The last ten years was a period of exponential growth for Magento. It was successful in gaining the favour of around 32% of top 100,000 websites that chose it for developing their ecommerce platform! Bear this in mind that the statistical data that you just read, is over a year old!
Magento is considered as the most affordable, flexible and dominating ecommerce development platform in the digital domain. It is offered in two editions:
- The Open Source Edition which was formerly known as Magento Community. It is a free version of the platform, but it offers a lot of feature extensions that one can add-on to the existing platform as they go and as per their needs.
- The Commerce Edition which was formerly known as the Enterprise/Cloud Edition. It is suitable for large corporations that offer the ideal environment for the platform to show its capabilities in full scale!
Magento Open Source Edition
It is the free version of the platform which saw its beginning back in the year 2008. It is a freeware, which anyone can download over the internet. It is an open source development platform that meant one can easily make the necessary adjustments in the core code of the software as per their unique business/curiosity needs! Magento doesn’t lock the user to a specific pre-configured roadmap that is the general approach of a typical development software that follows the SaaS model!
Magento Enterprise Development Edition
Magento Enterprise Development platform is the paid/premium version of the Open Source edition of the same. It is built using the same code that runs the Open Source Edition of Magento. It is the go-to e-Commerce development platform that big corporations use to handle huge amounts of traffic, extensive/ever-expanding catalogues of products, support their global presence and streamline complex core business processes.
The Enterprise Edition of Magento, among many other premium features, offers the following to its users:
- Magento Dedicated Account Management Tool
- Magento Technical Support Tool
Features of Magento Open Source and Enterprise Development at a glance
A few features are shared by both editions of Magento. However, some advanced features are only made available in Magento Enterprise Development. Let’s take a look:
Magento Open Source
- License – Free
- Responsive e-Commerce website – Check!
- Intelligent Promotions Engine / Product & Catalog Management tool – Check!
- Management tool for Checkout/Payment/Shipping & Order Management – Check!
- Admin panel for website management – Check!
Magento Enterprise Development Platform
- License – Free
- Responsive e-Commerce website – Check!
- Intelligent Promotions Engine / Product & Catalog Management tool – Check!
- Management tool for Checkout/Payment/Shipping & Order Management – Check!
- Admin panel for website management – Check!
- ElasticSearch tool – check!
- Bluefoot CMS – check!
- Magento Order Management tool – check!
- Content Staging & Preview tool – check!
- Magento Shipping management with real-time tracking – check!
Which is the best?
Long story short – it depends on the needs and long-term goals of the business! What are the specifics of your business? What digital marketing strategy have you put in place to spread the word about your venture? Ask yourself these questions and the answer that will follow will help you choose the version of Magento that will suit your business the best! On top of that, every business is unique in terms of its core principles. Make sure you do enough market research followed by surveying your TA before you choose your e-Commerce development platform!
