Magento Enterprise vs Magento Community: Which One's Best Suited to Your Needs?

So you've made up your mind: it's Magento “fuel” that will be powering your e-commerce website. And now you're facing challenge no. 2: Magento Enterprise vs Magento Community! 

Which one of the 2 Magento platform's editions is right for you? What are the key differences after all?

Which one's best suited to your current feature needs? And how about your daring goals and growth plans? Which one's scalable enough to accommodate your expansion plans?

The quickest/easiest/surest method to “find your match”: confronting your current requirements with each one of the 2 Magento editions' sets of features and functionalities.

Note: the method is the same if you're having a Magento vs Drupal Commerce "dilemma" instead, for instance.

Then draw the line and just do the math!

So, without further ado, let's dig up the:
 

• Magento Enterprise features 
• Magento Community features 
• And draw the profile of the “ideal” online store for each one of the 2 Magento editions
   

1. Is Magento Free? Price Tag vs Value

With or without a price tag on.

This is the most rudimentary “Magento Enterprise vs Magento Community” comparison that one could make.The first one does come at a price, while the open source version is free to download off the internet and, implicitly, free to use.

And now the question that arises is: does the price tag come with added value, as well?

Without question!

The Magento Commerce edition —  merging, since June 2017, the Enterprise and the Magento Cloud Edition —  comes not with 1, but with 2 price tags on. Along with a heavy load of enterprise-level features and high-end functionalities.

And it's your own needs and goals that will tell you whether... it's worth it. Whether a free variant, with basic online selling capabilities or a bulky feature set, with a heftier price tag on, suits you best.
 

2. Top Magento Open Source Features 

The open-source community edition is Magento's downloadable version. And, as you can expect, it provides much of the same functionality, same basic performance and shares the core features with its enterprise counterpart.

And here are some of these core features that you can power your e-commerce business plans with and get your functional online store up and running in no time:
 

• modern tech stack
• regular updates
• automated code merge
• payment integrations
• scalability
• automated testing
• flexibility (install the extensions of your choice to ramp up your site's functionality)
• responsive layout
• fast product import
• integrated video & marketing tools integration
• customizable & mobile-compatible admin dashboard
• guest checkout
• registered customers
   

A word of caution:

Determine your site's specific goals and needs right from its planning phases.This because implementing specific functionalities from your “wishlist” might require you to install additional plugins and to craft some custom code.  
 

3. Does Your e-Commerce Business Fit the CE Client Profile?

It does if your answer is “Yes” to most of the following questions:
 

• Is it a small-scale e-commerce project that you're starting?
• Are you planning to keep extension/plugins implementation to a minimum; can you already predict that there will be no need for custom modules in the future?
• … no need for 3rd party design and web development teams to handle your not so complex site project?
• Are you looking for an e-commerce platform that should provide you with the basic features needed for getting your store up and running?
• On a shoestring budget?
• No plans to grow from a small e-commerce site into an enterprise online store? Or to enter new markets?
• Is it a versatile platform that you're looking for? One leveraging open source for delivering you a significant load of basic plugins and templates to custom-tune your store with?
• … and to deliver rich experiences to your customers with?
   

In short: Magento's open source community edition (CE) is built, from the ground up, with the basic needs of small e-commerce business owners in mind.

It's a turnkey solution for small sites.

Note: having just a few products doesn't necessarily mean that your site's needs are basic. Therefore, this is no indicator that you should opt for Magento Open Source.
 

4. Magento Enterprise vs Magento Community: Do You Have Any Expansion Plans?

Just think these growth plans through and the sooner the better:
 

• Would you like to enter new markets at some point in the future?
• Would you like to ramp up and customize your site's current functionality at some point?
• How much do you want it to grow? Is scalability a critical feature for you?
   

Do set up your e-commerce goals at this phase of the project!

For once you've got your site running on Magento Community (or Open Source), switching to Magento commerce will be more challenging than you expect:
 

• the two editions' code bases are different
• you'll need to give your website a full redesign
• the Magento Open Source templates that you will have installed won't work in Magento Commerce
   

So, take some time to think about the future, your e-Commerce site's future...

Since “upgrading” it, later on, to Magento Enterprise, comes with inconveniences and compromises that you'll have to make (e.g. losing some of your team's hard work).
 

5. Top Magento Enterprise Features 

Magento Commerce — the 2-in-1 Enterprise & Cloud edition of the platform — provides you with enterprise-level features right out of the box. 

Along with the price tag comes the added value transposed into a set of online selling capabilities that you don't get with its open source counterpart. So, do consider this when you're having a Magento Enterprise vs Magento Community dilemma.

Capabilities geared at meeting your enterprise online store's complex demands from an e-Commerce platform.

And here are the enterprise edition's top features:
 

• PCI compliance
• MAP pricing
• cloud hosting
• 24/7 technical Magento support, including a dedicated account manager 
• RMAs
• visual merchandiser: drag & drop UI and sorting rules for easily organizing your product category pages by variables of your choice (best/newest products, by color etc.)
• segmentation & targeted promotion features: personalize your customers' shopping experiences
• full-page caching
• improved UX: features such as wish lists and gift registry
• advanced marketing features: it provides you with reward points that you can use for setting up your own customer loyalty programs
• better performance: expect better page loading times as compared to Magento Open Souce
• geo-targeting
• B2B features: create custom catalogs and multiple payment options, set up multiple buyers, create several company accounts etc.
• content staging
• enhanced security out-of-the-box: PA-DSS payment bridge, credit card tokenization...
• separate databases for Product data, Checkout, Order Management: a major performance boost
• improved tax calculation functionality
   

In short: Magento Commerce offers you more out-of-the-box functionality as compared to Magento Community, where you'd need to engage in custom coding and extension implementation to have these features “injected” into your site)
 

6. Go With Magento Commerce If...

… you plan to launch a large, enterprise-sized online store or a small-scale one, but you're “nurturing” major expansion plans!

In this case, the Magento Enterprise vs Magento Community “dilemma” is an easy one: Magento Commerce (now including the enterprise version, as well) is perfect for you! 

For your big, “needy” website site, that you expect to:
 

• accept non-standard forms of payments, too (e.g. check or cash in hand)
• enrich your customers' shopping experiences with functionalities such as gift registries, wishlists, buy gift cards
• provide you with advanced inventory management and detailed reporting functionalities, with no need to install any extensions (or to write custom code) for this
   

… definitely needs a more robust, premium-grade features-packed platform.

And Magento Commerce is the one. 
 
The END!

So, how about now? Do you find it any easier to decide for one of the 2 Magento editions? Do any of the eCommerce business needs and expectations that I've outlined here match your own?

If so, which of the 2 feature sets  —  Magento Enterprise's and Magento Community's — suits them best?