Magento Community vs Enterprise: Selecting the Right Version for You

Have you ever had to make a choice? A bunch of times, we guess. It ruins all the fun, being responsible for your own business and income especially. Besides, this process is quite complicated, crucial and even the littles miscalculation results in collapse. But slow down and don’t give up, Cart2Cart was called upon to give you a hand. Let’s complete one of the biggest challenges that eStore’s owners bump into when deciding which platform to choose to go with. In this article, we’re going to cover the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce usage. What are you really paying for when going with Adobe Commerce? Is its enhanced functionality essential for your business? How are you supposed to get by on the Open Source options? Is that even possible? And are Adobe Commerce's premium service really worth whatever it costs? Stay tuned, it’s time for a showdown.

To Save or Not to Save?

In the skiing metaphor, better once to see, than a hundred times to hear. Cart2Cart - your fine fellow and good counselor - have set up infographics for you not to pass without reply any question.

No one can decide between these two carts which of them fits you better and meets your demands to the limit. Nobody but you. First of all, you should assess how daring goals and ambitious expansion plans you have, what you hope to gain from all of this? If you hold in mind a great deal, be ready to invest today and reap the benefits in the future. Well, that’s - not rush to judgment. We’d instead analyze each pro and con step-by-step to delve in and get to the point of truth. Let’s get started.

Magento Open Source: Hands Off Your Budget

Magento Open Source is a free, open source eCommerce platform with public access. Without paying any money, everyone can download and use this platform to build an online store on. It is trusted by hundreds of thousands of loyal online store owners all over the world due to serving as a primary eCommerce tool. This edition is open-source, which means, that you can add changes and modify it, to cover own needs and take such advantages:

Profitableness;
Steady upgrades;
Visitors check out;
Registered clients;
Swift import of products;
A wide range of extensions to ramp up your site's functionality; For further customization options, explore our customized migration guide.
Renovated tech stack;
Automated code merge;
Various gateway;
Programmed testing;
Responsive design;
Video & marketing tools integration;
Customizable & mobile-friendly admin dashboard.

It’s supposed to be a right choice for someone who maintains a small to medium business, developers, tech-savvy merchants and for ones, who would like to experiment in building an eShop.

Insurance or margin for error, whatever you name it, but the fact is, with Magento Open Source you lose nothing because the only charge you have to pay for comes from the domain name, web hosting and a qualified Magento programmer (if necessary). To be honest, hardly anyone wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars if there’s a free alternative. But this price doesn’t appear out of thin air, so you have to bear in mind that Adobe Commerce includes a considerable number of aspects that worth money when Magento Open Source is deprived of them.

Adobe Commerce: No Money Down - No Biggest Score

Adobe Commerce is one of the best open source B2B eCommerce platforms, an exclusive premium paid version, mostly preferred by medium to large and large to enterprise business. Does Adobe Commerce's price tag indeed come with added value, a heavy load of enterprise-level features and high-end functionalities? Without questions!

How much is Adobe Commerce? At last check, the Adobe Commerce premium version’s price ranges from approximately $24,000 to over $190,000 per year, based on revenue. That may seem a little steep compared to its open-source counterpart, which is $0. But like most things in life, you do get what you pay for.

The list of Adobe Commerce top enterprise features involves:

Geo-targeting;
Ability managing large catalogs (20,000 products and up) very well;
Progressive ACL;
Automatic Return Management Authorization system;
PCI Secure Payment Bridge compliance;
MAP pricing;
Cloud hosting;
24/7 technical Magento support, as well as a dedicated account manager;
Dynamic visual merchandiser: drag & drop UI and sorting rules for easily organizing your product category pages by variables of your choice (best/newest products, by color, etc.);
Enhanced scalability;
Customer segmentation and targeted promotion features: put your mind to your customers' previous purchases and spheres of interest;
Full-page caching;
Increased customer loyalty and promotion: reward programs, virtual/physical gift cards, private sales with the ‘Invite a Friend’ option;
Built-in SORL search;
Extended UX features: multiple wish lists, gift registry, enhanced search, and private sales;
Better page loading times: the speed of the checkout process in EE is significantly faster per each step as compared to Magento Open Source;
B2B features: create custom catalogs and multiple payment options, set up multiple buyers, create several company accounts, etc.;
Content staging and merging;
Improved security out-of-the-box: PA-DSS payment bridge, credit card tokenization;
Automated email marketing reminders;
Separate databases for Product data, Checkout, Order Management: a major performance boost
Robust Rollback and Backup options;
Upgraded tax calculation functionality.

Adobe Commerce was designed for those, whose sites demand special bells and whistles to reach goals for the rapid growth and scalability. It makes sense if you decide on entering additionals markets and countries. Or if you’re not happy with where you are or what you’ve got and would like to ramp up and customize your site's current functionality at some point. In case your expansion plans match with these options, switch to Adobe Commerce immediately. But note a few aspects mentioned below:

Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce share a core codebase, but Adobe Commerce includes exclusive modules and features;
Upgrading your store will be a significant project, but not necessarily a complete redesign;
While many themes and templates are compatible, some from Magento Open Source may not integrate seamlessly into Adobe Commerce without modification due to the different feature sets.

Seems to be too high a cost and sounds frightening? Don’t jump to conclusion. Adobe Commerce is explicitly made for sites with large volumes of traffic and sales. It also provides you with the chance to host separate parts of your website on different servers. Adobe Commerce's arsenal of high-end functionality comprises customer segmentation with targeted offerings, minimum advertised price, return management authorization, price and promotion permission, an enhanced catalog and content management system, among a multitude of features. Let’s look deeper, there are still many fascinating things ahead!

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce: Birds of a Feather

You may be surprised, but while being fundamentally different, the two editions have something in common. Their similarities can be summarized in the following peculiarities:

First of all, applying either the Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce, you will get the advantage of the Adobe Commerce Marketplace – the Magento Extension marketplace, where there’s the whole variety of apps is in public access.
Both of them are open-source, which means the same core features and essential functions released. These versions belong to the same Magento ecosystem.
Last but not least, integration with different databases available, due to the webservers API, feel free to use.

As you can see, Adobe Commerce platform picked up only milestones of its competitor, but even these basic features are significant when choosing the sales panel to go for.

The Quest for New Ideal: Right This Way

The premium edition adds more values to online merchants and their customers, making a difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce. Not to mouth empty words, look through the mean values for both versions. Magento Open Source is definitely out of Adobe Commerce's league, particularly when it comes about meeting your eStore complex demands and selling capabilities.

#Support

Feeling lonely with all these tech concerns? Not anymore. Adobe Commerce guarantees 24/7 technical support, which means certified developers and experts will resolve all technical problems that may occur with your eStore. With this great resource which will guide your business in getting the most of the Magento, you'll definitely achieve your daring aims. Magento Open Source has no official support. For similar comprehensive assistance during your migration, consider our Ultimate Data Migration Service.

Above all, with Adobe Commerce you’re “armed” with dedicated account manager form Magento team to help you whenever you ask for assistance. The merchants also can be sure about their security support. The group of specialist scan the platform often with and enhance Magento core security with special diagnostic tools. It’s used for a more in-depth analysis of your website’s different aspects such as crucial database tables, installed extensions, and modified core files. Such supervision provides the best environment to work in.

#Search, Marketing and Merchandising

One more significant difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce features, we’re going to describe, benefit your customers and your company as well.

The premium edition of Magento uses upgraded content staging, targeted content, sophisticated attribute based customer segmentation, abandoned cart reminder emails and many more elements for business marketing, merchandising, and searching.

Content Staging and Preview enables merchants to complete some challenges without hiring Magento developers. Elastic Search is beneficial to locate the product clients are searching quickly. In Adobe Commerce it is easy for store owners to view, edit, create multiple invoices and many other options to independently process order from the very beginning until it’s completed. Straight from the Admin panel you can update products, prices, and coupons in customers’ shopping carts and wish lists, can create customizable emails for account updates, password resets, send email notifications and RSS feeds with order status at ease. Take advantage of the filters (like color, price, type, size) to sort your products and narrow down results as you wish.

Remember, there’s only one choice: give a client what he wants or see an image of him going away. When it comes to the difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, it’s much more effortless to let customers do a fantastic shopping, they have never experienced before. If you're looking for the solution to grow shortly and gain heavy website traffic, then site functionality, significant customizations, security, and product enhancements will be essential to bottom line eCommerce goals. Adobe Commerce is designed for scalability if you're supposing high website traffic since its underhand code base is better drafted to implement high-end development. Enterprise edition features an accelerated rendering of admin product, and also customer and order management views for faster access to information.

Is this how you want to play? Migrate from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce and get advantages of accurate, swift and secure migration in no time. Remember: changes are leading new achievements!

Closing Remarks

Now you’re facing challenges Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce, try to answer a straightforward question: what are you’re working to accomplish? It’s not about which platform choose to run the business, it’s about how lucrative business you expect to hold in the result. Make no mistake, believing that you don’t have many products, so Magento Open Source will work for you. Most of them are designed as configurable ones and have many attributes? Your approved customers need to be able to create wish lists, gift registries, buy gift cards and take advantage of non-standard payment forms (cash in hand, check & purchase orders)? Detailed reporting and advanced inventory management are inherent in your workflow? Cheers, you should perform an upgrade from Magento Open Source to Adobe Commerce right now! For a comprehensive plan, utilize our Magento Adobe Commerce Migration Checklist. And Cart2Cart is the one, that can be of great help in it. Start Free Demo to leave an unprofitable, small and boring business behind and be trendy. With our service, your brand new store will deliver to buyers the most enjoyable experience ever. Good luck and be ready to resounding success.

Monthly Update – September 2025

As we approach the final quarter of 2025, the conversation around Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce continues to evolve, with a strong emphasis on composable commerce architectures. This modern approach allows businesses to 'compose' their e-commerce stack using best-of-breed services for various functionalities, rather than relying on a single, monolithic platform. For both Magento Open Source users seeking enhanced flexibility and Adobe Commerce clients aiming for ultimate scalability, adopting a headless strategy is paramount.

Headless commerce decouples the frontend presentation layer from the backend e-commerce logic, enabling greater agility in design, faster content delivery, and seamless integration with emerging technologies. Businesses can leverage the powerful backend capabilities of Magento or Adobe Commerce while offering highly customized, engaging experiences across multiple touchpoints, from web and mobile to IoT devices. This not only optimizes performance but also future-proofs the digital storefront, allowing for rapid adaptation to market shifts and customer expectations. Embracing composable commerce ensures that your platform can grow dynamically with your business needs without being constrained by traditional architecture.

For more details, explore our FAQ section or schedule a call with a migration expert.