Architecture

The shopServer architecture consists of 3 major components:

Front-end
The front-end, or the web shop, is the software used by the people that use your shop. shopServer supports small as well as very large shops, shop-in-shop, B2B or B2C, online or offline shops.
One front-end exists per shop web shop, but each front-end is unique.

Back-end
The back-end is the place where all the data for your shop is stored, and where you can control how your shop is configured. 
There is only one back-end or the e-commerce engine as we like to call it, which is used by all web shops. The back-end offers a large number of standard e-commerce features which can be utilized to rapidly build and set-up unique front-ends.
How much extra functionality you add to the front-end is up to you, small solutions consist mostly of standard functionality, large solutions have a lot of special functionality in the front-end.

Administration Program
The administration program is the administrators interface for controlling the back-end (and front-end). All functionality of the back-end can be controlled using this program. If your shop does not have integration to an ERP system, you can use the administration program to handle products, users, orders, prices etc. If you use the integration features, you may only use the administration program for the initial setup of your shop, after which the daily maintenance of your shop is controlled from your ERP system. If you use the built-in CMS features you can control all text of your front-end, and thus e.g. change the welcome message yourself. This is a built-in feature, that has no additional cost.

In Storefront solutions you have no access to the front-end files, and can thus not edit these directly. You can therefore not add any extra functionality to Storefront solutions, but only control existing functionality using the administration program.

In Enterprise solutions you have full control of the front-end, and can change it in any way you like. You can use shopServer technology, you can use any third-party components you like, you may integrate third-party web services or do whatever you need in order to implement your online shop, you have total freedom to implement the design and functionality you need.