What is the difference between Magento Commerce and Magento Open-Source? Do you know which types should be used for your business? This article will help you expand your awareness of Magento.
I. Overview of Magento Commerce and Magento Open-Source
Since its foundation, Magento Open- Source and Magento Commerce have been available. They are published at the same time, but they bring some differences. This article will mention to some differents, special features and give some suggestion about choosing a fit version for business.
1.1. Magento Open-Source
Magento Open-Source Edition (formerly Community) is a free version of the platform with a relatively shallow learning curve that offers access to a huge web of feature extensions.
Magento Open-Source, formerly Magento Community Edition, is an open-source eCommerce platform. Developers can implement the core files, after that extend functions, adding new plug-in modules given by others. Since the principal public beta rendition was delivered in 2007, Magento Open-Source has been developed and optimized to create a basic eCommerce platform.
1.2. Magento Commerce
Magento Commerce Edition (formerly split into Enterprise & Magento Cloud Edition): allowing large businesses to discover their full functions, and expand to practically any size of deployment.
Magento Commerce, formerly “Magento Enterprise Edition” is rooted in Magento Open-Source and has the same core files. Whistl Open-Source is free but has fewer features and functionality. Magento Commerce is designed for large businesses that require technical support with advanced functions such as installation, usage, configuration, and troubleshooting. Pricing starts at $1,600 USD/month.
II. Differences of Magento Commerce and Magento Open- Source
2.1. Cost
Magento Open-Source is free for users whereas Magento Commerce has to pay about 22.000$ per year. It is a massive investment, which makes small businesses and startups company can not adaptable to it.
2.2. Security
As mentioned to overall security, the core is the same for both editions. The most difference is that sometimes new patches can be released a couple of days earlier for the Commerce version. Besides, to worth with the customers paid, the Magento Commerce edition also provides some features to warrant better customer protection.
- Credit card tokenization or advanced payment security to ensure the safety of payments.
- Some secured payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, CyberSource, WorldPay. That is the reason why the data payment is not stored in the Magento Commerce but is skipped directly to payment gateways.
- Action Logs — This system will record detailed changes a user with access to the admin panel does on the store. So their access permissions can enter the whole website Admin; follow who and when changes.
The main user can also replace new roles and reset permissions to avoid trouble changes to the store. The main user can also implement these features with the help of third-party extensions. But If you still follow other features Magento Commerce provides, it will be easier to buy a license.
2.3. Performance
Magento Commerce outweighs Magento Open-Source when it has a function: performance. It is quicker, leaner, and more expandable. This is worked through optimized databases using leaner versions of the code. Magento Commerce likewise incorporates Fastly, which is a Content Delivery Network augmentation that proficiently presents content through storing. This demonstrates quicker pages and content stacking and higher revenue simultaneously.
Furthermore, Magento Commerce comes with New Relic, which is an exhibition checking framework to guarantee everything is advanced by waving to things that might slow the framework. You’ll have the option to see everything continuously immediately in fixing when they appear.
III. Features of Magento Commerce and Magento Open-Source
3.1. B2B
The Magento B2B suite (which was released properly last year) is a hugely valuable addition to the platform, featuring a range of important features for B2B merchants, such as:
- RfQ functionality / price quoting and negotiation
- Customer-specific pricing and catalogs
- Credit limits
- Quick checkout options
- User roles, purchasing limits and permissions
- Customer-specific payment options
- Customer-specific purchasing limits and thresholds
- Support for quick purchase lists
These are just a small part of the features available via the Magento B2B suite/module and retailers are also able to expand functions around their specific requirements. Perhaps, this has been one of the most important functions of Magento developments for a number of years and supports their focus on B2B and wholesale.
3.2. Catalog and System
The catalog permission feature allows retailers to choose specific categories to engage with a group of customers. In Magento Open-Source, the Catalog Management has been managed optimization with various visual tools whereas the Magento Commerce edition has more than an advanced tool.
Magento Commerce follows the ‘Build and Sell’ pattern so merchants don’t have to wonder about the limits. It has the ability to manage large catalogs, up to 20,000 products. They can use Magento Visual Merchandiser to make simple product sorting in a visual mode, where all products are classified as a tile on a grid.
Using Magento Commerce, you can assign and change multiple categories with different pricing and items. This makes it feasible for B2B sellers who deal with both retail and wholesale customers. You can set different pricing for different products depending on your purposes.
3.3. Marketing
Both Magento Open-Source and Magento Commerce have basic SEO boosting functions such as meta descriptions and custom URLs. There are some unique marketing features in the Commerce edition:
- Advanced customer segmentation
- Targeted content
- Customer loyalty system
Magento Commerce helps content management more simple with Page Builder, which is a drag-and-drop interface that includes instant preview and in-context text editing. Users can add visual effects and schedule content to go live with staging and preview functionality without any difficulties.
Moreover, the Business Intelligence tool permits you to immediately access data from other sources, rewrite it into detailed reports, and derive new marketing insights.
3.4. Support
Magento Open-Source is not supported by dedicated. Technical teams can only take benefit from a massive community, important guide library, and other forums.
Besides, Magento Commerce Edition provides support functions such as a dedicated main account to manage the equipment with Magento, support teams active 24/7 with a real person, permission accesses to the Rapid Deployment Packages from Magento partners that can make launch any solution by the easy way.
Magento Support is not enough for you to manage your online store — the technical team is a must-have element. But in some cases, support is better than nothing. In special situations, the support team of Magento is used to report bugs and ask when the right time to fix the patch will be released. But sometimes are situations when the support is very necessary, helpful, and convenient.
3.5. Extra features comparisons
IV. Which objects fit to use Magento Commerce or Magento Open-Source?
For almost all online store owners, there is not much of a difference between Magento Community Edition and Enterprise Edition except for the cost. All we know is that the cost is the most important element, but we need to think about the worth of the Enterprise for the projects and not just about the cost. Enterprise Edition could help to prevent potential security and invisibilities challenges that are going to emerge in larger companies. So, thousands of worldwide known brands choose to use Enterprise Edition.
About those companies that choose Enterprise Edition, you can list Burger King, Canon Australia, Easy Spirit women’s footwear brand, Marimekkousa, and Old Glory is a music, sports, and entertainment online store. All of those companies need to make sure the online store works smoothly with millions of product varieties and thousands of orders at the same time. That is the reason why they use Enterprise Edition, which has a lot of processes to maintain and scale their companies.
Many popular brands started with Magento Community Edition such as Nike, Burger King, Canon, etc. Therefore, even if you start with Magento Community Edition (or Magento Open-Source), there is always a possibility you will need to switch to the Magento Commerce edition in the future.
If your big company looking forward to expandable easy solutions, Magento Enterprise Edition will be an excellent one. However, if you are a startups company, you should be careful and make a clear with the Magento Community Edition more. No matter what the main things you consider, when comparing the Magento Open-Source vs Magento Commerce is the essentials of your company and your project.