Magento 2 Open Source / Adobe Commerce Features Explained

Shortly after Magento’s success story began in 2007, there was a freely available open source version – the community version – and an enterprise version for which license fees were charged. Apart from the fact that Magento is now managed by Adobe and the enterprise version is now called Adobe Commerce, nothing has changed with regards to this initial structure. Both versions run on the basis of the revamped Magento 2 system – support for Magento 1 was discontinued in 2020. In this article, you will get an overview of the most important Magento 2 open source features as well as Magento 2 Commerce features.

Why does a company like Adobe actually stick to an open source solution that cannot bring any direct profit? A very large open source community is jointly responsible for ever new developments at Magento and Adobe. The acquisition of Magento by eBay and later Adobe has not changed this. Adobe has repeatedly emphasized that the community is an important value for the company and that the open source version should be preserved. In this context, the fact that important features have been made available for the open source version could be understood as a recognition of the underlying community.

If we talk about features, we mean, for example, the Page Builder and the Magento 2 PWA Studio. Thanks to the Page Builder, Magento 2 allows you to create online store pages by means of drag and drop, without the need of any programming skills. The PWA (Progressive Web Apps) Studio makes it possible to greatly optimize the shopping experience for smartphone users, making it more like using an app.

However Adobe Commerce also includes some features that are not easy to map in the open source version. These include B2B features and the option of multi-channel sales, just to name a few. Here, Amazon is already integrated into the backend as a sales channel. In addition, with the magnalister plugin for Adobe Commerce, you can list and manage your products centrally on many other online marketplaces. These include eBay, OTTO Market, Kaufland, Etsy, METRO and many more.

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Table of Contents

General pros and cons of Magento open source and Adobe Commerce

Features of Magento 2 Open Source and Adobe Commerce

Conclusion

General pros and cons of Magento open source and Adobe Commerce

Before getting into the specific features that make up the two systems – namely Adobe Commerce and the Magento open source version, we would like to describe some more general advantages and disadvantages of each solution.

Costs

One key difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce concerns costs. The Magento open source version is free to download. But it would be wrong to think that the software is hence free. Depending on the complexity of the store that is to be built, it may even be more expensive. After all, if you do not have a lot of developers with open capacities in the company, external specialists will have to be paid to implement the project.

However, the licensing costs for Adobe Commerce (Magento Commerce) are also relatively high – probably difficult to pay for very small companies. They are at least 15,000 to 20,000 dollars and are increasing depending on sales.

Ease of use

One advantage of Adobe Commerce concerns ease of use. Working in the backend as well as in the frontend is somewhat easier than in the basic open source version. So if many employees work with the store system, even employees with only little IT knowledge, this speaks in favor of Adobe Commerce.

Security

Security has been greatly improved in both systems compared to the previous Magento 1 system. The biggest difference is that Adobe Commerce (Magento Commerce) automatically receives security patches on an ongoing basis and is therefore less maintenance-intensive in terms of security. The security features include PCI compliance – meaning the adherence of Payment Card Industry standards is ensured.

Scalability

With Adobe Commerce, scalability is also guaranteed in terms of peak loads and load times. This means that Adobe’s cloud servers are so powerful and the store’s architecture so effective that the system functions optimally even with a high number of visitors and neither long loading times nor downtimes occur. This can also be achieved with the Magento open source version – but it requires a lot of work.

Support

Finally, Adobe’s support is worth mentioning as an argument in favor of using the licensed/paid version of Magento. The industry giant assigns each company its own customer support representative to take care of their individual concerns. According to Adobe, customer service is generally available around the clock. With the open source version, on the other hand, support is entirely in the hands of the agency, or developers.

Features of Magento 2 Open Source and Adobe Commerce

In this section, we will go into more detail about individual features of the systems.

Independent servers vs. Adobe Cloud

If you choose the open source version, you host the system on your own servers (on-prem) or the servers of an agency. With Adobe Commerce, on the other hand, your store system is hosted in the Adobe Cloud. As mentioned earlier, the capacities of these servers are designed to be large. So growing your store would never be a problem. After all, major customers like Coca-Cola, Omega Watches, and BMW are among Adobe (Magento) Commerce users. Moreover, the question here is how many resources you have available for maintenance and hosting of an open source solution.

B2B Features

If your customers are primarily B2B, then the features associated with it are a strong argument for Adobe Commerce. That’s because B2B functionality of the system has continued to mature. Enterprise customers can be offered a special account in the store system, whose content and options can in turn vary depending on access rights of different employees. This allows you to provide customized offers to enterprise customers and greatly simplify payment, for example, using a credit system.

Page Builder

In 2021 and with Magento version 2.4.3, Adobe has also made the CMS editor Page Builder available for the open source version. For many, this step was surprising, since the Page Builder had been an important and unique selling point of Adobe Commerce until then. Whatsoever, it is now possible to design the frontend of one’s own store using Magento 2 drag and drop editor in both versions. This simplifies the Magento 2 design in each case by default.

Magento 2 Multistore: Managing multiple stores from one backend

It is now possible to manage multiple stores from the same backend – both in Magento open source and Adobe Commerce. To do this, users simply select the desired domain or frontend from a drop-down menu and find themselves in the corresponding backend. This is especially important for large companies that operate multiple stores with multiple brands.

Magento 2 Layered Navigation: Navigation via attributes

Both systems allow customers to easily search for products using a drop-down menu. Using this menu, customers can sort the products by attributes such as price, color, style, material, pattern and many more. With the help of such Magento 2 features even customers can filter the results by these attributes.

Progressive Web Applications (Magento 2 PWAs) and Magento Headless Commerce

Both Magento 2 PWAs as well as Headless Commerce can be used with Magento 2 in general. Both features are ultimately concerned with the separation of backend and frontend programming. Using various technologies and best practices, the developer is here able to create user interfaces for the web browser whose look and feel is more reminiscent of desktop or mobile apps than of websites. On average, loading times are faster. At the same time, the resulting frontends are cheaper and easier to implement.

Marketing, analytics and AI tools

With regards to these features, Adobe Commerce stands out strongly from the open source version. This is because there are many different tools available that can improve both marketing, customer data analysis, customer search, and offer personalization. These features are not available in Magento 2 open source.

We are talking about important functionality such as a visual merchandiser tool that displays products to customers according to certain intelligent rules. This can measurably increase sales. In Adobe Commerce, customers can also create gift wish lists, and reward and loyalty programs can be mapped to loyal customers. There is also the possibility to create exclusive events and offers for specific customers, a feature, which doesn’t come out of the box with the open source version.

To streamline analytics, you can set up as many dashboards as you want, create many different types of reports and export them in a variety of formats. You can share insights automatically, for example, by sending reports directly via email. With the help of so-called data warehousing, all data can be collected and analyzed centrally. With artificially intelligent (AI) tools, for example, AI-supported live searches and product recommendations are possible in addition to the intelligent evaluation of data.

For both systems, there are various options for making offers to customers or highlighting products (promotions). In addition, Magento 2 open source users can use features such as email and newsletter templates as well as automated shipping. Furthermore, wish lists can be created and the store can be connected to social media platforms.

Shipping solutions

As of April 2022, Adobe is planning a partnership with e-commerce platform and FedEx subsidiary ShopRunner to improve its shipping capabilities. Among other improvements, this will enable customers to enjoy 2-day delivery and better manage growing delivery volumes. Online merchants with an interest can be notified of news around the cooperation. Most likely, this will not be part of the general Magento 2 shipping features, which are available in the open source version, but will be exclusively available to Adobe Commerce users.

Improved Magento 2 checkout process

The path from shopping cart to checkout is crucial in online stores. With every unnecessary click and every superfluous entry, the risk of losing customers increases. The entire checkout and purchasing process has been greatly improved in Adobe Commerce (Magento 2 Commerce). This means more sales for online merchants.

Search engine optimization (Magento 2 SEO)

Both versions of Magento 2 include various SEO features to improve the ranking of your store web pages on the search engine results pages. This includes the possibility to optimize meta data, i.e. meta title, meta description and meta keywords via the corresponding fields. In addition, a sitemap can be produced and updated regularly. This can also have a positive effect on the ranking of your store. With the help of URL rewrites, URLs on the results pages can also be displayed in a more user-friendly way. In addition, various plugins or extensions can be installed that also help with search engine optimization.

Configurable products on Magento 2

Both versions allow you to easily assign individual SKUs to product variations by creating a simple child product for each variant. This enables you to track accurate inventory levels for each individual product. If, on the other hand, all variations have the same SKU, you will not know, for example, which colors are still available and which ones are currently out of stock.

Customer account management

Both systems centrally provide real-time information about inventories and orders. Users can trigger returns and refunds at any time. In these respects, the systems function in the same manner as the magnalister plugin. The big difference is whatsoever that with magnalister such processes can even be triggered for numerous online marketplaces via the backend, once they have been connected with our plugin.

Multi-channel sales with magnalister

Another feature that is only offered in Adobe Commerce, is the integration of the store system with Amazon. Our plugin, that is available for Adobe Commerce, helps you to list and manage products centrally from the backend and across multiple platforms. It allows you to integrate not only Amazon, but also many other online marketplaces such as eBay, OTTO Market, Kaufland, METRO or Etsy into your store system.

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Conclusion

Magento 2 open source offers a wide range of features. However, Adobe Commerce is ahead in some areas. Security is high on both platforms, but slightly better on Adobe Commerce thanks to PCI compliance and other technologies. Scalability here is also easier to ensure thanks to the reliability and speed of the Adobe Cloud service. Adobe’s 24/7 customer support services are another big advantage that only come with the Commerce version of Magento.

You also don’t have to worry about hosting with Adobe Commerce. Furthermore it is very strong when it comes to B2B. Corporate customers can get a special account, where the content and options can be configured flexibly depending on access rights of different employees. Thus, customized offers are possible and payment can be greatly simplified, for example, with the help of a credit system. Finally, Adobe Commerce scores in the areas of marketing, analytics, and AI tools.

When it comes to multi-channel sales, it is not only possible to integrate an Amazon sales channel. Other online marketplaces can be connected when using our magnalister plugin. Whether it is eBay, OTTO Market, Kaufland, Etsy or cDiscount – with magnalister you can merge product listing and management across platforms and centrally from your Adobe Commerce backend.

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The features of the two systems once again at a glance:

We hope this article helps you with your decision for the suitable store system and wish you much success for your business. If you have any questions about our magnalister plugin, please feel free to contact us.

Via phone: +49 (0)30 / 120 76 74 12
Via e-mail: support@magnalister.de

The central functions of our plugin 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: Create invoices and upload them flexibly

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