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.
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 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 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 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.
The following features are available in all 3 Magento editions.
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.
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.
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.