Business success depends on a platform that unlocks the full potential of e-commerce. And Magento is an excellent choice in this regard. According to the Hosting Tribunal, the platform processes $155 billion in transactions annually. Nearly 8,000 customers have switched to Magento within the last year. About 10% of e-commerce websites are built on it, and 12% of all stores in the world use the platform as their main one!
Let's find out what the secret of Magento's popularity is. Dinarys experts presented a comparison of Magento Open Source vs Commerce vs Magento Commerce Cloud development features, which should help you choose the best option for your business.
Magento Overview
Scalable architecture, rich feature set, and the ability to customize the smallest details make the platform the best for retail. Regardless of the preferences of Magento Community vs Magento Enterprise, it is used more often than other CMS for creating online stores.
By the way, if you are used to using the old names, keep in mind that Magento Community is now called Magento Open Source and Magento Enterprise - Magento/Adobe Commerce.
General characteristics of Magento:
Mobile-friendly
Accessible and convenient catalog management
Advertising tools
Main dashboard for website maintenance
Search optimization features
A wide range of payment integrations to pick from
The platform is considered optimal in terms of cost in both B2C and B2B segments. At the same time, the key difference between Magento CE vs EE (Open Source vs Commerce) is also in the cost of use, although different versions are adapted to different requirements.
The first one is free, but the second one requires a paid license. The ultimate cost to move from Magento Open Source vs Commerce averages at $24k per year.
In a comparison between Magento Open Source vs Commerce, the financial factor matters. The free platform means that you will be responsible for building the network and server.
Magento Enterprise versus Community offers hosting and support services. You don't have to look for hosting and provide any services on your own. The second guarantees only a basic set of tools for an online store. Magento Enterprise Edition has a lot more functionality and well-implemented customer support.
Magento Open Source e-commerce is great for getting started with a platform or starting a small business. However, medium and large market players will not find it sufficient. At the same time, it cannot be said that it is impossible to build a successful business with it. An experienced technical team has a good chance of developing a reliable B2C online store, but the amount of effort and the number of potential risks will be significantly higher.
And now, let’s dive into more detail and consider each Magento solution separately.
Magento Open Source
It is an affordable and highly customizable e-commerce platform. This is a strong contrast to many other SaaS that impose restrictions on users.
The updated Magento 2 Community Edition provides a sufficient set of features and capabilities, including
Website management.
Analytics and reporting tools.
Catalog view and management.
Instant purchase features.
Integration verification, payment, and shipping tools.
Customer support.
Private user accounts.
Functional testing capacities.
Indexing and caching opportunities.
SEO tools.
Multi-language support.
Reinforced security.
Reliable technology stack.
Marketing, promotion, and conversion tools.
In terms of comparing Magento Open Source vs Commerce features, here are some capacities both platforms have in common:
Pricing and discount tools
Search optimization
Web content management
Catalog management
Catalog views
Product views
Checkout and payment tools
Shipping tools
Order management and customer support
Customer loyalty tools
Individual user accounts
Global website support
Analytics and reporting
Markups and themes
The list is impressive, you can do a lot, but not absolutely everything. Without extensions, it is quite difficult and time-consuming for an unskilled user to make any changes. Fortunately, Magento has many partners (Dinarys is one of them) that can be brought in to do this job.
Magento Commerce (now Adobe Commerce)
The paid Adobe Commerce offers many other dimensions to take e-commerce to the next level. It has the same core but provides more useful features. In the B2B configuration, you can host the site on your servers or use the cloud by choosing one of the available packages: Starter or Pro.
The first is for salespeople who are just starting out in a big business and would like to focus entirely on growth rather than IT management. Essentially, Starter is Magento Open Source with connected support.
The second is perfect for B2C and B2B sellers looking for rapid growth in the future. For example, if a website needs to be prepared for complex integrations and non-linear traffic growth.
It is a turnkey platform with all e-commerce capabilities including features, customization, third-party integrations, and Adobe cloud-managed services. You get the ability to upgrade to Business Intelligence Pro as well as to expand functionality through numerous add-ons.
In the comparison of Magento 2 Open Source vs Commerce, the second clearly wins, since it can be hosted not only locally but also via cloud deployment. At the same time, only some functions are available for the local version:
Improving website performance due to built-in page caching
Using separate master databases to support billing, order management, and product data
Allowing each master database to have multiple “slaves” to scale read operations
Even in Magento 2, in the Open Source vs Commerce comparison, the latter looks preferable because it comes with many exclusive features like
Business analytics monitoring dashboard.
B2B functionality.
Expanded marketing tools.
Customer loyalty tools.
WYSIWYG web page editor.
Visual Merchandiser.
Product recommendations.
Customer segmentation.
Articles for adding products to the cart.
Additional payment gateways.
Admin rights user roles on the website and store level.
Extended permissions.
Automated digital marketing notifications.
Backups.
Enhanced cloud deployment.
Configurable order tracking widget.
Content management system.
Category view and purchase rights for separate groups of customers (limited catalog access).
Customer attributes management.
Special offers and merchandising management.
Elasticsearch.
Google tags manager.
Built-in Signifyd fraud protection.
Admin action log.
Message queues.
Multiple main servers.
Multiple connected databases.
Multiple wishlists.
MySQL clusters support.
Optimized indexing.
Orders archiving.
PA-DSS Certification.
Private sales.
RMA - Return Merchandise Authorization.
Bonus points.
Scheduled import/export features.
Store credits.
Reliable encryption, hashing, and data key management.
CDN support.
This is the gold standard for modern e-commerce. Agree, it's hard to imagine a successful online store without a product recommendation system or customer loyalty tools. While all functions are critical, the first three are especially important for medium and large businesses looking for growth and effective expansion.
Magento Commerce pricing starts at around $1,500 per month when billed annually and grows with your income. Considering the increased functionality and the increased potential for business growth, the price is justified. Many companies are showing growth after switching to Commerce.
Another important advantage is the availability of technical support. You can send requests to the support team and count on timely professional help from the platform creators.
Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce: How to Choose
When evaluating Magento 2 Commerce vs Open Source, it is worth considering that the main functions are duplicated in them. Practically everything is there, except for the very essential details. You will have to weigh the need for the Magento 2 differences Commerce vs Open Source described above, as well as the other benefits of the paid version for practical use mentioned below.
Content placement
Changes to CMS pages can be scheduled in time. Administrators can preview changes prior to publishing, rather than checking for accuracy later, as is the case with Open Source.
Extended advertising features
Retailers can enforce advanced promotion rules to send customers coupons for specific products, offer free shipping based on order value, conduct time-limited sales, and modular deals.
Extended reporting
While Open Source can be a great solution, the reporting functionality is somewhat limited. Commerce allows you to create up to 100 different types of reports.
Customer segmentation and personalization
Sellers can generate customer segments based on past behavior, different demographics, and show customized ads and promotions for each group.
Diagnostics features
Users can access various diagnostic and testing tools such as the Magento Performance Toolkit to help optimize site performance and user experience.
Gift cards
To achieve a major customer loyalty boost, the Commerce version allows merchants to sell virtual and physical gift cards that can be reused as long as the card balance is not depleted. The store provides the ability to maintain gift registers that allow the buyer's friends and family to purchase gifts for special events.
Loyalty programs
A modular reward system with discounts and refund features, customizable according to brand requirements. This increases customer loyalty and thus sales.
Private sales and events
Users may enter into time-limited trades and potentially limit the number of customers allowed to participate in the promotion. Sellers can offer exclusive invitations and VIP service. The feature is useful for improving the quality of service and increasing customer loyalty.
Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)
Customers can request a return directly from the store interface. The feature can be applied to all or to specific positions with the seller's control. Buyers can choose a reason and indicate if they want a refund after the seller has processed the item.
Rule-based product interactions
Sellers optimize sales through a relationship system based on how buyers display and view related products. These products can be personalized based on segmented customer lists to make purchases more personalized.
Store Credit
Sellers can provide buyers with credit, the optimized algorithm of which can be easily applied to future orders. This improves the overall shopping experience.
Visual Merchandiser
Users may change the sorting method, creating a beautiful and easy-to-read product layout. Visual Merchandiser optimizes product categories, helps you organize them according to specific properties, and makes it convenient to add new products or change orders.
Integrated B2B functionality
The feature provides great opportunities for B2B-focused businesses. In particular, large orders, customized catalogs, and prices in accordance with the terms of the contract, and self-service tools. This kind of functionality in Open Source can only be implemented through extensions and custom Magento 2 development.
Expanded analytics and reporting
Advanced analytics and reporting are mostly only available in Commerce (and Commerce Cloud Pro). It provides access to 100 predefined sales, and marketing, reports, SQL visual report builder, Google analytics, B2B dashboard.
The solution allows creating of 10 user accounts with additional permissions and also grants the ability to send reports to specific members of your team.
Marketing Functionality
This task area includes many features that can help an e-commerce professional improve service and increase customer conversions. For example, Elasticsearch helps customers find the products they want faster. Reward points, gift registers, gift options, and wishlists are also very effective tools for gaining customer loyalty.
The targeted promotions feature will provide the ability to display dynamically generated information to a specific type of customer. The segmentation feature can help you identify these customers by specific attributes, including unregistered users.
Automated placement of certain types of items in certain categories saves time for other work and allows you to more fully meet user needs. Instant Purchase enables customers to skip the checkout process and purchase items immediately.
As you can see, the functionality of these two editions is plentiful. But how do you find the best one? You need to know what is present in one and what is absent in the other. In this aspect, it is important to note the possibilities of cloud solutions.
Magento Commerce Cloud
The cloud offers Commerce functionality hosted on the AWS cloud infrastructure. Magento Cloud key benefits include
Fully configured environment. You don't have to worry about server configuration with the correct version of the server software, PHP or database software compatibility. If necessary, you can pre install additional tools (for instance, Elastic).
An integrated source code management system (GIT) with support for developing, testing, and storing launch environments.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). A virtual infrastructure for production and staging environments with a 3-server setup and dedicated hardware delivers high levels of reliability and availability.
Such a system will help set up a staging environment for testing installed extensions or any code changes without affecting the running server. What's more, an integrated source code management system stores all changes, which allows rollback and ensures that changes are easily tracked.
The advanced technologies used are also noteworthy:
Fast page loading with CDN and Varnish-based caching
Blackfire Profiler for performance testing
New Relic APM for performance testing
GitHub and Bitbucket (if you need a Git repository)
Other major benefits also include automated image correction and optimization. And apart from commercial features, there are also
Cloud connections support.
99,99% global availability.
Web app firewall.
Reinforced Fastly WAF and DDoS services security.
PCI compliance.
Simple deployment.
Optimized updates.
Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition also offers rapid development and continuous deployment processes. Cloud hosting powered by Amazon Web Services is available for both Pro and Starter plans.
Infrastructure includes production, staging, and PaaS development environments with unlimited user support, full versions of tools for monitoring and performance testing. Services like MySQL, Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ can be implemented without extensions. But don't forget to factor in the additional costs for Web Hosting ($14.99 - $39.99/month).
The list of Magento Enterprise features is wider. While both editions of the platform are built on the same code, average use of Magento Commerce by large merchants vs Open Source prevails. The solution better handles higher traffic levels, number of products, sales volumes, and organizational complexity.
The final choice of a platform should be based on the specifics, goals, needs, strategies, and business resources. There is no competition between these editions. They are just different, with different goals. In other words, we can efficiently choose based on specific needs and requirements.
Ambitious businesses need a more robust option with enterprise-grade features right out of the box. For those who own an online store with profits reaching more than $5 million in revenue per year, it makes sense to choose Commerce.
Magento Open Source capabilities can be customized with additional extensions or custom development. However, it will not scale quickly as you grow, which could cause problems in the future. There is no protection against copyright infringement: you are solely responsible for any third-party claims related to your software. We at Dinarys believe this is the perfect platform for startups and small businesses.
Bottom Line
Thousands of old and new brands continue to trust the platform and achieve great results.
If you are a large company looking for highly scalable solutions, look no further than Magento Commerce. But if you are a young startup, Open Source can bring more value to your business. The main thing to consider is the needs of your company and project. Start with the free version, and as your business grows older, you can upgrade to the full version of this unique platform.
Anyway, if you have any questions, contact us, please. Our team of professionals is always ready to help with advice or specific product development.
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