It is often that we start a new project with limited financial funding, and it is hard to choose the areas to allocate funds to. One of the most important choices to make is to decide on the Magento Open Source vs Magento Commerce (previously Magento Enterprise versus Community Edition). The main difference between these two is that the Magento Community is a free open source version while Enterprise Edition is the paid version of Magento. Of course, the difference between these two is huge, but most importantly, a paid version offers hosting and supporting services while an open-source platform does not provide these two, and you will need to find hosting and ensure proper maintenance yourself. Financially, the difference between Magento Community and Enterprise Edition is about $22,000/year.

Magento Commerce Edition

Let’s start with Magento Enterprise Edition first. It goes without saying, for $22 grand paid yearly, you are going to get considerable benefits. To start with, Enterprise Edition includes a variety of business intelligence tools, including customer segmentation, hosting services that make your project available globally, and easy deployment features together with technical maintenance and support. Thus, if you pay those $22 grands, your project is going to be supported not only by your team but also by the Magento team.

The use of the Enterprise Edition has the next features:

• The yearly payment for the Enterprise edition de facto includes implementation costs
• The paid version offers credit card tokenization and advanced payment security that is lacking in the open-source edition.
• Magento Enterprise allows the projects to scale rapidly and provides support for running multiple databases
• Enterprise provides more advanced features and facilitates marketing research.

Who Needs Magento Commerce?

For the majority of online store owners, there is not much of a difference between Magento Community Edition and Enterprise Edition except for the cost. While the cost is an important factor, yet there is a need to think about the value of the Enterprise for the project and not just about the cost of it. Enterprise Edition might prevent potential security and scalability challenges that are going to emerge in larger companies. As a result, many worldwide known brands choose to use Enterprise Edition. Among those companies that choose Enterprise Edition, there is Burger King, Canon Australia, Easy Spirit women’s footwear brand, Marimekkousa, and Old Glory is a music, sports, and entertainment online store. All these companies have a lot of processes to maintain and scale, and therefore they need to make sure the online store works smoothly with millions of product varieties and thousands of orders at the same time.

Read also: Magento support is ending. Is it time for Magento 2 Magento migration?

Magento Open Source Edition

The main idea and the biggest advantage of Magento Community Edition is the ability to be a part of the active community that develops the platform. With a community edition, Magento is open source, and everyone can add something to the platform. With Magento Community, you don’t need to spend any additional costs to pay for the platform, but you are going to need to pay for the hosting yourself as well as to invest in the proper maintenance.

Who Needs Magento Open Source Edition?

Many famous brands initially were launched on Magento Community Edition. For example, such a company as Kitchen Cabinets is among the companies that were started on the basis of Magento Community Edition. As soon as the company grew in size, the company migrated to Magento Commerce.

Another successful company that started on Community Edition is DC Thomson Shop who sells magazine subscriptions, gifts, collectibles, and puzzles. In 2017, the company grew rapidly and needed to migrate Magento Enterprise 2 because they required a more up-to-date solution for their business. Therefore, even if you start with Magento Community Edition, there is always a chance you will need to switch to the Enterprise version in later years.

Bottom Line

If you are a big company looking for easily scalable solutions, look no further than Magento Enterprise Edition. However, if you are a young startup, you might benefit from Magento Community more. Therefore, the main thing to consider when comparing the Magento Community vs Magento Enterprise is the needs of your company and your project. Either way, if you have any questions about the Magento platform, just contact us. SoftLoft is here to help.