know dozens of stories about malfunctioning integrations. We won’t cite more examples or blame the companies responsible. Why? Because mistakes happen—to us as well.

That’s why monitoring processes is so crucial.

Integration issues can arise on multiple levels—hardware, software, or logic (e.g., a missing product or incorrect product identifier in the target system preventing proper order data transmission).

How to Prevent This?

First and foremost, log everything possible. This way, you’ll have a history (as well as proof when discussing issues with the company) of the processes, including which succeeded and which failed.

We can use log collection and analysis tools such as ELK Stack to monitor activities and events between different systems within an integration. This will allow us to easily identify the root cause of potential problems or even set up notifications/alerts for failed actions.

In addition to using centralized logs, we can also leverage external tools for monitoring periodic calls, such as Healthchecks.io. This tool allows for the definition of a recurring action and its frequency to be specified. We only need to add the appropriate URL call at the end. Suppose the notification is not triggered within the expected timeframe from our action. In that case, Healthchecks.io will notify us of a problem, prompting us to check the correctness of the scheduled task execution.

Using Queues (e.g., RabbitMQ)

I remember when one of our clients accidentally deleted a significant portion of their products from the store. Restoring from a backup would cause gaps in orders. Selective restoration would take some time. Resynchronization? Exactly—most companies would say restoring a backup is faster unless you’re using multi-threaded queues.

What Are the Benefits of Implementing Queue Mechanisms?

• Breaking the process into small tasks (why send 100 orders at once when you can send each separately?),
• Better control over data,
• Easier error detection,
• Simple resumption of integration after a failure,
• Reducing database load,
• Task prioritization (remember waiting for your order to be sent to ERP because 1,000 products were being imported first?),
• Optimized for high-volume operations (comparison of RabbitMQ 2.3 and 2.4 available here: RabbitMQ Blog).

Magento Integration – Summary

Magento 2 integration with other systems is not overly complex for experienced professionals. However, the key to success lies in planning and effective execution. I hope this article has made the topic a bit easier to approach.