Magento 2 Open Source Vs Adobe Commerce and Commerce Cloud: Things to know

Why Choose Magneto 2 Open Source Vs Commerce and Commerce Cloud

When establishing an online e-commerce store with Magento 2, choosing the right edition—Magento 2 Open Source, Adobe Commerce, or Adobe Commerce Cloud—is crucial. Each edition offers distinct features, making it essential to align your requirements with the capabilities of these editions.

Magento Open Source is ideal for launching a marketplace, especially with extensions like Marketplace Platinum. This extension streamlines seller product management and order processing delegation. It also provides empowering feature for vendor registration. This enhances customer engagement by offering a variety of products from different merchants at competitive prices.

Let’s have a Look at Each of These Editions Efficiently

Magento Open Source

Magento 2 Open Source Edition, formerly known as Magento 2 Community Edition, is a freely available platform for e-commerce. It plays a significant role in the e-commerce industry for offering Magento development services. This contributes to about 15% of the web hosting industry, highlighting its importance in online business infrastructure.

One of its key advantages is its flexibility, allowing admin users to configure the software to meet their company’s specific needs. However, one drawback is that while it offers robust basic features, access to advanced functionality may require merchants to extend the platform with specially designed modules available in the Magento catalogue.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce Edition, formerly known as Magento 2 Enterprise, Magento 2 Commerce, or Magento Commerce On-Premise, offers users a range of rich out-of-the-box features, unlimited customisation capabilities, and seamless third-party integrations. Unlike the Open Source Edition, Adobe Commerce Cloud Edition does not offer a free download option.

With Adobe Commerce, users also benefit from 24/7 email support. This edition includes features tailored for corporate account management and customer support, company credit management, customisable catalogues, and price lists. Additionally, it provides tools for quick order processing and managing online quote requests

One standout feature of Adobe Commerce is Content Staging, which allows users to create, preview, and schedule various content updates directly from the Admin panel. This feature enables the creation of dynamic pages that automatically change throughout the year based on scheduled dates.

Adobe Commerce Cloud Edition

Magento Commerce Cloud, previously known as Enterprise Cloud Edition, is a managed and automated hosting platform tailored for Cloud solutions. Often referred to as the Magento self-hosted edition, it combines all the features of Magento 2 Commerce on-premise with enhanced Magento Cloud infrastructure hosting. This includes Git integration and key environments for development, staging, and live production. In essence, users of this edition can code, test, and deploy across Integration, Staging, and Production environments to ensure the smooth performance of their online stores.

Magento 2 Open Source Features

Following are the features Magento Open Source Offers:

• Catalog Management;
• Marketing, Promotions and Conversion Tools;
• Customer Accounts;
• Checkout, Payment, and Shipping;
• Instant Purchase Checkout;
• Magento Shipping;

Adobe Commerce Features

• Advanced Reporting powered by Magento Business Intelligence;
• Analytics and Reporting;
• Indexing, cart, and cache operations Improvements;
• Integrated dotdigital marketing automation software;
• Full Page Cache;
• Page Builder.

Both These Technologies Support the Latest Version of the following:

• web servers – Apache 2.4 and Nginx 1.8
• PHP 7.4, 8.1
• Varnish 6.x, 7.0
• MySQL 8.0
• Redis 5.0, 6.0, 6.2
• RabbitMQ 3.8, 3.9
• Elasticsearch 7.6+

Magento Open Source and Commerce differ significantly, with one of the disadvantages of Magento 2 being the limitations of Open Source features. Magento 2 Commerce offers exclusive features such as:

Catalog management (Category Permissions);

Advanced marketing:

• Promotions (Dynamic Blocks, Related Product Rules)
• Merchandising (Visual Merchandiser, Gift Registry, Reward Points, Private Sales & Events (including countdown ticker), Store Credit, Gift Cards, Gift Wrap, Wishlist Search)
• Communications (Email Reminders)
• SEO & Search (Google Tag Manager)
• Content (Dynamic Blocks, Content Staging, Page Hierarchy);
• Customers (Customer Attributes, Customer Segments, Multiple WishLists per Customer);
• Sales (Order Archives, RMA, Assisted Shopping Cart Management);
• Reports based on Private Sales, WishLists, and Segments;
• B2B features (Shared Catalogs, Company Credit, Company Accounts, Quick Orders by SKU or Product Name, Quotes, Payment on Account, Requisition Lists)

The following are three features that make Magento 2 Commerce exceptional

Product Recommendation

Product Recommendation is a marketing tool powered by Adobe Sensei, utilising AI and machine learning to analyse customer behaviour and catalogue data, offering personalised product suggestions.

Site-Wide Analysis Tool (SWAT)

Site-Wide Analysis Tool (SWAT) assesses site performance, generates reports, and provides recommendations for enhancing performance.

Live Search

Live Search is a robust search tool powered by Adobe Sensei, leveraging AI and machine learning to analyse visitor data and deliver more relevant and personalised search results.

Comparing Adobe Commerce to Open Source, Magento Commerce offers a wealth of features, but Open Source is more customisable, allowing merchants to add necessary functionality through extensions. This flexibility enables businesses to choose which features are essential, making the decision more cost-effective. If you don’t require the full range of Magento 2 Commerce features, you can select only those that align with your business needs.

Adobe Commerce Vs. Adobe Commerce Cloud

Adobe Commerce Cloud is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) hosted on a redundant AWS-based cloud infrastructure. Professional cloud consulting services can greatly facilitate the transition to cloud infrastructure, ensuring businesses utilise advanced and appropriate cloud technologies for their specific needs.

Unlike traditional SaaS e-commerce platforms, Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition offers high levels of customisation, scalability, and simplifies integration with third-party systems. For those seeking to further optimise their cloud infrastructure, AWS serverless consulting services can offer valuable insights and solutions. Let’s delve into the features and benefits of these two versions.

The platform includes excellent DevOps, release, and cloud management tools and encompasses all the features of Adobe Commerce.

Cost Comparison of All Three Platforms

As mentioned earlier, Magento Open Source is free, while Adobe Commerce requires a license fee, which is a percentage of your total annual revenue. When evaluating cost, it’s crucial to consider the value each brings. The paid version offers significantly higher value, as outlined below. You also need to factor in the developer time and cost to create functionalities already included in the paid version.

However, the pricing model for Adobe Commerce is primarily beneficial once your store reaches a certain turnover. For stores with low revenue, the minimum license fee might be too high. If you don’t anticipate rapid growth that justifies the investment in the paid version, the free platform might be more suitable.

Scalability

Planning for scalability is crucial when selecting an ecommerce platform. If you anticipate rapid growth, starting with Adobe Commerce is wise. It offers extensive features that provide the agility necessary for a growing business. Opting for the free version might lead to constraints and delays as you’ll need to develop every new component required for your growth journey.

Security

Adobe Commerce offers significantly stronger security features compared to Magento Open Source. Open Source lacks key security features like credit card tokenisation and advanced payment security, which are essential for secure transactions. Additionally, the free version does not comply with PCI DSS security standards,

In contrast, Adobe Commerce provides advanced security solutions. The paid version is PCI compliant and includes the Magento Secure Payment Bridge for secure card processing. It also offers bug bounty programs, regular scanning processes, and secure payment gateways like PayPal, WorldPay and CyberSource. Moreover, Adobe Commerce’s Action Logs record and store every change made by users with admin panel access.

For further security enhancements, Adobe Commerce Cloud offers CDN and DDoS protection, along with the Fastly Web Application Firewall. Upgrading to the pro version provides additional security features such as New Relic infrastructure and logs, as well as a dedicated technical advisor.

Here are the Best Advantages of Adobe Commerce Cloud

Completely Configured Environment

With Adobe Commerce Cloud, you don’t have to worry about server configuration, ensuring the correct versions of server software, PHP, or database software compatibility with Magento 2. The most important aspect is to properly configure access to folders and files. If needed, additional tools like Elastic Engine can be pre-installed. Adobe Commerce Cloud streamlines server administration, making it more straightforward.

Integrated source control management system (GIT)

Integrated source control management system (GIT) with support for eight environments for developing, testing, and launching your store.

Integration: The Integration environment set includes three testable environments, each containing an active Git branch, a database, a web server, caching, services, environment variables, and configurations.

Staging: As your code and extensions pass your tests, you can merge your Integration branch to a Staging environment, which serves as your pre-production testing environment. This environment includes a staging active branch, a database, a web server, caching, services, environment variables, and configurations.

Production: Once the code is ready and tested, all code merges to the master branch for deployment to the Production live site. This environment includes your active master branch, a database, a web server, caching, third-party services, environment variables, and configurations.

Inactive: You can create an unlimited number of inactive branches.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

The virtual infrastructure for Production and Staging environments includes a three-server setup with dedicated hardware, ensuring a high level of reliability and availability.

This system simplifies configuring the staging environment for testing extensions or code changes without impacting the live server. While deploying a new instance is an option, it is labor- and time-intensive, requiring a server administrator for deployment and maintenance. Additionally, the integrated source control management system stores all changes, enabling easy rollback and ensuring straightforward tracking of changes.

The benefits of using advanced technologies in Adobe Commerce Cloud will offer the following:

Fastly for CDN, web application firewall (WAF) and caching (based on Varnish);

Blackfire Profiler for performance testing;

New Relic APM for performance testing;

Rabbit MQ job queue framework;

GitHub (if you need a Git repo);

Bitbucket (if you need a Git repo).

Among other benefits, automated patching and image optimisation should be mentioned.

IDS Logic for Magento and Related services

Contact IDS Logic for expert Magento development services and solutions tailored to your e-commerce needs. With years of experience, IDS Logic offers comprehensive Magento development, customisation, and optimisation services. Whether you need a new Magento store, custom extensions, theme design, or ongoing support and maintenance, IDS Logic has the expertise to deliver. Their team of certified Magento developers ensures that your store is secure, scalable, and optimised for performance. Reach out to IDS Logic today to elevate your Magento e-commerce experience.

IDS Logic is your one-stop solution for all things Magento. With a team of certified Magento developers and years of experience in the field, IDS Logic offers a comprehensive range of Magento services to meet your e-commerce needs. Whether you’re looking to build a new Magento store, customise an existing one, or optimise your current setup, IDS Logic has the expertise to deliver top-notch solutions. With our competitive services, we can assure the success of your business.

The Final Note

In conclusion, choosing between Magento 2 Open Source, Commerce, and Commerce Cloud depends on your specific business requirements and budget. Magento 2 Open Source provides a robust platform for small to medium-sized businesses with limited budgets and simpler e-commerce needs. It offers basic features like Magento support and can be extended with third-party extensions.

On the other hand, Magento 2 Commerce is ideal for larger businesses with more complex requirements. It offers a wide range of advanced features out of the box, such as advanced marketing tools, customer segmentation, and a page builder. It also includes technical support and more frequent updates compared to the Open Source version.

Magento 2 Commerce Cloud combines the features of Commerce with cloud hosting and infrastructure management. This version is suitable for businesses looking for a fully managed cloud solution. Taking up Magento maintenance in addition to this will help with benefits of scalability, security, and performance optimisation.

Ultimately, the choice between Magento 2 editions depends on your business size, budget, technical expertise, and specific e-commerce requirements. Each edition offers its own set of advantages and limitations, so it’s important to carefully evaluate your needs before deciding.