Orgill eCommerce vs ToolSwift: managed by Orgill or owned by you

Orgill eCommerce, branded IMPACT, is Orgill's dealer program built on Elastic Path, with Orgill managing integrations and product data centrally. ToolSwift is a headless platform a dealer runs on their own domain and catalog, with nine ERP connectors, Orgill catalog integration, AI quoting from photos and voice, a native contractor app and published pricing from $499 a month.

I run ToolSwift, so weigh this comparison accordingly. I built ToolSwift around one idea: a hardware store, farm and home center or building supply dealer should run an online store shaped like its own business, on its own domain, connected to whatever POS or ERP it already uses, with a price list it can read before it talks to anyone.

Here is what that means in practice. You get two front ends on one catalog: a retail storefront on your domain for homeowners and walk-in buyers, and a separate contractor dashboard with a native, branded app for your trade accounts. The catalog lives in our own PIM, so you can sell what Orgill, Do it Best and Emery Jensen can ship, including items that never touch your shelves. A contractor starts a quote from a photo of a list, a voice note or a takeoff, and your counter reviews a priced draft with no retyping. Checkout knows each account's credit limit. Delivery pricing follows zones you draw on a map. You keep your own payment processor, whether that is Stripe, VersaPay, Clover, Square or Moneris.

We connect to nine systems: Spruce, BisTrack, Eagle, Profit Master, PRISM, Paladin, Ogasys/Acceo, QuickBooks and NetSuite, and we build connectors for others. Our pricing is public: $499 a month per store, $250 a month per additional location, $3,000 to $9,000 to onboard, development at $60 an hour, no transaction fees, month to month with 30 days' notice.

If you buy from Orgill, the online option you are most likely to be shown is IMPACT eCommerce. Orgill is a distributor serving more than 13,000 hardware stores in over 50 countries, according to its May 1, 2024 release with Elastic Path. The same release calls IMPACT a B2B2C solution on Elastic Path Composable Commerce, hosted on AWS, with Orgill managing integrations and product data centrally. It comes in tiers from a catalog-only site to a fully POS-integrated one. Orgill publishes no price for any of them.

A distributor-managed catalog program and a dealer-run store are two separate purchases, and this article compares them.

ToolSwift has a native PIM. The product record lives in the platform, which is the system of record for what you sell online. Product data, pricing logic and catalog structure sit in one place and sync with your POS or ERP.

That single design choice sets your online range: the back office does not cap it. You can list a distributor's catalog, enrich it, merchandise it your way and decide independently what you stock versus special-order. The POS reports what is on hand and what it costs, and you decide what to sell.

We integrate directly with Orgill, Do it Best and Emery Jensen. Products you do not stock are projected from the distributor's distribution center into your storefront, read live via API and labeled "Available Online Only." An item you do not stock can ship to the customer from the distribution center at the center's shipping rate, without touching your yard. Your dealer-side decision stays yours: what you stock, what you special-order.

A dealer who buys from Orgill gets the Orgill range through that integration and can add Do it Best or Emery Jensen items next to it. Whose truck delivers is a fulfillment detail.

Raw distributor feeds in general arrive thin: truncated descriptions, no attributes, one poor photo. We do the enrichment work ourselves. We clean up descriptions, specs and imagery, and map the gathered data to your ERP or POS item file. The output is yours to keep. Enrichment is priced as an add-on to onboarding.

The admin is built for large catalogs. Products go in manually or by bulk CSV upload. Variants carry their own images, pricing and inventory. Categories nest three levels deep with an image at each level, and you restructure by drag and drop. Bulk price changes take a few clicks. AI writes product descriptions and search tags and categorizes products by material, dimensions and color. Search mixes exact matching (for the part number) with semantic matching (for the homeowner describing a problem in plain words).

Orgill's release says IMPACT comes preloaded with more than 75,000 enriched Orgill items and offers access to the Orgill Industry PIM, which holds 1.3 million products, "if the dealer opts for it." Dealers can add their own products and choose Orgill-managed or dealer-customized pricing. A 2021 Hardware Retailing milestone story on the PIM said only about 12% of the items in it are stocked in Orgill warehouses.

The Emerge2 catalog page, which lists the program tiers, says all tiers carry 70,000 US or 50,000 Canadian products from the dealer's Orgill distribution center, with daily product data updates. Its Endless Aisle tier can add non-Orgill products. Orgill's public pages do not describe how non-Orgill distributor catalogs are fed in, or whether Do it Best or Emery Jensen items can be sold.

On IMPACT, the catalog starts as Orgill's range, with non-Orgill products as an add-on within a tier. Ask how each source you buy from reaches the shelf online, and which tier carries it.

We connect to Spruce, BisTrack, Eagle, Profit Master, PRISM, Paladin, Ogasys/Acceo, QuickBooks and NetSuite. Those are the systems independent hardware stores, lumber yards and building supply dealers in North America actually run. The list grew because dealers asked for them one at a time. For the wider set of accounting, payment, shipping and marketing connections, see the integrations page.

Every connector is built on the same architecture. Where the POS or ERP supports it, pricing and inventory sync in real time. Customer accounts, credit limits, net terms and AR balances flow through from your system, so a contractor sees real available credit. Orders from your POS and from the online store appear in one Orders view, each marked with its sales channel. Inventory stays synchronized across physical and online stores.

Connecting is something we do, as part of onboarding. If your system is one of the nine, it is configuration. If it is not, we build the connector and then we own it. If you run something uncommon or built in-house, we run a free feasibility assessment before we quote, so you know whether it is workable before you have committed a dollar. The price logic stays on our side too: if your POS cannot express tiered or customer-specific pricing, we build it in the platform instead of telling you it is impossible.

The Emerge2 tier page names Epicor Eagle and Paladin for the Full Service tier, and Paladin's November 2024 release guide describes the Paladin integration. Hardware Retailing quotes the president of Central Network Retail Group saying orders at the Elliott's Hardware pilot flow into Epicor Eagle. The two non-transactional tiers, Fresh Start and Quick Start, do not include POS integration.

Two named POS systems are the public list. If you run anything else, Orgill's public pages do not say whether it is supported.

Check your POS against Orgill's two named systems, Eagle and Paladin, before you compare anything else. If you run Eagle, Paladin, PRISM, Profit Master, Spruce, BisTrack or Ogasys/Acceo, the ToolSwift connector exists today.

The retail storefront lives on your own domain and is built like retail: browsing, imagery, product pages with real content, search for people who do not know the SKU, and checkout without a login requirement.

A few details that matter at a hardware store:

Visibility is yours to set. Customers are segmented into groups and you choose which products each group sees. Some items can show only to logged-in trade accounts and stay hidden from retail shoppers. You can build a B2B catalog for selected accounts with negotiated pricing and quantity tiers, and run banner promotions aimed only at trade customers.

Marketing runs from the same dashboard: email and SMS through Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, targeted by customer or group, and a loyalty program where customers see and redeem points in their own dashboard.

Orgill's public pages describe IMPACT in tiers, so the sites dealers actually run were checked. On September 30, 2026 these five live dealer sites were opened: Elliott's Hardware, Farm Supply Company, Dowling Lumber, Golden Oak Hardware and Sawgrass Hardware. The table records what each site's own page data and text show.

All five load the same stack: Elastic Path image and catalog references, Builder.io page content, Algolia search index settings and images and spec sheets from an Orgill media path. None of the five carries a "Powered by Orgill" credit in the footer. Each site's configuration data includes flags for transactional mode, pickup and ship-to-store options, and tax settings. Two sites are configured non-transactional and show a shopping list or no cart at all. Three are transactional with pickup in store, and Elliott's adds ship to store. Elliott's homepage reads "Buy online, pick up in-store!" and the dealer says it does not ship.

None of the five showed a contractor or pro account tier, a quote request or a parcel-shipping option. As an anonymous visitor, no price was visible on the three transactional sites, which may change once a store is selected or an account is open. Nobody logged in or placed an order, so checkout completion is unverified.

Modern Retail, which supplies the order management system, lists buy online pick up in store, ship to store, shipping, local delivery, drop ship and curbside as capabilities of that system. Which of those each dealer site switches on is a configuration choice per dealer.

The five live IMPACT sites range from a shopping list for in-store pickup to a cart with pickup. If you want delivery, parcel shipping and contractor accounts online, confirm which tier carries them, in writing.

For most building supply and many hardware dealers, quoting is the business. A contractor sends over a materials list, somebody inside turns it into priced line items, and whoever comes back first with something accurate usually gets the order.

The bottleneck is translation, and it was never the software. A request arrives as a takeoff from an architect, a spreadsheet, a photograph of a wall, a scribbled list on the back of a delivery note or a voicemail. Somebody has to turn that into SKUs. That is the work. Everything else is formatting.

The Takeoff Agent is live. A contractor starts a quote from the dashboard or the app by voice note, photo, scan, takeoff or file upload (CSV or PDF). The agent reads trade shorthand such as "2x6-16 PT" or "1/2 CDX" against your catalog with that account's pricing applied, and produces a draft quote. A person on your team reviews the draft before it goes out. The draft lands in your quoting dashboard. Staff can also build and send quotes for a customer. Each quote gets an assigned sales rep, a due date and a revision history, and the list filters by period, status, customer, quote ID or rep. The customer and your team talk in a thread attached to the quote, and the contractor signs it in the platform. You can send quotes by email with a branded summary and scheduled automatic reminders, with SMS available after setup. When the quote is approved, it converts directly into an order with the same line items, pricing and account, so nothing is re-entered. The contractor gets a push notification when a quote is ready.

Assist AI, a separate assistant, is in review and not live. It is designed to help staff reply to customer emails and keep a running quote from the conversation across the quote system, internal messaging, SMS, WhatsApp and email.

Orgill's public IMPACT pages do not describe a quote feature. The five dealer sites showed no quote request.

Ask each platform to start a quote from a photo of a handwritten list, then time how long the priced draft takes to reach your counter.

$499 a month per store. $250 a month for each additional location. Onboarding runs $3,000 to $9,000 depending on how much catalog work you need. Development beyond that is $60 an hour. No transaction fees. We do not take a percentage of what you sell. It is month to month, with 30 days' notice.

A three-location dealer is looking at $999 a month ($499 for the first store plus $250 for each of two more). You can work out your own number without talking to anyone.

The monthly fee is the platform. Onboarding covers the whole project, run by one team with one dedicated account manager: discovery and requirements, data migration, the POS or ERP integration, the design of your retail and contractor portals, catalog and pricing configuration, staff training and go-live. Integrations are quoted separately, so you pay only for the ones you need.

Orgill does not publish IMPACT prices. No Orgill, Elastic Path, Modern Retail or Paladin page states a dollar figure for the tiers. The numbers below are pricing as quoted to Orgill dealers, so they come from dealer quotes and can change.

The scopes differ, so read what each number includes before you compare. A catalog-only site at $5,750 is a different product from a store with checkout. What nothing public states: contract length, cancellation terms and what happens to your site and data if you leave.

Pricing IMPACT takes a conversation with Orgill. When you get a quote, ask for the monthly figure, the term and the exit terms in writing.

ToolSwift's shipping module has three fulfillment methods, Pickup, Delivery and Shipping, each switched on or off per product. Your lumber can be delivery-only, your fasteners can ship and your special orders can be pickup at the branch. Buy online pick up in store and curbside pickup run alongside scheduled delivery.

Delivery pricing for your own trucks is set on an interactive map. You build zones by zip or postal code, city, state or country, run several zones at once, give each its own pricing tier and estimated delivery time in days, and tie each zone to a store location. Policies cover methods and rates, handling times, delivery windows and same-day cut-off times. Parcel shipping connects through Shippo or ShipStation with automatic tracking IDs and shipment timelines. Distributor items can drop-ship from the distribution center at its shipping rate. Shipping costs are calculated from product dimensions and weights, and each location can be enabled for fulfillment so orders go where the stock is.

We are gateway-agnostic: Stripe, VersaPay, Clover, Square and Moneris. You connect your own processor, keep your rates and your bank relationship, and funds settle directly to you. We hold no balance and charge no transaction fees. Methods include credit cards, cash, net terms, ACH, credit balances for prepayments and Konek bank payments, including Interac Direct. For Canadian dealers, native card vaulting runs through Moneris.

Payments are tied to credit and AR. Checkout enforces each account's credit limit. Your team monitors overdue balances, sends bulk payment requests and shares payment links by SMS and email. Every B2B invoice sits in one place marked paid, pending or overdue, and contractors see their credit limit, available credit and outstanding balance with a "Make a Payment" option. Returns and refund policies are set per product or category and applied automatically.

Orgill's release lists buy online, pay in store and digital checkout. The Emerge2 tier page says Full Service customers check out by credit card and lists fraud-prevention tools. Elliott's page configuration includes an Authorize.net setting and an Avalara tax flag, and Avalara was on at Elliott's and Golden Oak. On fulfillment, Elliott's Hardware says online orders go to the chosen store and that it does not ship. Modern Retail's order management system supports ship to store, which Modern Retail describes as out-of-stock items auto-ordered from Orgill for the next truck to the pickup store. That is an Orgill option for putting the Orgill catalog on the dealer's site. Orgill's public pages do not describe delivery zones, delivery pricing or net terms for online accounts.

The live IMPACT examples show pickup in store as the main path. If delivery to a job site is part of how you sell, verify it is part of the tier you are buying.

Keep buying from Orgill. Put this in front of your POS: a custom retail storefront on your domain and a separate contractor dashboard with a native, branded app, on one catalog. Orgill, Do it Best and Emery Jensen stock is sold online and drop-shipped from the distribution center. Quotes start from a photo, a voice note or a takeoff and end as orders without re-entry. Checkout is credit-aware and your payment processor stays yours. Delivery zones follow your routes. And you can read the price today: $499 a month per store, $250 per additional location, $3,000 to $9,000 to onboard, month to month.

IMPACT is a distributor-managed program that puts Orgill's catalog and data on a dealer's site in tiers, with Eagle and Paladin as the two POS systems Orgill's public pages name. ToolSwift is a platform built for lumber, hardware and building supply dealers, that runs on the dealer's own domain, keeps the enrichment output with the dealer, and treats the POS as a connector: swap it and the storefront, catalog, accounts and URLs stay.

Compare platforms on what they publish: public pages, priced tiers and live dealer sites.

Decision rule: if you want contractor accounts, quotes from a photo and several distributors on one store, with your POS and payment processor untouched, shortlist an independent platform and price it next to IMPACT. Ask both for their terms in writing.

Each table matches a section above. The ToolSwift column is sourced to our feature pages and published comparisons, the Orgill column to the sources listed below.