When you go to the car dealership, you have a general idea of what car you want. It all depends on cost, how many passengers you may have at any time, the safety standards, and other important factors like mileage. This also applies to a Magento website. There are different versions to choose from, but it will depend on the cost, the amount of traffic on your site, the security, and lifetime of the version. This is your guide to the top 5 differences between Magento Community and Cloud Editions.
What is Magento Community?
The open-sourced version of Magento is supported by a wide variety of third-party developers and applications. It is available as a free download. It is a lightweight solution, and with the proper development team can compete with the larger versions of Magento.
What is Commerce Cloud?
This version is also known as the Enterprise version and is a paid version of Magneto. It is generally aimed at larger companies with higher traffic but provides many benefits to every business. It offers many bonus features and support that the community version does not offer customers.
Cost
Magento Community is a free version and a great option for businesses who are starting out. It will work great for smaller brands who do not need an advanced service. Many solitary developers will use this for mass website creations. It is an opportunity to build websites for multiple clients without purchasing multiple license fees. Magento Enterprise is a premium option, but the pricing is one of the most competitive in the market. Magento 2 Enterprise licensing costs generally range from $22,000-$125,000 based on expected sales revenues. Cloud Edition bundles license costs and AWS-based hosting and ranges from $40,000-$190,000.
Technical Support
Cloud versions of Magento offer access to the Customer Success Manager, Engineering Technical Support, and Quick-Build express Packages. Enterprise is hosted by Magento, and therefore it increases availability and ease of updating. Community, on the other hand, is self-supported and lacks copyright infringement protection.
Enhanced Security
One of the major reasons to choose Enterprise is for the enhanced security. The paid version offers regular bug scanning, built-in penetration testing, and credit card tokenization. The free version of Magento does not comply with PCI DSS security, and therefore requires additional applications to meet compliance. EE, however, is PCI compliant and connected to the Secure Payment Bridge to take care of the process.
Scalability
As mentioned before, Magento Community will do the trick for small brands. It has limited scalability, so you will need to upgrade or migrate to another platform when your business outgrows this solution. For big businesses with hundreds of transactions, Magento Commerce is the better option. It offers a split database performance solution which leads to additional utilities. It uses three separate databases to manage traffic, and therefore does not affect performances and speed.
Capabilities
Open-source lacks some of the basic and helpful native capabilities that Enterprise offers. Community has the most basic features to get stores running, but higher functionality will require Enterprise or a knowledgeable developer who can upgrade your store. Enterprise offers opportunities to implement aspects more easily and potentially without IT assistance. It offers a page builder, B2B functionality, and much more.
Which to Choose?
You must decide which version best suits your business size and goals. Each version has benefits to help you grow your business. Community is effective for small businesses on a budget. Enterprise provides supplemental support and security for high amounts of traffic. We hope this guide to the top 5 differences between Magento Community and Cloud Editions has provided some insight into the best option for you. For more information, contact us!
Check out our recent article on our Guide to Magento Multi-Store and other uses for your Magento website.
