Differences between Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce and Magento Cloud

[jeremy_flight]

Hi

I'm new to Magento but an experienced PHP developer. I can't find anything on the website that explains the differences (functional, price etc.) between Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce and Magento Cloud.

I want to build eCommerce sites for clients which we will host on our own server. The client will maintain their product catalogue and manage orders through the Magento admin system; we will create a customised theme (or adapt an existing theme) for their store front and configure the relevant eCommerce functionality.

Which version of Magento suits what I'm after?  Where are the details of that particular version on the Magento website?

Thanks!

[Robert Rand · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeremy,

Welcome to the Magento Community!

The majority of Magento sites are built on Magento Open Source, the free version of Magento. 

Typically, more established merchants with millions of dollars in annual online revenue consider Magento Commerce or merchants that expect to reach that kind of success quickly, such as brands with significant offline revenue that they anticipate will follow them online. The Commerce version comes with an annual license fee that starts in the $20k+++ range. To justify the expense, you have to have enough traffic / volume to benefit from its features. 

Many of the features that come with Magento Commerce can be added to Magento Open Source with Extensions, so instead of paying for the kitchen sink with Magento Commerce, most smaller merchants tend to opt to get what they need through extensions piecemeal with Magento Open Source.

Here are some key features that come with Magento Commerce that don't come with Magento Open Source off-the-shelf:

- Customer Segmentation, Targeted Promotions & Merchandising

- Customer Attribute Management

- Visual Merchandizer

- Dynamic Rule-Based Product Relations

- Automated Email Marketing Reminder

- Category View and Purchase Permissions per Customer Group (Limited Catalog Access)

- Rewards Points / Loyalty Program

- Store Credits

- Multiple Wish Lists

- Gift Registry

- Gift Cards

- Private Sales

- Add to Cart by SKU

- RMA

- etc.

Magento Commerce also has more advanced indexing and other benefits for large traffic volumes.

There's also a B2B version of Magento Commerce available for wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors, and other business to business sellers.

Magento Cloud is, in essence, a hosting option for Magento Commerce. You can also choose to host more cost-effectively on Magento optimized dedicated servers or with a team that provides fully-managed AWS cloud servers for Magento.

Best of luck!

[mark_woodrow]

So for the vast majority of users, Magento Open Source is sufficient, right?

[Robert Rand]

Correct. 

To use Commerce Cloud, they have to have the budget to cover the license, and to be sold on it, they'll want to establish what value they're getting above and beyond the hundreds of thousands of Magento Open Source (Magento Community) website out there. Only a small percentage of businesses will, therefore, choose the paid license. 

However, folks using Magento Open Source are doing quite well overall, and have lots of flexibility to build and grow their websites.

[rivona]

Hi There

I'm in the process of moving to Magento 2 Commerce from Magento 1 Community and i wanted to find out - how much does it typically cost a developing company to do this? We are currently hosted with developers that are going to handle the migration for us and apart from the license fee, what is the average cost range?

Thank you for your help!

[olhaanurinc22e]

If you want to know the difference between Magento versions, check this video comparing all three versions of Magento: https://youtu.be/E4iaIQevk8E