Comparing Magento 2 Open Source and Commerce: How to make the right choice.
What is Magento Open Source
Available as a free download, Magento Open Source is a platform which allows to launch a unique online e-commerce store from the ground up. Being perfect for small-scale entrepreneurs, this platform doesn’t request investing in license.
Magento Open Source allows its clients to meet all their specific needs, as it is more than easy to set up and configure through different extensions and adjustments – in their absence, an ordinary user will face difficulties trying to make different modifications or changes.
In order to successfully deal with integration of the specific modules, e-business owners choose to work with the companies and organizations, specialized in Magento.
This platform is suitable for the small store purposes, providing the clients with opportunities to maximize productivity by using Magento extensions.
What is Magento Commerce
Apart from the previous Magento eCommerce platform, Magento Commerce is not free and has a license fee. Magento Commerce is aimed at larger organisations with bigger requirements –ensuring an optimal customer experience, among its features and benefits are technical support with customization and setup, addressing challenges and overall usage.
Comparing Magento Open Source and Commerce Editions
1. Productivity
The difference in performance between Magento Open Source and Commerce is that the first platform offers a better productivity and works faster on small-scale stores with fewer resources, while Commerce is more efficient working on websites with big amounts of traffic and products.
If you want to increase the level of productivity, it is better to use third party extensions for both editions (Magedia deals with this as well).
2. Capability
Whereas both Magento Open Source and Commerce are built on Magento, it means they have the same functions. However, as the Commerce edition is a paid platform, it has specific additional functionalities such as, return management authorization, promotion permission, content management system, extended catalog and call center software.
Among the advantages of Magento Commerce are the provision of BI dashboards and different marketing instruments, that raise the productivity of the B2B companies, such as content staging & preview, catalog management, customer service, visual merchandising and others. Many of them can be carried out using custom development and extensions into open source edition.
3. Reporting and Advanced Analytics
Only Magento 2 Commerce edition provides the Advance Analytics and Reporting option. This increases company’s efficiency by providing high number of customers, BI dashboards, visual report builders and preliminary set sales.
According to your company’s business needs flexible reports and individual dashboards are created based on your specific customer data, products and orders.
Apart from Magento 2 Open Source, Commerce edition helps you to monitor all products in your store by having extra reports, such as customer segments & wish lists, as well as private sales.
4. Marketing features
The distinction between the Magento Open Source and Commerce editions is style of product marketing – the first platform provides some functions to increase your store’s SEO such as setting headings, URLs and meta tags. Commerce edition grants various advanced functions, e.g. targeted content, emails reminding about abandoned basket, and complex attribute-based customer segmentation.
Let’s put it in a nutshell
In conclusion, when choosing between Magento Commerce and Open Source you should take into account your business’s needs, future plans, assets and specificity in general. These platforms have various distinctive features that should be carefully considered in order to achieve better results.
