9 February 2020

Which Magento edition do I pick?

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Hussey Coding blog.

Not to long ago we posed a blog all about why you should choose Magento for all of your eCommerce needs and mentioned that we would be writing a whole other blog specifically looking into the different types of Magento that are on offer to you, this is that blog.

In this blog we will be looking at the 3 different types of Magento available to you
- Community Edition (M1) Open source (M2)
- Enterprise Edition (M1) Commerce (M2)
- Commerce Cloud (M2 only)


This is the free version of Magento that’s 100% free that you can host on your own server, for free, did I mention it is free? Well, if I didn’t then listen up, Community and Open source editions are both FREE!
Why is this such a huge deal? Well, unless you are developing your site yourself then you are going to need a developer or development team to do it for you, a team like Hussey Coding for example, and unfortunately development teams aren't free so the fact that Magento Community / Open source is, is a huge financial relief for anyone new to the online retail environment.

But don’t be put off by the fact that it’s free, thinking that it’s just there to force you to upgrade to Enterprise / Commerce later, because it’s not!
You and your business can easily thrive using this version of Magento for years. If you have aspirations to rival companies like Amazon then you are really going to want to upgrade at some point, otherwise you can easily keep using Community / Open source for years!
But before we go any further I just want to make sure there is no misunderstanding here, there will be a cost involved if you are hiring a team or individual to set up your store but access to community / open source and all that it offers comes FREE.

What makes it so amazing is that it’s fully customizable from the get go, giving you the freedom you need to create the store that’s right for you, it’s incredible versatility means that as your business grows Magento is able to grow and expand with you at the same pace as your business.

Out of the box you will have access to a whole host of customizable options like site management, marketing tools, product and catalogue management, checkout, payment and shipping management, customer and order management systems, custom themes and much, much more.
This is all made much simpler when also utilising the Magento Market place (https://marketplace.magento.com/) giving you access to extensions of all sorts like themes, customer support, marketing and site optimization.

Now this can still all seem massively overwhelming but don’t worry you are not alone in this! Not only will you have your development team behind you and access to the Marketplace but you will also become part of the Magento Community (https://community.magento.com/).
Magento boasts in having the largest, interactive and best community of developers, shop owners and implementation partners in the world, take a moment to let that sink in, THE WORLD!
They are all there to help each other and you to build, develop and enhance the Magento eCommerce experience and you are welcome to read, suggest, ask, contribute and just generally interact as much or as little as you would like.

Magento Community / Open Source is the perfect place to begin your eCommerce adventure. As always, I would like to point out that official support for M1 is ending in June 2020, so if you are looking to build a new store from scratch then go with M2 as this will save you later down the line.
If you currently own an M1 store then our recommendation to you would be to at least look into transferring to an M2 store sooner rather than later. Your development team will be able to handle all of this for you but if you don’t have one or need some extra help then look no further than developerconnection.co.uk, the new Magento project marketplace designed to help you find the perfect developer or development team for any and all of your Magento needs.



So if community / Open source is such a good deal that allows you to thrive for years what is the point of the Enterprise / Commerce edition?
Basically it takes everything from community / open source and makes it better, faster, stronger and adds some new abilities to your already impressive arsenal.

It is designed for larger, fast growing businesses that need premium service support in their day to day running. Unlike Community / Open source, you are going to need to buy this edition so below is a chart that we found helpful by the GRAYBOX blog, click on this link to read their article on Magento pricing (https://www.grayboxpdx.com/blog/post/how-much-does-magento-2-cost)


Magento 2 Cost Comparison Table









We will go into Enterprise cloud in more detail later on but basically what this chart is telling you is that the more your company makes in sales the higher band you will be on and the more you will need to pay out, do bare in mind that this is not a one off cost either, this is an annual cost.
It's also important to remember that these are not definite figures, there is some wiggle room here based on your business and some other factors.

So how do you find out how much it will cost you? Before you fully commit to Enterprise / Commerce or Cloud editions, there will be a number of conversations that you will have with Magento talking over various things that will include but not be exclusive to, your annual licence fee and once everyone is happy to go ahead you'll be given the keys to the kingdom.

But is it worth it? What does Enterprise / Commerce offer that Community / Open source doesn't? First off you will have access to Magento's technical team 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help you with what ever you need help with, they are fast in responding and effective in resolving all types of issues, which is what everyone wants. The other benefits of going premium are listed below and are exclusive to Enterprise / Commerce edition.

 - Advanced Promotion Management
 - Customer Segmentation & Personalization
 - Content Staging
 - Automated Product Relations
 - Visual Merchandiser
 - Database Sharding
 - Page Hierarchy and History
 - Loyalty Program
 - Gift Cards
 - Store Credit
 - Advanced Reporting
 - Bluefoot CMS Editor / Page Builder
 - Blackfire
 - Return Management
 - Admin Logger
 - Private Sales

This list was taken from a post by MAGEBIT, who goes into a little more detail as to what these extra features do, to read that article please follow this link (https://medium.com/magebit/magento-2-open-source-vs-commerce-af18da2e72e3)



Commerce cloud is everything that regular commerce is with a few extras, and rightly so since you are paying quite a bit more again for the cloud access.
However it is important to note that Commerce Cloud is exclusive to M2 stores and M1 owners will not have access to this, making it another great reason to make the M2 move.

The biggest feature to look at with this Magento 2 exclusive is that Magento will be hosting your site as part of the package on their own servers.
If you need an all in one cloud solution that is tailor made for your Magento store with all the best security, simple deployment and some updates automatically being installed, then this is the route for you. As a nice little incentive, new Commerce cloud clients are able to pay in monthly instalments to help spread the cost of the hefty price tag that comes with this edition.

Thank you for your time today, as always we really appreciate your support, jump on down to the comments below to let us know what your thoughts are, do you have an M1 or M2 store? have you or are you in the process of migrating your store to M2? What advice would you give to those thinking about it?
Don't forget that you can find developers to not only migrate your store but for all of your Magento project needs over at Developer Connection.
Until next time, stay safe and have a great day.

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