Magento Commerce Vs Magento Community Edition Comparison – The Fight For The Best Selling eCommerce Platform

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Which platform do you use for selling online? Chances are, Magento is among your go-to site for selling stuff on the internet. But Magento is just an umbrella under which two of the most advanced selling platform exists – CE and EE. But the big question is – which is the superior one? Magento Commerce vs Magento Community (or Magento 2 Enterprise vs Community) edition is a showdown between two popular eCommerce gladiators.

In this blog, I have tried to draw a comparison between the two editions of Magento 2 – Magento enterprise or the Magento Commerce Edition and the Basic Magento Community edition highlighting all the features and benefits of each on various scales. By exploring various aspects mentioned in this blog, you can get an exact idea as to which Magento version is the best

The Basics

Remember these 4 points as you will need this throughout the blog:

1. Magento 2 Community Edition (CE) was named into Magento 2 Open Source.
2. The Magento 2 Enterprise Edition (EE) was named into Magento 2 Commerce.
3. Magento Connect and Magento Marketplace are accessible by both the above versions.
4. Both platforms are open source and are a part of the Magento ecosystem

So let’s roll…

Magento Commerce Vs Magento Community Edition Comparison:

With more functionalities and better security features, sellers consider the Magento Commerce edition as superior to the two editions. But the community edition has its own points of dominance.

Magento Commerce is the #1 platform in the 2019 Internet Retailer U.S. Top 1000.

Magento Community version is a paradise for tech-nerdy developers as it provides ample opportunities for you to experiment while building your dream eCommerce website.

So here’s the breakdown of Magento Commerce Vs Magento Community on various parameters:

1. Cost
2. Availability of Magento Cloud
3. Implementation and Installation
4. Product Upload and Management
5. Performance
6. Catalog Management
7. Security
8. Marketing and Targeting
9. Help & support
10. 3rd party extensions compatibility
11. Miscellaneous benefits
12. Conclusion

The first parameter is cost.

Cost:

One of the major factors that sellers consider while choosing their preferred Magento edition is the Cost.

Magento 2 Community Edition or CE is a FREE Open Source platform that allows sellers to customize their store as they wish. The best part of this edition is that you feasibly download the latest version without paying any additional fee.

The maximum annual cost in Magento Open-Source edition comes around:

Hosting cost = $200 per month x 12 = $2400
Developer cost- $40 per hour = 40 x 20x 12 = $4800 (considering 20 hours of monthly work)
Total = $7200 is the approximate cost.

Whereas

Magento 2 Commerce or the Enterprise Edition is a paid version. You can get all the advanced functionalities while being charged with the following:

1. The Implementation cost
2. Hosting Cost
3. License Cost

In simple words, the total cost of selling with Magento 2 Commerce version is:

Magento 2 EE Pricing = Revenue X License Cost X Percentage

 The Magento Commerce Edition is based on the revenue model.

This also means your cost varies as per your overall revenue. The more your annual gross revenue is, the higher you have to pay.

How much does the license cost for the Magento Enterprise version?

The license varies as per the range of your sales:
For example, if your revenue is less than 1 million then the license is charged around $22,000
Similarly, if your range is between 1 million to 10 million then the license is $125,000.

Small or medium-scale online merchants usually have the preference for Magento 2 Community Edition over Magento 2 Commerce Edition – because of its cost. The license and the upfront cost of building and managing the store on Commerce edition is not ideal for new sellers.

So, in terms of cost, the point goes to the Magento community (Opensource) version.

Learn more about the cost of selling with Magento Enterprise and Community. 

Now let’s move to the 2nd parameter – i.e. cloud.

Availability of Magento Cloud:

The Enterprise edition provides the availability of Magento Commerce Cloud – a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) which is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.

Due to this feature, you can easily get rid of all the hosting and deployment issues in your Magento 2 store.

The Magento Cloud feature also keeps a check of Multitenancy, thus simplifying the task of online sellers.

Unfortunately, Magento Community merchants, on the other hand, could not avail of the benefits of the Magento cloud.

If you are dealing with a large product catalog, you can benefit from the Magento cloud by choosing the Magento Enterprise version. But for a small scale merchant, it is not advisable as the cost is too high.

This simply means that the cloud management tools make the process of deployment, testing, promoting and operating multiple environments rapid, easy and manageable at the same time. Since this feature is only available in EE, this makes the enterprise edition superior under this category.

And this round goes to Magento Commerce!!

Implementation and Installation:

The implementation time frame of the Community edition is lesser than the Commerce edition.

It takes around 6-8 weeks for the complete installation and setup your eStore on Magento Community edition whereas for Magento Commerce the time frame exceeds to around 14-16 weeks.

The implementation cost of the Commerce version is greater than $50k whereas for the community version it varies with the number of external extensions and it ranges between $10-60k.

There is also an ulterior angle of looking to the implementation process – The Community merchants have the freedom to make any number of customization without being held back. This means that Community sellers can increase or decrease the overall time frame of installation as per the need of the hour. But the Enterprise merchants are bound to spend a minimum of 14-16 weeks before getting a fully functional up and running website.

If you are looking to quickly set up your shop and start selling, then the Community edition is the right fit for you.

And this is definitely a huge point for Magento Community and they again took the lead!! 

Now, let’s ascend to product upload and management:

Product Upload and Management:

The product upload and the management process in Commerce edition are way better, faster, and easier than the community edition.

In Magento CE users/sellers have to manually list their product one at a time. It is really a hefty task to set up and upload products. Moreover, if you wish to list products in bulk, then you need to install an external extension (or integration) for it.

But, there is good news for Magento Commerce sellers. Magento has eliminated this manual process by introducing dynamic listing. Through this efficient feature the related, upsell, and cross-sell products are automatically associated in bulk, making it easier for you to manage products.

You can also schedule import and export of products on a daily, weekly or monthly basis in Magento Commerce edition. With this feature the files to be imported or exported can be located on local Magento servers, or on remote FTP servers.

This simply means that Magento commerce (enterprise) is the efficient version of the two. It has simplified the upload and management of any number of products in bulk without any external extensions.

And we have a clear winner for this round ie: the Magento Commerce.

Performance:

The Community edition of Magento is believed to be faster than the Enterprise Edition but it is just a speculation. The reason why the speed difference is observed is that merchants using the community version are generally small or medium scale merchants with lesser SKU and products.

But the surprising features of EE supports multiple databases simultaneously thus speeding up the overall performance of the website.

The deployment process is also speeded up with the help of the new Enterprise Cloud for EE.

Full Page Caching available in Magento Community edition making the shopping experience more enhanced.

The speed of the checkout process in EE is <1.9 seconds per each step as compared to Magento Open Source.

Looking at the bigger picture the overall performance of the enterprise edition surpasses the community in almost each and every aspect.

The tables have turned and Magento Commerce is now in the lead.

Catalog Management:

The Catalog Management in Magento Community version is simplified with additional various visual tools features.

Magento 2 Commerce Edition comes with advanced catalog management which is beneficial from the perspective of a Magento seller.

Choose what to display and to whom. The catalog permission feature allows sellers to choose the specific categories to display to a group of customers. In short, you can create custom catalogs in EE and control what your customers sees and explores.

The Commerce version follows the ‘Build and Sell’ pattern without worrying about the limits. The EE version can manage large catalogs (20,000 products and up) that are not available in the basic community version of Magento.

The Commerce edition also dominates the Community version with the introduction of the unavailability of PCI compliance or credit card tokenization, the security of the Magento Community version is not as secure as the Visual Merchandiser feature which is available from 2.3 versions and beyond. By using the Magento Visual Merchandiser, you can enjoy the simplified sorting of products in a visual mode where all your products are listed as a tile on a grid. The same tools are available in each mode and you can use the buttons in the upper-right corner to toggle between each type of display.

In the Magento Commerce version, you can assign various categories with different pricing and items in them. This makes it feasible for B2B sellers who deal with both retail and wholesale customers as well. You can set different pricing for different items depending upon your target audience.

It simply means that the product and catalog management in EE is way simplified than the community edition where you have to do all these manually.

We do have a clear winner for this round – the Magento enterprise (Magento commerce).

Security:

With the introduction of a new version usually, the security issues are updated and the same is the case with the Magento CE and EE.

The Magento Commerce edition has advanced security patches making it a much stable and secure version of the two.

Due to the unavailability of PCI compliance or credit card tokenization, the security of the Magento Community version is not as secure as the Magento Commerce Edition.

The PA-DSS certified payment bridge is ONLY available in the EE version making your payments secure on both ends.

Due to dedicated technical support, any security threat occurring in your Magento 2 shop is easily resolved in the Magento Commerce version.

This means that if you opt for the Magento Community version you have to keep your eyes wide open all the time and be ready to deal with any sort of ups and downs. Unlike in the Commerce version, just sit back and relax while all your security threats are eliminated before you can even notice.

Now you can notice the domination as the Community edition is now heading towards a clear win in this Magento Community vs Magento Commerce.

Marketing and Targeting:

The Marketing and targeting features in the Commerce edition are way superior to that of the basic community version.

Magento has introduced multiple and analytics features in the EE version which not only lets you sell but sell better with minimized efforts.

With GEO targeting feature in EE, you can reach a much-refined audience. Increase your ROI by showcasing your products to the right audience based on their geographic locations.

You also have the luxury to present different content or advertisements to different consumers. This is a smart way of increasing your return of investment with personalized and targeted advertisements.

Features like advanced content staging, customer segmentation, targeted content, and shopping cart reminder notifications are added in the EE version making it a better platform to sell.

Filtering and searching the products is made easier with Commerce edition.

With the help of the Elastic search feature, your customers can easily track and locate their products.

This means that the community version allows you to sell but the Commerce version allows you to sell Better with increased ROI.

By winning this round, Magento commerce has created a huge margin and they are now ascending towards victory in Magento Commerce vs Magento Community.

Magento Community needs help to survive in this, so lets move to help and support.

Help & Support:

The community version of Magento does not provide any additional support and technical support. But that’s not the case with the commerce edition as you get 24×7 support from Magento itself which deals with all your technical and non-tech errors.

This is really a huge setback for the basic community edition as you are totally responsible for any error occurring in the functionality of the Magento CE.

This problem is eliminated in the Magento Commerce version as you get a dedicated account manager associated with you. Not only this, after buying the Magento Commerce Edition, you are entitled to efficient technical 24×7 support.

And don’t worry if you get stuck in an unfavorable situation in CE. You can always get help from any of the third-party developers.

This simply means that if you are a small scale seller who is just exploring the platform then it’s fine to ignore the additional support and stick to the community version. But if you are a large scale seller with a stable business, then risking with Magento Commerce will do no good. Opting the 24×7 support of the community version will be the best fit for you.

Round after round but the result is almost the same every time. 

3rd party extensions compatibility:

The Enterprise edition falls short under this category as the community edition is more compatible with any number of third party extensions as per the need of the sellers.

As discussed above, due to its feasible customization abilities, the Magento Community version is a paradise for tech-nerdy developers.

In the community edition, you can use any number of highly customized extensions.

If you are looking to design and manage your shop as per your requirements and keep altering it with time and demands, then the community edition is the right fit for you. Doing the same in the Community edition will cost you a lot and is not ideal.

Here your actions are not bound and you can experiment while building your dream eCommerce website.

That’s a huge comeback for Magento community as they just delivered a perfect comeback in this.

I believe we have covered all the major criteria of comparison between the Magento Commerce Vs Magento Community Edition.

Now, let’s move to the miscellaneous benefits of Magento Commerce over Magento Community version

Miscellaneous benefits:

The Magento Commerce version supersedes the Community version under the following features:

• Upgraded tax calculation functionality
• Simplified Database management
• Automated email marketing reminders
• Comprehensive scalability enhancements
• Automated Order management
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Multiple payment options
• Segmentation with targeted offers
• Minimum advertised price,
• Return management authorization
• Price and promotion permission
• Enhanced catalog and CMS
• Gift Cards
• Customer loyalty
• Assisted shopping
• Checkout experience
• And much more

Here is a side by side comparison of features of Magento 2 Enterprise vs Community Edition.

In case I missed out on anything, comment below.

Conclusion:

The Magento Community Edition Vs Enterprise Edition debate can be decided on the basis of the sellers’ needs.

There’s not a single inch of the doubt to the fact that Magento Community edition has superior features and advanced functionalities.

But, is that enough?

The better selling platform is the one that fits your needs and suits your budget as well.

Final Words:

Magento Commerce is a better fit for a large scale or a stable merchant with a strong financial background.

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Here are 8 reasons why to choose Magento Commerce for large scale businesses.

But for a small scale or a medium scale merchant looking to set foot in today’s competitive eCommerce market, the fees of the Commerce version is too much to manage.

You can start small with Magento Community and after attaining stability can switch it to Magento Commerce (Enterprise) version for a better experience.

Choose Wisely!!

If you are still doubtful about choosing the right version of Magento, we can help you come to conclusion. For Free Website Survey and Consultation.