Which Platform: Magento Open Source or Magento Commerce?

The most widely used Magento platform, formerly referred to as Magento Community Edition 1 or 2, now re-named Magento Open Source. This version is free to download, self-hosted, fully customisable and supported by a vast and active community of developers, store owners and marketers. 

For small to medium businesses, Open Source is an excellent choice with which to build and grow an e-commerce business. Not only does it include an incredible array of features as standard, but within the Magento community there exists a world of apps (in Magento parlance, Extensions) that can replicate and sometimes better features that exist in Commerce/Pro.

The danger of paid plans is they sometimes make free versions seem like poor relations. However, having used Magento Open Source for the past three years in a successful, market-leading store, we can honestly say that it lacks for nothing, and can happily cater for business turning over up to $5 million a year before a need to take out a paid Commerce edition might arise. 

Formerly referred to as Magento Enterprise, the Commerce platform builds upon the solid base of Open Source but adds many enhancements that extend various areas of operation. Most significantly, Commerce provides a PaaS – Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) based production, staging, and development environments optimised for Magento – in plain English, Magento hosts the store for you.

Stand-out software enhancements include an inbuilt loyalty program, improved search function, advanced marketing, and more productive order and content management tools. But are any of Commerce’s software features reason enough to take the plunge? Yes and no. While you can narrow the gap between Open Source and Commerce with 3rd party extensions, there is a lot to be said for the simplicity and cohesion of a single system.

The crux of the decision to use Commerce over Open Source could well come down to server costs and associated time savings that the Commerce subscription affords. 

Commerce Pro takes things up a notch, with a bolstered, dedicated hardware setup to provide what Magento call “enterprise-grade reliability and availability”. On top of the hardware upgrade, Commerce Pro also includes the Business Intelligence Essentials analytics package, and a dedicated launch manager to oversee technical account management from sign up to go-live.

Such is the monthly cost of Pro, only large e-commerce stores, possibly blending physical outlets and multi-location warehousing will be able to realise its potential. Arguably, this pre-qualification makes Commerce Pro the easiest of all Magento versions to recommend.