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Magento 2 Commerce, Commerce Cloud & Open Source

In June 2017, Magento rebranded its product suite and now has three major editions of its core product. Magento Enterprise Edition is now Magento Commerce. Magento Community Edition is now Magento Open Source. The third is Magento Commerce Cloud, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) version of Magento Commerce hosted by Magento on Amazon Web Services.

Magento 2 was redesigned with performance in mind and was re-architected using the latest technology stack implementing best practices for both coding and design. Improved performance means enhanced user experience, better engagement, more products added to cart and more sales.

Overview of the Magento 2 Editions

Some key features of the new Magento 2 platform include improved page load speed with full page caching in both the Enterprise and Community editions, a streamlined checkout that to make the process faster and handle more orders per hour, faster add to cart times and improved website security with more secure payment gateways and safer data storage practices for clients and users.

Magento 2 Commerce Edition

Magento 2 Commerce Edition is the premium and paid version of Magento. It is completely supported by the Magento team and subscribers receive full customer service and support by phone and email. Pricing also includes security, advanced features and product improvements. Commerce Edition is operationally more scalable and is generally used by mid-sized to large retailers with higher throughputs of customer traffic, larger product catalogs, wider global presence and more complex business processes.

Magento 2 Commerce Cloud Edition

Magento 2 Commerce Cloud Edition is a managed Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud hosting platform that is fully configured for Magento 2. It combines all Commerce features with enhanced cloud infrastructure hosting including GIT/Bitbucket, Fastly for CDN and caching, Blackfire and New Relic APM. As Mark Lavelle, CEO of Magento Commerce explains: “With this new platform running on AWS, we ensure that our merchants have the agility to respond to a rapidly changing environment, can continuously deploy innovations, easily scale to meet unexpected demand and don’t have to worry about the day-to-day management of infrastructure.”

Magento 2 Open Source Edition

Magento 2 Open Source Edition is a platform available for free download and installation and it contains the same core features as it’s Enterprise counterpart. Since it is open source, it is easily customizable and makes use of the Magento Marketplace and skilled technical resources to extend the core features and support specific business and functional requirements. Unlike a SaaS model that locks you into a given software roadmap users are free to make configuration adjustments to the software to meet their specific needs. Many large and mid-market retailers utilize Magento Open Source for their ecommerce platform and successfully meet ever expanding requirements and customer demands.

Common Core Magento Features

The following features are available in all 3 Magento editions.

  • Code-Level Access
  • Web Services and API Integrations
  • Mobile HTML Theme Pre-Integrated
  • Themes
  • Mobile Commerce
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Multiple Stores, Store Views and Websites
  • International Commerce and Multiple Languages
  • Advanced Administrator Roles
  • Persistent Shopping Cart
  • Flexible Couponing and Promotions
  • Analytics and Reporting
  • Layered Navigation
  • Shipping Rules
  • Payment Configurations and Gateways
  • Product Configurations
  • Up-Sells, Cross-Sells and Related Products
  • Content Management
  • Catalog Browsing
  • Product Browsing
  • Order Management
  • Customer Account Management

Bundled in Magento Commerce/Commerce Cloud

The following is a list of features that come bundled with Magento 2 Commerce Edition. This is a list of the most talked about features and is not comprehensive. Many of these Commerce features can be integrated into Open Source using extensions. It is however important to keep in mind that marketplace extensions may function differently than the Commerce Edition feature.

Features

  • Automated Product Relationships
    • Define rules to automatically associate products rather than mapping them manually
    • Applies to related products, up-sells and cross-sells
  • Content Staging, Scheduling and Rollback
    • Edit your content such as pages, products, etc., preview your content for accuracy and automatically schedule it to go live whenever you want
    • Extremely useful for promotions or other content updates you may want to schedule in advance
  • Performance Enhancements
  • Customer Segmentation and Targeting
  • Customer Attribute Management
    • Magento Commerce allows you to segment customers so that you can personalize content or market to user segments in a more productive manner. Segments are more robust than Customer Groups as they are based on shopping behavior and data collected.
    • Examples of segments – “Users who registered before or after a certain date”, “Customers who have only purchased once”, “males only”, “customers over 40 years old”. Customers can be members of multiple segments.
  • Automated Email Marketing Reminder
  • Additional Payment Options
  • Order Archiving
  • Magento Shipping
  • Store Credit
  • Private Sales, Events and Invitations
  • Reward Program
  • Price and Promotion Permission
  • Minimum Advertised Price
  • Enhanced Catalog and Content Management
  • Return Management Authorization (RMA)
  • Gift Cards
  • Gift Registry and Gifting Options
  • Multiple Wish Lists
  • Admin Access Restrictions Per Website
  • Instant Purchase – One-Click Amazon-Like Checkout
  • Visual Merchandiser
  • Admin Action Log
  • Business Intelligence Dashboards
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Elastic Search (there is news that Elastic Search will be supported in Open Source v2.3)
  • Magento Technical Support

Features Specifically Beneficial to B2B Merchants

As of version 2.2, Magento Commerce comes out of the box with features needed to manage B2B sites for multiple brands, channel partners, or key accounts. Customers can self-manage their company accounts and set up multiple tiers of buyers with specific roles and permissions. They can track quotes, view order histories, and manage their credit online. Altogether, these features provide a very robust B2B experience on Magento that is not easily replicated on other eCommerce platforms.

  • Self-Service Company Accounts
  • Shared Buyer Accounts
  • Credit Lines
  • Quick Order Entry
    • Add to order by SKU or Product Name
    • Upload a CSV file to create an order
  • Requisition Lists
  • Quote Request Management
  • Improved Shipping Options
  • Customized Catalogs and Price Lists

Additional Features with Commerce Cloud

  • Magento 2 Commerce Edition
  • Optimized PCI Compliant AWS Hosting
  • GIT/Bitbucket
  • Fastly for CDN and Caching
  • Blackfire
  • New Relic APM
  • Enhanced Security with Fastly WAF and DDoS Services
  • Automatic Backup of Code and Databases

Which Magento 2 Edition Do I Choose?

Choosing the Magento version for your eCommerce store depends on a considerable number of factors including sales volume, priorities and budget, website and marketing requirements and long-term business plans. Think at least 5 years ahead – how do you see your eCommerce business scaling and growing?

All editions of Magento provide customers with the necessary tools for fully operating eCommerce stores. The main differences are in cost and features available out of the box. Open Source is a sound option when all the additional features provided in Commerce are simply not required or are overkill for your eCommerce business. Mid-market merchants who want greater control over the environment and wish to use extensions or custom code to implement a smaller set of specific customer requirements not included in Open Source may be able to dismiss the Commerce or Commerce Cloud Editions.

If a larger part of the Commerce Edition feature set syncs with your brand needs, Open Source is likely not a good long-term solution. Businesses with near-future expansion plans, B2B customers, those expecting to do international business, have multiple brands, or do a significant amount of volume online, should strongly consider Commerce or Commerce Cloud with its more robust feature set and support.

Different business models and scale of operations call for different solutions. If you need assistance evaluating the different Magento editions, contact us. We are happy to help you.