Magento Commerce vs. Magento Community Edition- A Comparative Index to find which will better fit your brand!

Which platform are you opting for selling your goods online? Undoubtedly, Magento is among your top lists for this purpose. But Magento is just like an umbrella under which Magento Commerce vs Magento Community edition exists and selecting the superior one obviously is a showdown within the popular eCommerce gladiators.

In this blog, we tried to draw a comparison between the two most advanced editions of Magento 2 – Magento Commerce Edition or Magento Enterprise and the Basic Magento Community Edition highlighting all the. We hope that by exploring the several aspects and benefits of each on various scales, it will be easier for you to decide on the Magento version that is best suited for you and your brand.

Magento Commerce vs Magento Community Edition – Our Inputs.

1. Performance

1. In general, we have seen Commerce sites perform well even with multi-country / multi-store implementations. There are some valid reasons like 
   1. Code and standards are good because commerce sites are done following stricter recommendations from Magento and the extensions available for enterprise are also generally better coded (also more expensive) than for community. 
   2. The infrastructure provided by Magento is very well optimized for Magento sites. 
2. If it is totally about brute performance, not considering direct price comparison – community or even commerce self-hosted can be optimized to work faster than commerce cloud, due to the variety of infra and optimization options available (there are providers like mgt commerce, akoova and excess that can guarantee <1-1.5 sec load times); and also, because Magento would generally have a one-size-fits-all approach to architecture, and we would have the flexibility to tailor based on our site. 
3. The info about clients leaving cloud for self-hosted or community was persistent 1-2 years back, but after Adobe’s acquisition, things have improved a lot. 

2. Features

1. Till recently, Magento had a clear upsell to Commerce with features like the following, but now – 
   1. Elasticsearch (smart/suggestive search)
   2. Page Builder 
   3. Content Staging and Preview (Easily achievable with the staging / pre-prod instance), except scheduling.
   4. Visual Merchandising 
   5. B2B – is definitely a plus, but we don’t have any use here, and still available via extensions that meet almost all functions. 
   6. Advanced Marketing – All are very good features, but easily available with extensions, and would have be required to be modified in some way to suit our workflow.
      1. Segmentation 
      2. Abandoned cart emails 
      3. private sales 
      4. loyalty 
      5. RMA 
      6. Analytics

a. PWA approach (whether studio or scandi) will dampen some of this feature differentiation because not all commerce-only features are fully supported/compatible with studio yet. 

b. We have seen that many customers do not get to use / intend to use all the upsell features for actual revenue / sales implications, as larger brands already have some or the other tool or resources providing that function (Ex. Mixpanel or Adobe Target for Analytics / Targeting, Landing page builders or people to do it in HTML) etc. 

c. With Adobe’s acquisition, as with other such acquisitions, Adobe might try to remove features from upcoming community versions and offer them only in commerce to drive licenses.

3. Support

1. 1. Having a dedicated RM / Technical Account manager plus infra support from Adobe is a definite plus, though the same support (infra) can be provided by an agency + a managed hosting provider. 
   2. The community version does not provide any additional support and technical support. But, the commerce edition provides 24×7 support from Magento. After purchasing the Magento Commerce Edition, you get efficient 24×7 technical support.

4. Security and Compliance – 

a. In case of commerce, Platform Security and PCI compliance is managed by Adobe, which is a big plus. 

b. In case of community, security can very well be guaranteed with periodic security audits / VAPT’s, and third party softwares like sucuri and WAF’s etc. PCI is generally not an issue even with the community version because we do not intend to accept cards / payment info on our site (assuming).

c. Therefore if you opt for the Magento Community version you need to be vigilant enough to check for any sort of ups and downs whereas in the Commerce version, all your security threats are ideally eliminated before you can even notice.

5. Updates

a. Clear winner is commerce because Adobe will provide pre-beta releases and also auto-updates to commerce customers. 

6. Safety / Reliability 

a. For AM as a global brand – for risk management, having Adobe backing the solution, and providing a dedicated account manager for technical/architectural inputs and infra support is definitely a value add for any brand, and brands typically go with commerce due to the safety net/sense of security that comes with having a license/enterprise supporting your platform if not anything else. 

7. Price

a. First-year pricing can be nearly identical in both cases due to additional development charges/extensions / separate hosting costs, but the 2nd year and onward cost of ownership will definitely be much lesser with the community because of zero recurring license cost. 

b. Magento Community Edition is a FREE Open Source platform that enables the sellers to customize their store at their convenience. The maximum annual cost in the community edition comes around:

Hosting cost = $2400 and Developer cost = $4800 on average taking it to the Total of $7200 approximately.

c. Whereas Magento Commerce is a paid edition. You get all the advanced features and functionalities while being charged for the Implementation cost, Hosting Cost, and License Cost.

Cost Comparison

8. Magento Cloud:

The Enterprise edition provides the availability of Magento Commerce Cloud as it can be seen as a Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS which is empowered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.

The Magento Cloud feature takes care of all the hosting and deployment issues in your online store. Also, it checks for Multi-Tenancy. You can benefit from the Magento cloud in case you are dealing with a large product catalog simply by choosing the Magento Commerce version. But, Magento Community merchants, on the other hand, this feature is not there.  This implies that the cloud management tool makes the process of deployment, testing, promoting, and operating on multiple environments easy, rapid, and convenient. 

Implementation and Installation:

The implementation time frame of the Community edition takes around 6-8 weeks to set up your eStore completely whereas the time frame exceeds for Magento Commerce to 14-16 weeks. The implementation cost as well for the Commerce version is on average over $50k whereas for the community version, it ranges within $10-60k and depends on the number of external extensions.

Therefore, if you are looking forward to setting up your shop quickly then the Community edition perhaps is the right fit for you.

Benefits associated with the Magento Commerce version:

The Magento Commerce version precedes the Magento Community version for the following features and functionalities:

• Improved tax calculation functionality
• Simplified and controlled Database management
• Automated email marketing notifications
• Enhanced scalability.
• Automated Order management system
• Search Engine Optimization
• Multiple payment modes
• Marketing and promotion strategies
• Enhanced CMS
• Overall a good Checkout experience

The best-selling platform is the one that suits your needs and fits your budget as well.

Wrapping it up:

Magento Community Edition may be a better option due to its superior features and advanced functionalities for large-scale or stable merchants who possess strong financial backgrounds. But for a small-scale, startup or a medium-scale merchant, the Commerce version is a bit expensive. However, there is an option of switching to  Magento Commerce (Enterprise) version after attaining stability with Magento Community for an enhanced experience.

A crucial step that any business needs to take is choosing the correct eCommerce platform that can contribute to expanding the business thereby improving customer experience. At Indglobal, we have a proficient team of experts who help online enterprise merchants to analyze, plan, and set up their businesses successfully. Our proficient team has over a decade of Magento experience and has built several successful online stores – we’re perfectly placed to help you make the right choice between Magento 2 Community Edition and Enterprise Edition.
If you are searching for a Magento website development company you can visit our website.