Store Systems: Adobe / Magento 2 Commerce vs Magento Open Source – Premium Cloud System vs. Cloud 9 for PHP Developers

Adobe Commerce is the former Commerce/Enterprise version of the Magento 2 system. The system has become a mature, comprehensive, flexible and complete solution for companies that can already invest a little more in an online store system. Magento Open Source is the freely available counterpart and as the name suggests – a free open source solution. If you want to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the two systems, you came to the right place. Based on the information presented here, you can better decide which system suits you.

The following applies to both systems: The possibilities for optimizing the store system grow with the skills of the developers involved. This is due to the fact that Adobe Commerce, the former Magento 2 Commerce Cloud, is also open source and, with the appropriate skills, offers great flexibility compared to other store systems.

So the central question for companies and retailers is: What are the competencies and resources that we have to implement a store system ourselves? How much do we want to be involved in the development? With Magento in the open source version, there is of course the possibility to hand over the development of the system to an external Magento developer, or a Magento agency. At this point, however, it is already clear that even with the use of Magento Open Source costs are associated.

Adobe / Magento 2 Commerce offers the advantage that employees without programming knowledge can maintain and manage the store system more easily. Numerous intuitive plugins can be installed for various purposes. Comprehensive sales across multiple channels can now be realized, for example, with our magnalister plugin for Adobe Commerce. It is controlled via the Magento backend and you can use it to sell on many online marketplaces such as eBay, Kaufland, Amazon, OTTO Market, Etsy and many more.

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Table of Contents

Advantages of Magento Open Source

Drawbacks of Magento Open Source

Drawbacks of Adobe Commerce

Advantages of Adobe Commerce

Conclusion

Advantages of Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source is available free of charge and offers almost unlimited possibilities with the appropriate developer skills and resources.

Available free of charge

You can simply download and install Magento 2 open source at any time and get started almost right away. The download is available on GitHub, for example. More in-depth IT knowledge is required for this. However, if you have sufficient PHP knowledge and an appropriate hosting environment, you will be running a functioning store system after the successful installation and individual adjustments. After you install Magento 2 Open Source, versatile extensions and some themes can be added via the Magento 2 marketplace.

Theoretically (almost) unlimited possibilities

Following the above, the limits of your store system with Magento Open Source are a mirror of the limits of your developers are – for very good developers, they hardly exist. For Magento Open Source there are particularly many extensions freely available. Hence, Magento Open Source offers great opportunities for companies that have many resources for the development of a store system available. Meanwhile, an open source page builder has even been released, after it had received Adobe’s approval. This simplifies the design of the front end for the online store. The front end is what customers see when they visit the store on their devices. If developers have any questions, they have access to a huge community.

Drawbacks of Magento Open Source

The customization/personalization of the system is complex, scalability and good loading times are not automatic, and security risks can arise more easily.

Personalization is complex

In Magento 2 Open Source, fewer features are integrated by default. This means that customizing your own online store can become very time-consuming. For example, it is more difficult to convey the brand image in a meaningful way or to improve the user experience of the store through other special features. Especially the customization of the backend for payment, shipping, order processing and management can be very time-consuming in individual cases. If the creation of the store takes longer as a result, this can of course bring about disadvantages with regards to competitors.

Scalability can be difficult at times

Some features, for example country-specific shipping options, can also only be implemented with Magento 2 Open Source via various third-party extensions. This can make scalability difficult, especially in the case of rapid growth. With this issue, the question of how the store system can handle rapidly increasing numbers of visitors arises.

For example, if a marketing campaign was very successful and the number of visitors skyrockets, then this should not noticeably affect the performance of your store page. Should this be the case, the potential of the marketing efforts is not fully exploited. After all, increased loading times often lead to store abandonment, and downtime could even lead to negative customer reviews and long-term negative consequences on top of that. Again, it is not impossible to configure the Magento 2 open source system for such load spikes. But it means a lot of effort and it is certainly not free of charge.

Better developers, higher costs vs. security risks

Good developers and agencies specialized in Magento know the value of their work. With very cheap providers, on the other hand, caution is advised. Especially if extensions are not professionally tested, or errors creep in at other levels, security risks can arise. Especially in times of the GDPR, this can quickly have unpleasant consequences for companies. The development of the store should therefore only be carried out by absolute IT professionals. Make sure that they also provide good support and, in the best case, transfer knowledge to your company.

Drawbacks of Adobe Commerce

Especially for smaller companies, the disadvantages of Adobe Commerce are mainly the cost and also the need for the system to be co-maintained by IT staff.

High license fees

As we have mentioned some disadvantages of Magento Open Source, we will now come to the disadvantages of Adobe Commerce. The first thing to mention would be the cost of use. These depend on the size of your business. Exact information about the price for the store system with all its features can only be obtained upon request from Adobe itself. According to some experiences published online, the price for smaller companies is around $22,000 per year and can reach six figures for large companies. For most startups and newcomers, that’s rather difficult to handle.

Costs for store setup and maintenance

Of course, your store is not ready when you subscribe to Adobe Commerce. The store must be individually created and tailored to your products by IT experts. There are further costs for certain extensions. Freely available extensions are not as numerous as with Magento Open Source. In addition, the regular updates can cause technical problems, for example, they might not be compatible with a certain extension. If the path via Adobe support is not bringing the expected solution, further costs arise.

Finally, the community of developers is smaller. If you don’t want to leave the further development and editing of your store system entirely in the hands of Adobe, this will require additional resources.

Advantages of Adobe Commerce

The benefits of Adobe Commerce are numerous. The system has been optimized over the years and offers the advantages of a fast cloud. So you don’t have to worry about hosting plus you always have a personal contact at Adobe. The integration into the Adobe Experience Cloud and the easier setup of multi-channel sales also speak for the globally popular store system.

Proven cloud solution with personal support

With Adobe Commerce, you get to enjoy a very mature store system. It’s not by chance that Magento has become the market leader among online store systems. Companies like Coca-Cola, Omega Watches, and Ford rely on Magento and have had great success with it. If you can afford it, you may soon be rewarded with a good return on investment. In this case, your company does not have to worry about hosting: you will have an optimized cloud environment. Hanging on hold and explaining a problem four times over to new employees – that’s not going to happen either. This is due to the fact that at Adobe Commerce, every company has its own personal customer service representatives who are available to help with any difficulties.

Best-in-class security standards

Another advantage concerns the security of the system. This has been improved with each new release/version of the system. So, for your business, you can be sure that all state-of-the-art technologies have been applied to protect your customers and the system. With each update, the protection is brought up to date again.

Robust performance

Adobe Commerce Cloud is robust, even during performance spikes like a Black Friday, after a viral campaign, or in the run-up to Christmas. Your store’s performance won’t suffer – and neither will your business. Your customers will appreciate the fast loading times.

Integration of helpful Adobe tools

The system continues to offer many integrated features, such as marketing tools or artificially intelligent software that makes specific product suggestions based on user behavior. Adobe Commerce is part of the Adobe Experience Cloud. This is a suite of products and services. Any company can use it to manage its customer experience and benefit from real-time data, optimized marketing, and scalable personalization, among other things. This is made possible by tools such as Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe Advertising. In turn, Experience Cloud is connected to Adobe Creative Cloud. This means that as an Adobe Commerce customer, you also benefit from other Adobe products. These include classics such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, and many more.

Multi-channel sales made easy

With Adobe Commerce, expanding your multichannel ecommerce is within reach. Install the magnalister plugin with just a few clicks, and you’ll soon be selling on online platforms like eBay, Kaufland, OTTO Market, Etsy, Amazon, Rakuten, and many more via the backend. In addition, you can open up Amazon marketplaces in over 10 countries.

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Conclusion

We would like to summarize the respective strengths and weaknesses of Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source for you once again in the following table.

As for Magento Open Source, the more complex the open source system becomes, the higher the maintenance effort and costs involved. Let’s assume you want to build a solid online store without a lot of bells and whistles and you have a good PHP developer in your ranks who could put his focus on this project. Furthermore, you have a suitable server for hosting. In this case you would be well advised to use the open source solution.

However, if you need to involve a Magento agency because you want to build a comprehensive store system or even several store systems, then Adobe Commerce might be the better solution for you. Especially if your store system will have various individual requirements and even more so if you also want to boost sales on multiple channels and possibly abroad. After all, the better the agency or developers and the more complex the requirements, the higher the costs for customization in this area are likely to be. The same is true if you expect rapid growth. Then Adobe Commerce’s advantages in scalability, fast load times, and easier customization become more significant.

Another aspect is ease of use. Adobe Commerce has continued to improve so that even employees with little IT knowledge can manage the products in the store and even customize the front end with an intuitive page builder. So another key question is: Who should manage and maintain the products? Are they developers? Then it is also possible to work with Magento Open Source. Is it rather content managers without programming knowledge? This speaks for Adobe Commerce.

Especially for sales on multiple online marketplaces, our listing and management plugin is a good choice: With magnalister, you simplify item listing and management on online marketplaces such as eBay, OTTO Market, Kaufland, Amazon, METRO, Etsy and many more. You can centrally manage all these marketplaces with magnalister via your Adobe / Magento Commerce store system. From the synchronization of inventory levels, order statuses and prices, to the matching of attributes and the uploading of invoices – all this is done in a bundled, time-saving and convenient way via magnalister. You can also access many foreign markets more comfortably with our plugin, for example Ricardo, cDiscount and many international Amazon markets.

The central features at a glance:

• Product upload: Upload products directly from your online store to marketplaces and price portals
• Price synchronization: Prices are matched fully automatically or individually (per marketplace)
• Inventory synchronization: Always up-to-date stock levels between store and marketplaces
• Automatic order import: Import and manage marketplace orders
• Attribute matching: Match product variations and features with marketplace attributes
• Order status matching: Automatically match order status (e.g. “shipped” or “canceled”) with marketplaces
• Interface customization: Customize the plugin via so-called hook points as you desire
• Invoice upload: Send invoices created in your online store or by magnalister to marketplaces

Our support staff will be happy to help you with the setup. Even during the free trial period, we offer you a free on-screen training.

Whatever you decide now, whether it is the premium cloud model (with or without magnalister) or cloud 9 for your PHP developers: We wish you every success for your store and your business! And we hope we could give you some helpful insights for your decision making.

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