Alphabet Inc. is betting that an emerging ecommerce startup founded four years ago can change the way companies sell online.

Reaction Commerce Inc., the startup in question, today announced the completion of a $8.5 million funding round led by the search giant’s GV venture capital arm with participation from four existing backers. The cash infusion brings its total raised to $11.7 million. Reaction will use the investment to expand go-to-market efforts and finance the development of new features for its namesake ecommerce platform.

The software is available under an open-source license and can be adapted to selling a wide range of products, from traditional physical goods to cloud subscriptions. A big part of the reason behind the platform’s flexibility is that the underlying code is fully accessible, which enables companies to customize their deployments. Reaction provides support for Docker software containers and other popular development tools to ease the implementation of such changes.

At the same time, there’s more to the platform than just customizability. Reaction has also mixed in a raft of ready-made ecommerce features to make it easier for companies to set up their storefronts.

On the front end, the startup’s platform provides the ability to set up a simple, single-page checkout workflow and give users the option to log with their social media accounts. There’s also built-in support for shopping incentives such as discount codes. When it comes to backend operations, Reaction provides an array of management features designed to help companies manage their inventory and process payments.

Reaction is competing in a crowded market with larger players such as Magneto Inc. that boast a significant head start. Nonetheless, the startup said, it is seeing more than 2,600 installations per month since launching the first full release of its software in May.

Reaction is working to commercialize this growing installed base with a managed edition that promises to ease the task of operating large storefronts. The service enables companies to install updates without incurring any downtime, as well as automatically provision extra infrastructure resources in the event of a traffic spike. 

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