TL;DR: Lightning (Aura) is still officially supported but receives no new feature investment. LWR is where every Release 260 feature lives — RFQ, Agentforce Guided Shopping, Configurable Products, and more. Migration is a storefront rebuild, not a data migration, and takes 8–16 weeks with the right specialist. If your store works and you don’t need Release 260 features, you can wait. If you want any of those features, you need to migrate. UK SMBs should expect £15,000–£50,000 with an independent specialist versus £80,000–£150,000 from a large agency. According to the Salesforce State of Commerce 2024, 74% of B2B buyers would switch suppliers for a better digital buying experience — which makes the platform question a real commercial one.
What Is Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning?
Salesforce B2B Commerce Lightning — often called the “Aura storefront” by practitioners — is the original architecture that most UK manufacturers and wholesalers implemented three to six years ago. Built on Salesforce’s Aura component framework, it was the first production-ready version of the B2B Commerce product and served its purpose well at the time.
It’s still officially supported. Salesforce continues to ship security updates and bug fixes. But no new commerce features are being built for it. The platform has entered a maintenance-only phase, and the gap between what Lightning can do and what LWR can do grows with every Salesforce release.
If your team implemented a B2B storefront sometime between 2018 and 2022, you’re almost certainly running Lightning. You may not have had to think about it much. That’s changing now — because the features your buyers are starting to expect require a different architecture.
Learn more about our Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud services →
What Is LWR, and Why Did Salesforce Build It?
LWR — Lightning Web Runtime — is Salesforce’s current B2B Commerce architecture, built on Lightning Web Components (LWC) and the LWR framework. The core difference that matters for UK SMBs isn’t branding. It’s page speed.
LWR supports server-side rendering (SSR), which means the browser receives a ready-to-display page rather than assembling it client-side. This has a direct, measurable impact on buyer experience. Akamai research found that a 1-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7% — a figure that becomes significant quickly at B2B order values. LWR storefronts score materially better on Google’s Core Web Vitals, which are a confirmed search ranking factor.
Salesforce made LWR its primary investment platform because it allows drag-and-drop composition in Experience Builder, faster iteration on new components, and — critically — integration with Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI platform. Every meaningful new capability Salesforce ships for B2B Commerce now ships to LWR first, and often exclusively.
Lightning vs LWR: Feature Comparison
The pattern here is consistent. Lightning holds its ground on the fundamentals — it’s supported, it works, it processes orders. LWR has everything buyers and sales teams are starting to expect from a modern B2B storefront.
| Feature | Lightning (Aura) | LWR |
|---|---|---|
| Still supported by Salesforce | Yes | Yes |
| Security updates | Yes | Yes |
| New feature investment | No | Yes |
| Server-side rendering (SSR) | No | Yes |
| Core Web Vitals optimised | No | Yes |
| Experience Builder drag-and-drop | Limited | Full |
| Request for Quote (RFQ) | No | Yes (Release 260) |
| Agentforce Guided Shopping Agent | No | Yes (Release 260) |
| Configurable Products | No | Yes (Release 260) |
| Qualification Rules | No | Yes (Release 260) |
| Pricing Context Extension | No | Yes (Release 260) |
| Predictive Product Suggestions | No | Yes (Release 260) |
| New Searchable and Filterable Fields | No | Yes (Release 260) |
Which Release 260 Features Require LWR?
This is the section that should actually drive your decision. Every feature below is available only on LWR storefronts as of Salesforce Release 260. If you want any of them, migration isn’t optional.
Request for Quote (RFQ)
Buyers can submit quote requests directly from the cart or a product detail page, without leaving the storefront. For manufacturers and distributors with complex or volume-variable pricing, this is a significant self-service capability that reduces phone and email quote volume. See our detailed breakdown of what’s new in Salesforce RFQ Release 260.
Agentforce Guided Shopping Agent
An AI-powered assistant that guides buyers through product selection in real time. It answers questions, narrows options, and surfaces relevant products based on buyer context. This requires both LWR and an active Agentforce licence.
Configurable Products
A product configurator built into the storefront, allowing buyers to define specifications before adding to cart. For manufacturers with made-to-order or variant-heavy catalogues, this directly reduces back-and-forth between buyers and sales reps.
Qualification Rules
Dynamic product visibility by buyer segment. Show certain products only to certain account types, regions, or contract tiers — without custom code. This is a native, declarative feature that Lightning simply doesn’t support.
Pricing Context Extension
Custom pricing rule logic that extends Salesforce’s standard pricing engine. Useful for distributors running complex tiered pricing, contract-specific rates, or promotional structures that don’t fit standard price books.
Predictive Product Suggestions
AI-driven product recommendations surfaced within the storefront, based on order history and browsing behaviour. This connects to Salesforce’s Einstein recommendation engine and is LWR-exclusive.
New Searchable and Filterable Fields
Expanded search index configuration, giving merchants more control over which product fields buyers can search and filter on. A smaller feature in isolation — but one that meaningfully improves product discoverability for large catalogues.
Practitioner note from Eduard Pop: The gap between Lightning and LWR isn’t just about features you’re missing today. It’s about trajectory. Every Salesforce release will widen this gap further. If you’re on Lightning and thinking “we’ll migrate eventually”, I’d encourage you to look at the Release 260 list above and ask whether “eventually” is actually “now”. The clients who come to us having deferred this decision for 18 months are usually paying more, not less, because their Lightning storefront has accumulated further custom work that now also needs rebuilding.
How much does Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud cost for UK small businesses? →
Should You Migrate? A Decision Framework for UK SMBs
85% of B2B organisations now operate a self-service ecommerce storefront, according to Shopify’s Enterprise B2B Ecommerce Trends 2025 report. The question for UK SMBs already on Salesforce B2B Commerce isn’t whether to have a digital storefront — it’s whether the one they have is competitive enough to keep buyers on it.
Migrate now if any of these apply
- You want any Release 260 feature — especially RFQ, Agentforce Guided Shopping, or Configurable Products
- Your storefront has poor Core Web Vitals scores or noticeably slow page loads (a 1-second delay costs 7% in conversions)
- You’re already planning a storefront redesign for other reasons — do it once in LWR, not twice
- You’re starting a brand-new B2B Commerce implementation — always start with LWR; there’s no reason to build on Lightning today
You can wait if all of these are true
- Your Lightning store is working well and your buyers aren’t complaining
- You’ve invested significantly in your Lightning storefront in the past 12 months
- No Release 260 feature is urgent for your business in the next 12 months
- Your store is simple — small catalogue, standard pricing, no planned AI or configurability requirements
Never do this: Don’t migrate because a large agency told you that you need to. Understand exactly which features you’re migrating for. If you can’t name two or three specific LWR capabilities that will improve your buyers’ experience or reduce your team’s workload, the business case isn’t there yet. Wait until it is.
What Does a Lightning to LWR Migration Actually Involve?
The most persistent misconception UK SMBs bring to migration conversations is that this is a data migration. It isn’t. Your product catalogue, buyer accounts, pricing rules, order history, and Salesforce back-end configuration remain entirely unchanged.
What you’re rebuilding is the storefront front-end — the visual and interactive layer that buyers see and use. The Commerce app, pricing engine, and order management system that sit behind the storefront don’t move. Your Salesforce data stays exactly where it is.
In practice, the migration scope breaks down into three categories of work:
- Standard LWR components replace their Lightning equivalents directly — these are typically the quickest to rebuild.
- Custom Lightning Aura components (anything your original implementation team built specifically for your storefront) need to be rewritten as Lightning Web Components, or replaced with native LWR equivalents where a native option now exists.
- Theme and branding work applies your visual identity to the LWR storefront — fonts, colours, layouts, and responsive behaviour.
The typical timeline with an experienced LWR specialist is 8–16 weeks. Simple storefronts with few custom components sit at the lower end. Storefronts with significant custom functionality, multiple price lists, or ERP integrations that surface data in the front-end sit at the higher end. The timeline is usually gated by client review cycles, not by build time.
A component audit before you start is non-negotiable. Count your custom Aura components, document what each one does, and decide early whether each will be rebuilt or replaced. That audit shapes your timeline and your budget estimate.
Common Salesforce integration mistakes that extend project timelines →
What Does a Lightning to LWR Migration Cost in the UK?
The cost ranges below reflect SmartHub Tech’s direct UK market experience — both our own implementation pricing and the figures clients shared when they came to us after receiving quotes from larger agencies.
| Complexity | What It Means | Independent Specialist | Large Agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | Standard theme, small catalogue, no custom components | £15,000 – £25,000 | £60,000 – £80,000 |
| Medium | Custom components, multiple price lists, integrations | £25,000 – £45,000 | £80,000 – £120,000 |
| Complex | Heavy customisation, multiple storefronts, complex integrations | £45,000 – £80,000 | £120,000 – £200,000+ |
The gap between an independent specialist and a large agency isn’t primarily about the quality of work. It’s about overhead. Large Salesforce system integrators carry significant account management, pre-sales, and delivery management costs that get baked into every project. A specialist who builds LWR storefronts directly — with practitioners doing the actual work — doesn’t carry that overhead.
What does drive cost, regardless of who you use: the number of custom Aura components that need rebuilding, the complexity of your pricing architecture, the number of external system integrations that touch the storefront, and whether you need multiple storefronts (for example, separate B2B and B2C experiences, or storefronts for different regional markets).
For guidance on what a complete Salesforce B2B Commerce engagement covers, see our Salesforce support contract guide.
What Are the Common Migration Mistakes UK Companies Make?
Most LWR migration problems are predictable. These are the four we see most often.
Skipping the component audit
Starting the build without a full inventory of custom Aura components means discovering scope mid-project. A custom component that nobody remembered exists — a specialised product comparison widget, a bespoke checkout step — can add weeks to a timeline that was quoted without it.
Treating it like a data migration
Teams that expect the migration to resemble a CRM data move often under-resource the front-end design and testing work. The data is fine. The time goes into rebuilding the user-facing experience correctly, testing it across browsers and devices, and getting buyer flows right.
The big bang cutover
Cutting the Lightning storefront off and switching buyers to LWR in a single move is high-risk. Running both in parallel briefly — even for one to two weeks with a subset of buyers — catches usability issues and integration edge cases before they affect your full customer base.
Choosing the migration partner on price alone
LWR expertise varies significantly across the Salesforce partner ecosystem. A lower quote from a partner who hasn’t built multiple LWR storefronts often results in a longer project and a higher total cost. Ask specifically for LWR case studies, not general B2B Commerce experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions from UK manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors about migrating from B2B Commerce Lightning to LWR.
Related Resources
Salesforce official documentation:
Salesforce B2B Commerce LWR documentation ·
Release 260 RFQ release notes ·
Google Core Web Vitals
Thinking about migrating from Lightning to LWR?
SmartHub Tech specialises in Salesforce B2B Commerce LWR implementations for UK manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors. Book a free consultation to discuss your migration scope and get an honest cost estimate.
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