What's the difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce?

Magento is a powerful e-commerce platform that has been owned by Adobe since 2018. Two versions exist, both running on the same technical foundation.

• Magento Open Source is the free, open-source variant. You only pay for hosting, development, and any extensions. This version runs on thousands of successful webshops worldwide and offers all the functionality most businesses need.

• Adobe Commerce is the paid enterprise version where you pay license fees based on your annual revenue. This investment provides access to additional functionalities, direct support from Adobe, and deeper integrations with the Adobe ecosystem.

Both platforms have been leaders in the prestigious Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce for years. In 2025, both Open Source and Commerce are excellent choices, each for their own target audience.

Here's the good news. Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce share the same powerful technical foundation. Managing products, processing orders, running multiple websites from one installation, setting intelligent price rules, advanced inventory control... It's all in both versions.

The flexibility is identical too. You can seamlessly integrate both platforms via APIs with ERP systems, CRM packages, or marketing tools. You're building on the same solid foundation, regardless of your choice.

This shared foundation also means that a potential migration from Open Source to Commerce is relatively straightforward. Your investment in Open Source isn't a dead end, but a logical first step that can grow later if your business requires it.

Open Source isn't a "basic version" or compromise. It's a full-fledged, professional e-commerce platform with which you build webshops that scale effortlessly and offer all the functionality most businesses need. In fact, for many organizations, Open Source is simply the smartest investment.

You choose Open Source when...

• You want complete control and flexibility. With Open Source, you fully determine how your platform looks and works. No license terms restricting you, no mandatory updates at inconvenient times. You choose when you do what.

• You have a strong development team or reliable partner. Without direct Adobe support, you depend on your own expertise or your partner. Working with specialists like PHPro? Then you have the same quality and certainty as with Commerce, at lower total costs.

• You prefer investing in growth rather than licenses. Those tens of thousands of euros per year in license fees? With Open Source, you can invest those in marketing, new markets, or product innovation. For growing businesses, that can make the difference.

• Standard features suffice for your marketing. If you mainly focus on good products, strong content, and efficient SEO and SEA campaigns, then Open Source offers everything you need. A well-optimized webshop already achieves excellent conversions without AI-driven personalization.

• You run B2C without complex business structures. For regular consumer sales, Open Source has everything on board. Customer accounts, wishlist, reviews, advanced search functionality... It's all there.

Adobe Commerce builds on that Open Source foundation with additional functionalities that can be game-changing for specific situations. Not better or worse than Open Source, just differently configured for different needs.

You choose Adobe Commerce when...

• You're serious about B2B. This is where Commerce truly shines. Business accounts with multiple users and approval workflows, quotes, separate catalogs and prices per customer, credit limits, purchase orders... Having these functionalities out-of-the-box saves months of custom development. Running mainly B2B? Then Commerce often pays for itself quickly.

• Personalized customer experience is central to your strategy. Adobe Commerce offers advanced customer segmentation where you create dynamic groups based on purchase behavior, browsing patterns, location, and lifetime value. You automatically adjust content, promotions, and prices per segment. Is personalization in your DNA? Then Commerce offers tools that make that much easier.

• You're growing internationally or have complex multi-brand strategies. Both platforms can manage multiple webshops from one backend with different languages, currencies, and inventory systems. That's in Magento's DNA. What Adobe Commerce adds on top are advanced tools for content staging and scheduling. Marketing teams can fully prepare campaigns, generate previews, and have them go live automatically at the right moment, without development needing to intervene. For many international webshops, this saves considerable manual work and coordination.

• Direct contact with Adobe provides peace of mind. As a Commerce customer, you can contact Adobe directly for support tickets regarding platform bugs. Adobe delivers patches that your partner applies. This certainty and 24/7 availability is valuable for business-critical webshops with large volumes.

• You're running volumes where stability is crucial. During extreme peak loads (think Black Friday with millions of visitors), Commerce offers technical capabilities like split databases and advanced caching that ensure your platform stays up. For most webshops, this is overkill, but if you're truly running large volumes? Then it can make the difference.

One of the most concrete benefits of Adobe Commerce is the integration with Adobe Sensei, Adobe's AI platform. This isn't futuristic technology, but proven technology that already has measurable impact on conversion.

Product Recommendations based on AI analyze what individual customers view, add to their cart, and ultimately buy. Based on that data, Sensei automatically shows relevant suggestions like "Frequently bought together" or "Trending in your segment". These recommendations are continuously improved.

Live Search goes beyond traditional search functionality. It understands search intent, corrects spelling errors, and learns from click behavior. Customers find what they're looking for faster.

Achieving comparable functionalities in Open Source? Certainly possible, for example via third-party tools or custom work. Whether we recommend that depends on your situation. Sometimes it's smarter to make that investment in custom development, sometimes Commerce is more interesting because these capabilities are already included and are continuously developed.