We have multiple brands, so had to go the custom route to allow multiple registrations across brands, but stop multiple registration within a brand. It's basically just an SSP page to replace the login/register touchpoint and an .ss service file to handle login/register requests. Using the commerce API in SS1 is pretty simple as the methods are all pre-defined. Alternatively, you could do a hackier version just using jquery or similar to intercept the standard register form submission, looking up the email with an .ss file or suitelet before stopping/allowing it to submit depending on whether it's a duplicate.