Running three brands on a single Adobe Commerce instance creates three distinct pressure points: getting the infrastructure sized for the combined load, blocking bot traffic that takes all three sites down at once, and making sure no one's change breaks anyone else's store. Chris Seedle has been through all of it and here's what worked, what didn't, and what he'd do differently from day one.

When we talk about the front end, we can handle and manage all that pretty much in house internally. And when it becomes a developmental task, we have a development group on hand, so we can modify that. The things we have to use Adobe to help with are the health checks, technical assessments, and the infrastructure underneath everything. That's the part most people don't think about until something breaks at 3:00 in the morning.

We have three different stores running three different credit card processors, three different ERP integrations, hundreds of new items that come in every month, and over 100,000 SKUs in the same Adobe Commerce environment. This is the story of how we right-sized that environment, and what I'd tell myself if I could go back.

Merging independent stores into one multi-store environment

Two of our companies, existed completely independently of each other. We were able to merge those stores together under one license to have a multi-store environment, and then to be able to do that, of course, we had to have the Adobe team look at optimizing it and making sure we were right-sized for the environment we needed to be able to process all the amount of orders and traffic we would receive. Review Cloud architecture for Commerce for more information.

Then it happened again when we moved another aftermarket hard parts automotive supplier into our environment. So we had to do extensive research into making sure that we had upgraded to the GMV price tier we needed and also to see if there were additional virtual CPU packs that needed to be added to the contract.

Bringing in a multi-store environment drastically changed the amount of attributes, the amount of catalog data, the amount of customer data we have now in our ecosystem. And being able to make sure that everyone working in the same environment is working in the correct scope — and making sure they don't touch something else that will break one of the other stores — is extremely important.

That has been the biggest challenge and change that has happened during our Adobe Commerce journey.

Getting the infrastructure right-sized

Working with the Adobe team, we basically gave them access to all the data on their end so they could make a strong recommendation of what exactly the type of environment we needed. The Adobe team was instrumental - bringing in infrastructure team members, Adobe cloud engineers - and reviewing all the data with us and our development partners.

It wasn't just to make sure that we were able to exist. We needed room to grow. So it wasn't just like, here's your baseline. We were given three options: here's your baseline, here's your middle ground, and here is the top choice that we really think you need to be able to grow. That's what we did. We took Adobe's recommendation, went back to leadership, and got a contract approved for exactly what we needed.

We went from being able to handle 400–500 orders a day to over 1,800 orders a day using the Adobe infrastructure to make sure it was right-sized, to ensure our websites could handle the traffic load. It was balanced correctly by the Adobe infrastructure team to make the solution that we needed.

Outcome:

• Order volume: 400–500 orders/day → 1,800+ orders/day

• Page load time: 8-second loads → sub-2 seconds across the entire catalog

• Infrastructure: Upgraded GMV price tier, added virtual CPU packs, sized for future growth

Fastly, bot traffic, and nights the sites went down

I don't know if anyone reading this has the same feeling, but over the last five months or so, we have just been inundated with different kinds of bot traffic. I believe it's all stemming from AI bots that are out there trying to harvest data from different websites. As recently as two weeks ago, every night, all three of our websites went down. See The bots tab for details.

The Adobe team was very quick to jump in and provide a solution — even at 3:00am in the morning while I was asleep — and get the sites back operational, then provide us with information about how we could adjust the Fastly VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) to make sure that malicious traffic was blocked. It's worth knowing that Commerce Cloud merchants can actually do this themselves — you have direct access to the Fastly configuration panel within the Commerce Cloud Admin and can create, edit, and activate custom VCL snippets without needing Adobe team involvement for every change. For complex incidents, having Adobe in the loop is genuinely helpful, but for routine VCL adjustments you don't have to wait. Step-by-step guidance is available here: Custom VCL for blocking requests. Also see the Fastly services overview.

You can just imagine: every night I'm asleep, and then I get an email around 2:00am or 3:00am that the sites are down, and Adobe is immediately working on a solution to make sure the websites are back up and ready for customers. The team has done a fantastic job.

In terms of Fastly, it's a fantastic service and we really wanted to make sure we had it. That was one of our decisions in moving to Adobe Cloud because it came with it.

The multi-store scope problem Is real every week

Everything that we're trying to focus on to make the stores better for customer experience we need to make sure that none of the changes at any of the other store levels affect anyone else. And it can be as simple as something like a credit card processor. We had one store where their credit card processor just closed down with not really much notice. So we had to quickly convert them to a different credit card processor and make sure what they were doing wasn't breaking any of the other stores. See the Site, store and view scope article for details.

That's essentially what happens almost every week.

Being able to make sure that everyone working in the same environment is working in the correct scope is extremely important. You can't overstate it. With different platforms, you're kind of locked in a box and there's not many things you can do to change the order flow or customer journey dependent on your current business use cases. But with Adobe Commerce, it's like you have a blank canvas and you can paint whatever you want on it. Anything you can imagine can be done - it just takes the drive, willingness and understanding of what you want to do. A good, experienced development partner helps as well.

How to: Working with Adobe on infrastructure right-sizing

1. Be 100% honest with the infrastructure team. We needed to be 100% honest with them so they could provide the best solution for us in our current situation and what it's going to look like in the future. Everyone wants to save a few bucks here and there, but when it comes down to it, you need to make sure your website has the best performance possible so you can service the customer.

2. Ask for options, not just a baseline. We were given three options - baseline, middle ground, and the top recommendation for growth. Take that conversation seriously and bring it back to leadership. We got a contract approved for exactly what we needed – including growth. Extremely important.

3. Build the relationship before you're in a crisis. Your Adobe Customer Success Manager has – most likely - built relationships with other parts of Adobe - through support, or their manager knows someone. If you're in a real pinch, reach out to them and let them know: I need eyes on this problem right now, I need this escalated quickly, and I need you to reach out to any resource you have available.

Key takeaways

• "We needed to understand, as a company, if we have three different entities selling over 100,000 SKUs in the same Adobe Commerce environment, we needed to make sure that we had enough headroom for the future."

• "It wasn't just to make sure that we were able to exist — we needed room to grow."

• "That relationship you have with your Adobe Customer Success Manager is extremely important." In most cases, that Adobe rep has built relationships with other parts of Adobe through support or know someone who can help. Take advantage of that.

• "The faster your website gets, the better it is for the customer on mobile or on their desktop — the customer journey they have, being able to find the products, add them to cart, quick checkout, place the order seamlessly."

• "If one person's having a problem in that customer journey, it's probably happening to other people." Having the ability to log in as them, see what they're seeing, helps immensely - not only from customer service, but also from future development and roadmap.

• "Don't panic. You are supported wholly with the Adobe team, whether it be support, your account representatives, or any solutions Adobe's providing."

What I'd do differently today

I think the best advice I would give myself if I look back on it — this might sound silly — is don't panic. Because you are supported wholly with the Adobe team, whether it be support, your account representatives, and any solutions that Adobe's providing. There can be this very much tunnel vision at the time where you're kind of freaked out and panicking about how we're going to be able to overcome the solution.

Make sure you build strong relationships with your Adobe representatives. Meet them, talk to them. Schedule monthly or quarterly calls to keep in touch. Understand how the ticketing system works. Understand that Adobe reps are out there, and it's their job to take care of the customer and make sure you communicate with them regularly. Do your health checks, make sure you run your SWOT analysis, you have access to Redis — use that tool to make sure that your developer team, whether in-house or external, are always trying to improve efficiency or anything you can do to optimize the website for the customer journey. Read about the Site-Wide Analysis Tool.

There's not been one thing yet where it's been like, all right, well, we just can't do it — it's impossible, let's give up and pack up and go home. There's no reason to stay up late at night worrying about things. It's going to all work out.

Actionable next steps

1. Schedule a health check with the Adobe team. The Adobe team identified the slowest loading pages and checkout paths — improvements that happened within the last 30 days of the conversation. Don't wait for a problem. (Adobe Commerce Cloud customers — initiate through your Customer Success Manager.)

2. Request an infrastructure right-sizing review before you need it. If you're adding a store, merging environments, or planning for seasonal volume, bring the Adobe infrastructure team in early. Ask for at least three options — baseline, middle ground, and a growth scenario — before going to leadership.

3. Tighten your Fastly VCL configuration proactively. Bot traffic targeting e-commerce sites has increased significantly. Review your current Fastly VCL rules before an incident forces the conversation at 3:00 AM. Commerce Cloud merchants can create and manage custom VCL snippets directly — Adobe team involvement is helpful but not required for all changes. (Adobe Commerce Cloud only. For step-by-step guidance on blocking traffic with custom VCL, see the Custom VCL for blocking requests guide.)

4. Define scope boundaries for each store before anyone touches anything. In a multi-store environment, every task — even swapping a credit card processor — has the potential to break another store. Build a scope-check step into your team's workflow.

5. Activate the Commerce Intelligence dashboard for real-time decision-making. Chris uses it for traffic analysis and sales reporting in real time — data that, as he puts it, you can't get from Google because there's always a data lag and delay. If you're not using it, start.

6. Invest in the relationship with your Customer Success Manager now, not during a crisis. That relationship is your fastest escalation path when the ticket system isn't moving fast enough and your sites are down.