Freento React Theme · Open-source storefront for Magento 2
Magento 2, Instant on Any Connection.
A headless React storefront for Magento 2, built for one goal — maximum performance. Opens instantly, stays instant on every click, even on slow mobile.
Comes with its own visual page builder — far easier to work with than Magento's Page Builder, and it never slows your pages down.
The theme is open source — code on GitHub: Freento/magento2-react-theme- Optimized for slow connections
- ~6 KB · category image 300×300
Why It's Fast
Ready HTML First
The server sends fully rendered HTML; React hydrates after paint. Content pages are prerendered to static files at build time.
Blocking Request per Page
One GraphQL request delivers the page. PWA Studio / Venia needs 10+ requests before content appears.
Smart Preloading
Loading starts the moment you hover or touch a link. The click comes ~200 ms later — by then the page is already in the browser, so it appears with zero waiting. Even without a hover it lands in ~200 ms.
Lighter Images
WebP/AVIF only, everywhere — the format alone saves up to ~2×. Served at exactly the size it is displayed, a listing gets 2–3× lighter than with JPEG — nothing oversized reaches the phone.
Brotli, Max Level
Assets are compressed with Brotli level 11 at build time — nothing is compressed on the fly.
Skip Magento Bootstrap
Critical queries can run directly on the Node server, skipping the Magento bootstrap entirely. Example: resolving a page URL takes milliseconds, versus ~150 ms through the GraphQL route() query.
Backend acceleration — optional add-ons
Freento_Swoole Module
PHP on Swoole: Magento stays loaded in memory instead of bootstrapping on every request. Ships as our Freento_Swoole module.
GraphQL Cache Warmer
Keeps the GraphQL cache in Varnish warm — 5–10× faster than warming regular pages. Ready to provide with the theme.
Freento_FullPageCache Analyzer
Analyzes why your GraphQL endpoints return cache MISSes and prepares a warm-up map for your store, used by the module.
Real PageSpeed Results
Home, category and product pages of the live demo — measured by Google PageSpeed Insights.
Replaces Magento Page Builder
A Page Builder Your Team Will Actually Enjoy
Magento's Page Builder is slow and painful to work with. The theme comes with its own visual editor instead: drop in blocks, tweak them, see the result instantly — and it physically can't ruin your PageSpeed.
Zero requests to Magento for CMS content. It's baked into the server-rendered HTML.
JPEG and PNG uploads are rejected. WebP/AVIF only — a content manager cannot ruin your PageSpeed.
Drag-and-drop with live preview using the same React components, in desktop, tablet and mobile modes.
Content lives as JSON files in git. Every save is a commit: full history, rollback to any version, content deploys together with code.
Ours vs the Rest
Freento React Theme
OursOnly 1 blocking request · ready HTML in ≈0.1 s · next pages prefetched, ≈0 ms wait
PWA Studio (Venia)
Other headless5+ blocking requests · 10+ requests in total
Luma Theme
Standard MagentoFPC miss (often): 1–2 s render + heavy AJAX regardless of FPC
| Criterion | Freento React Theme | PWA Studio (Venia) & other headless | Luma — standard Magento |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can it be fast? | ●●●●●Yes — fast out of the box, and it stays fast: just 1 blocking request per page and smart preloading of the next one. | ●●●●●Hardly. 10+ requests per page put heavy load on the server — and when the user clicks the next page before the previous one has finished loading, requests pile up and navigation gets slower still. | ●●●●●Only behind a perfectly tuned Full Page Cache — rare in practice. Cart, AJAX and similar requests bypass the cache and stay slow anyway. |
| Can AI develop it? | ●●●●●Yes — a compact, uniform codebase that ships with Claude Code skills. An AI assistant navigates all of it. | ●●●●●Weaker — a large, fragmented codebase spread across dozens of packages; AI assistants struggle to hold it. | ●●●●●Worst case — PHP templates, XML layouts and Knockout.js legacy; slow going even for AI. |
| Faster development, cheaper support? | ●●●●●Yes — Magento upgrades get much simpler with a decoupled frontend, and the AI-friendly codebase cuts development and support time further. | ●●●●●Partly — upgrades also get simpler thanks to the decoupled frontend, but development itself stays slow and expensive. | ●●●●●No — the theme is tied to the Magento core: every upgrade drags the whole frontend along, and support stays heavy. |
| Google PageSpeed out of the box (mobile / desktop) | ●●●●●100 / 100 | ●●●●●65 / 45 | ●●●●●60 / 90 |
| Images & static resources optimization | ●●●●●WebP/AVIF only, enforced by the editor. Brotli level 11 at build time, modern minification, critical CSS inlined. | ●●●●●Legacy PNG/JPEG — 30–70% heavier than WebP/AVIF. Standard bundler minification; no built-in Brotli precompression or critical CSS. | ●●●●●Legacy PNG/JPEG — 30–70% heavier than WebP/AVIF. Basic Magento merge/minify, no critical CSS — heavy render-blocking bundles. |
| CMS content | ●●●●●Baked into HTML — 0 runtime requests to Magento. | ●●●●●Fetched via GraphQL at runtime — extra requests that take extra time. | ●●●●●Page Builder, server-rendered. |
Faster to Build. Cheaper to Keep.
AI-Assisted Development
The codebase is compact and uniform, and ships with Claude Code skills — an AI assistant navigates all of it. Customizations that took days take hours, and development costs drop with them.
Faster Magento Upgrades
Magento updates — even major ones — take 2–3× less time: the frontend is decoupled, so there is no theme to re-test and re-patch on every upgrade.
Stable Integration Surface
The theme talks to Magento only through its stable APIs — the ones that don't change from release to release. No core patches, no fragile frontend rewrites.
Visible to AI Search
LLM crawlers and AI assistants don't run JavaScript. This theme serves ready HTML, so they see your full catalog — unlike client-rendered headless storefronts.
What's Covered
- ✓Catalog
- ✓Product pages with variants
- ✓Layered navigation + price slider
- ✓Full-text search with autocomplete
- ✓Cart + mini-cart
- ✓Full React checkout
- ✓Braintree cards + Google Pay
- ✓PayPal Express
- ✓Authorize.Net
- ✓Check / money order
- ✓Customer account
- ✓Order history + reorder
- ✓Wishlist
- ✓Product reviews
- ✓Newsletter
Compact, uniform codebase — customization is fast and AI-assistant-friendly. Ships with Claude Code skills.
How Implementation Works
Migration Estimate
We audit your store, map its customizations and integrations, and give you a concrete migration estimate.
Theme + Adaptation
We adapt the theme to your store: your design, your modules, your payment and shipping integrations.
Launch & Support
We launch, verify the scores on your real catalog, and stay on for ongoing support.
Click Through the Demo. Time It Yourself.
SimpleShop is a full demo store on the React theme — catalog, search, checkout, everything above. The theme itself is open source.