I have to say that I love the nopCommerce experience. It is so easy to work with and UI is excellent. Adding other currencies and multiple language support is really easy.
BUT......
I think that in this day and age where mobile apps are so ubiquitous, it is almost unacceptable to not provide a working, RESTful web API for nopCommerce as part of the core functionality that can be used out of the box.
Yes, I know there are some third-party web APIs, but quite frankly, they do not meet the outstanding standard of the nopCommerce app itself. The two options I have come across are
1) The nop4you Web API, which, in contrast to the open-source philosophy of nopCommerce, costs US$149. This may be too expensive for some retailers, particularly those in poorer parts of the world, where the cost of this plugin may constitute a significant part of their monthly salary.
2) The API plugin by Github user SevenSpikes. As it is community developed, it is not always compatible with the latest version of nopCommerce. In addition, it uses an extremely convoluted OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code grant type login flow, which keeps API user data completely separate from the nopCommerce user model, and does not appear to contain a way to register users from a mobile app. Furthermore, when people have asked about this on the Issues page, clear answers have not been given.
The fact that a RESTful API is not available out of the box may lead some developers/clients to pass over nopCommerce in favour of e-commerce frameworks that do provide this functionality as a core component.
I'll try a fork of the abovementioned plugin, but if that doesn't work, I will have no choice but to reject nopCommerce and return to using the clearly inferior Spree E-Commerce, which does provide a web API out of the box.