Are you planning on creating an online store for your business? You must be wondering which platform to use. Well, wonder no more, the answer is Magento! The real question is should you use Magento 2 Community Edition or Magento 2 Commerce Edition?
If you cannot decide for yourself, let this article be your guide towards making this decision. Pay close attention to the facts and you will surely make the right choice.
General Characteristics
Magento 2 Community Edition
Magento 2 Community Edition, previously known as Open Source Edition, was released on August 9th, 2017. It is called an open-source eCommerce platform since you can use it for free, as well as to adapt it to your own needs.
If you are a small- or medium-business user, this platform is certainly the best choice for you. With zero payment, you can create and edit a platform of your preference with minimal fuss.
Community offers you simple management tools. It makes it perfect for beginners who want to develop their online stores from scratch.
Some of the brands that are widely known use this platform: Brand Alley, Bulgari, Le Creuset, Bucherer, PMT Music, PrettyLittleThing, The V&A, Erdem, Kurt Geiger, Christian Louboutin, Missguided, Wrangler Europe, Lee Europe, Harvey Nichols, Agent Provocateur, Nobel Biocare, Ford, and Tog24.
Magento 2 Commerce Edition
Magento 2 Commerce Edition, previously known as Enterprise Edition, was released on November 28th, 2018. Contrary to Community, you have to pay for Commerce in order to use it for your medium to enterprise business.
Its rich pallet of features and a variety of useful functionalities, such as B2B, Content Staging and Preview, Advanced Marketing Tools, Customer Loyalty Tools, and excellent Technical Support, make this platform worth paying for.
If you want your customers to define your company as trustworthy, then Magento 2 Commerce is the platform you are looking for.
Many global brands use this platform, among them Nike, Monin, Jack Daniel’s, Seat, Canon, Helly Hansen, HP Inc, Jaguar and NCG, Marimekko, Burger King, Easy Spirit, Bulk Powders, Ahmad Tea, Paperchase, Smythson, BrewDog, JCB, Made.com, End Clothing, Paul Smith, Micro Scooters, Bjorn Borg, etc.
Now that you are aware of the main characteristics of both Community and Commerce, we can explore these two eCommerce platforms in great detail.
Functionalities and Management
These two platforms share many functionalities. Some of the most important ones are:
- Integrated checkout
- Payment and shipping
- Custom website design and styling
- Multiple language packs
- Site search
- Online customer groups management
- Managing information across multiple online stores from a single admin panel
- One-page online checkout
- Gift message management
- Multiple shipping address management
- Free shipping
- Managing shipping by weight and destination
- Search engine friendly URLs including URL rewrite controls
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Online poll creation and management
- RSS feed of new orders
- Feature-rich customer accounts
- Address book with unlimited addresses
M2 Commerce Exclusive Functionalities
However, there is a great number of beneficial features that Magento 2 Community is lacking, and Magento 2 Commerce can proudly offer to its users. The list of these features is pretty long, so pay close attention to the benefits that the Commerce Edition can bring you.
Business Intelligence Dashboards
All of the business data from all platforms displayed on one screen. Should you choose Magento Business Intelligence Pro, you will be able to sync, store, and refresh all data with extreme ease. Improve your business management with better insights.
B2B Functionality
Company account management, access control to accounts and subaccounts, unique pricing, quick order by SKU, requisition lists, etc. More than 90% of vendors around the globe prefer online purchase, so embrace this trend with this convenient functionality.
Advanced Marketing Tools
Tools that can help you improve your business by managing promotions, SEO and UGC, and communications (i.e., Banners, Related Product Rules, Private Sales & Events Google Tag Manager, Search Synonyms, Email Reminders, Gift Registry, Store Credit, Virtual Merchandiser, etc.).
Content Staging and Preview
Manage your content from Admin panel (create, preview, update, change, and schedule any content). Customize your own collection of changes by activating different elements of your page according to a specific schedule.
Customer Loyalty Tools
Your customers will maintain loyal as long as they enjoy the way you treat them. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to establish a firm relationship by awarding them for a large number of transactions.
Page Builder
An extremely useful editor that helps you customize the content of your page in order to improve the visual effect. Take full advantage of rich page design, advanced content tools, real-time editing, and more.
Visual Merchandising
A beneficial collection of tools for managing the appearance of your products. Choose the way in which you want to display the products and apply the changes via ‘visual mode’.
Inventory Management
Improve stock management from one or more locations, track your orders and choose between global management, management per source, or management per product.
24/7 Technical Support
In addition to Help Center Guide, FAQs, Troubleshooting, How to, and MBI, you can always count on the help of experienced Magento developers.
Express Packages
Enjoy the perks of proficient implementation of extensions and skilled customization of your online store, as well as adequate support of a Magento Solution Partner. Express Packages are a quick solution for the success of your store.
Related Product Rules
The rules can refer to up-sell, cross-sell, and related products. Set up the rule name and priority, choose a specific customer segment to which the rule applies, and much more.
Customer Segments
Create segments with customer-specific attributes. Choose a segment name and enter a short description, apply the segment to a particular type of customers (visitors or registered), etc.
CMS Page Hierarchy
Organize large amounts of content easily into a parent/child relationship by using nodes. The main advantage of page hierarchy is the fact that your customers are able to find the wanted articles more easily.
Dynamic Blocks
Create interactive content based on customer segments. Assign a dynamic block to a particular group of customers and choose a related promotion. An interactive content would be a fine addition to your online store.
Store Credit
Your customers can choose to purchase desired products with store credit instead of other payment methods. They can always check the available amount of store credit and apply it when ordering a product.
Abandoned Carts
Email reminders are sent to customers in order to remind them to finish the purchase. The products they have added to their shopping cart will not be lost should they close the window prior to finalizing the purchase.
Private Sales & Events
Create limited-time sales for defined customer groups, define invitation and event details, and even create a sale page. In this way, your brand will become a synonym for loyalty and innovation.
SERP Ranks and Visibility in Search Results
For an expandable business with a lot of online transactions, it is important to choose the platform which is able to receive a large number of orders per hour. As far as the Commerce Edition is concerned, the number of orders per hour reaches as high as 250,000. The checkout speed is another important feature, and yet again, Commerce wins the battle – it takes only 2 seconds for this platform to finish the task.
When it comes to your online shop, you can divide your database into three categories: Sales, Checkout, and Order Management, which is very convenient. Thanks to its 24/7 technical support, you are sure to receive any type of help at any moment, so you can rest assured that all possible technical issues are to be resolved in no time by the Magento team.
There is no need to pay extra in order for Magento developers to fix the issues, as it is the case with Community since it has no technical support at all.
Security is Imperative
There is no question about it – security is one of the key elements when it comes to your business. Since Community is not PCI compliant, it is up to you to choose one of the two possible solutions to make it one.
The first solution would be choosing one of the third-party payment methods, e.g., PayPal. The second solution would be SaaS PCI compliant payment method.
In comparison to Community, Commerce is PCI compliant connected to the Magento Secure Payment Bridge. Furthermore, it supports the Payment Application Data Security Standard (i.e., PA-DSS), which makes this eCommerce platform even more stable and trustworthy.
Other security measures may include some of the following:
- Monthly reviews by Magento developers
- Changing your password from time to time and making sure it is strong enough
- Restricting admin access using a specific IP address
- Using the Secure File Transfer Protocol in order to protect your web store from greedy hackers
- Preventing data interception by employing an HTTPS/SSL connection
- Engaging a two-factor authentication
- Constantly updating Magento.
Your business will most certainly be safe if you use as many security measures as possible.
Customer Loyalty
If you want to establish a solid customer base, you have to play the loyalty card. Without any doubt, Magento 2 Commerce wins this battle before it even begins, since it is rich with functionalities related to this field. One of the most important ones is Magento Commerce Reward Points System. Thanks to this system, you can improve your customers’ experience and gain their trust.
One of the things you are able to do is set up certain points for certain customer actions; then, assign a conversion rate between points and currencies. In this way, your customers can spend their earned points when purchasing your products.
Another thing that is going to make your customers jump with joy is Gift Registry. They can easily make multiple wish lists in the Customer Dashboard and invite their friends and family to purchase the chosen products. Moreover, the Gift Registry is directly connected to My Cart and My Wish List. This means that it is automatically updated after adding products to either one of these.
Pretty convenient, isn’t it? Yet another practical functionality is Gift Registry Search, which enables you to find a particular gift registry by name, email, or registry ID.
To Pay or Not to Pay – That is the Question!
All in all, there is another important question – should you use the free platform or the costly one? In other words, Community or Commerce? Here are three good reasons why you should choose the Commerce 2 Edition:
- The number of orders per month is 5 times higher on the M2 Commerce platform. Hmm, OK… What else?
- If you chose M2 Commerce, your turnover is sure to be 10 times higher than the one on M2 Community. Not bad, M2 Commerce! Not bad at all…
- Should you chose M2 Commerce, the number of new visitors per month could increase by 50 times! Wow! Now we’re talking!
Conclusion
To conclude, you should take into account everything that these platforms offer. Choose the one that gives you an undeniable opportunity to grow, no matter the cost.
Why not shoot for the stars? Why not be in the company of the greatest companies on the globe? It all comes down to growing a successful business that is going to provide income for the years to come.
Our choice is more than obvious… And what’s yours? Community or Commerce?
[…] In this article, we are going to talk about both Magento 2 Commerce and Magento 2 Community Editions and their power to fulfill all the steps mentioned above. If you want to find out more about these two editions, you can read one of SyncIt Group blog posts. […]