Which Platform Is Your Pick – Magento Enterprise Or Community?

After it’s launched in 2008, Magento became one of the most powerful e-shopping carts available today. Currently Magento has two editions available for merchants namely, Magento Community Edition and Magento Enterprise Edition. Even though many new businesses entering the online platform like community edition better than the Enterprise, both are designed for specific needs of merchants and give separate benefits.

Introduction To Community Edition

First off is the Community Edition. Since it’s free for everyone, the community version can be downloaded off the internet as open source software. This allows users to make all sorts of changes they want to meet their specific needs. Retailers from all around the globe have used Magento Community Edition to make their customization and create an ideal eCommerce platform for their business.

This includes custom functions and extensions to meet for their unique requirements with a little bit coding from the developers. It’s an ideal platform for small business that are on the lookout for a budget friendly online shopping store to kick off their startup on the internet with a premium feel. The community edition free version is easily accessible and can be downloaded anytime. For companies that want a stable user savvy online store, Magento Community Edition is the perfect choice.

Premium Version Or Enterprise Edition

While the Community edition is popular among the mainstream merchants, there is also a sizable percentage that believes the platform is not enough for their business needs. Businesses that operate in bigger capacities require advanced features with detailed functionality which the community edition simply cannot provide. To address the concerns of such businesses, Magento has made Enterprise edition. In several business operations, flexibility and multiple option scenarios must be present to conduct online eCommerce tasks effectively.

Magento Enterprise edition gives complete control from the back end and delivers top quality support from the Magento team. Retailers can get a subscription with a service level agreement for as long as they want. It’s a full premium package that gives top tier features and exclusive benefits to the merchants. For larger scale companies that require all the help they can get from the hosting brand, Magento Enterprise edition is the ideal online business solution they can get.

Major Differences

In order to evaluate the two platforms, we have compared them with respect to their price, the level of security they give, performance in eCommerce and their functionality. With these basic points below, you will be able to differentiate the disparity between the community and the enterprise version.

Cost

As we mentioned earlier, Community edition is free. This leaves the enterprise edition on a bit of a disadvantage when you can customize and modify the free version according to your preferences.  However, if you can pay $15,550 for the subscription, its completely justified with the amount of features and facilities Magento gives. Besides, if you are running you business on a bigger scale, the investment in the premium version will pay off with good return.

Security

Security is basically what you get for free and paid, but for a version that is open source, Magento Community edition is quite a sturdy build. It does not offer credit card tokenization or the highly secured payment gateway options like premium, but for something that comes download ready, it is quite appreciable.

To meet the safety standards in the industry, Enterprise edition uses a PA-DSS payment bridge for high standards in the eCommerce industry. If you have decided to expand your payment gateway options and deliver a secure experience to your customers, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze if you go for Magento Enterprise edition.

Support

For Enterprise Edition, Support is integrated with a 24/7 service that looks after your queries and distress calls in the software. This gives quite leverage to premium user. However, even though community edition does not offer any Magento support, the community is always there for you. You can easily access Magento forums and get the best available advice and tips without spending a dime from your pocket.

Performance

Community edition is tons of fun with plenty of personalization packed with SEO features, customer segmentation, targeted promotions, layered navigation and checkout finesse. With the new Magento 2 out, Community and Enterprise is both mobile friendly and Internationalization capable.

However, Magento Enterprise is clearly faster and a more scalable business solution compared to the free version. It gives high end functions with top tier features for large scale business operations. The flexibility allows rich consumer experience with hundreds of extensions available for all sorts of business needs. It gives you access to a dense network of expert developers and consultation services.

Functionality

Unarguably, Magento Community and Enterprise, both exhibit the same core. However, with the Enterprise version, the functionality extends to advanced customer segmentation and targeting along with full page caching. The merchant can create loyalty programs such as reward points, private sales, and store credits etc.

These features are also present in community version but with only limited functionality. PCI compliance with SOLR search also gives an extra edge to Enterprise Edition. It’s a clear advantage of paid premium against free open source.

Final Thoughts

Even though there are several aspects to the comparison, we have given a basic assessment on the two editions and how they can sit with your business needs. Our assessment is based on factors like cost, performance, security, support and functionality. Community edition is a safe play with exceptionally good personalization potential; while the premium version can deliver a bigger punch given you have the financial backbone to support it.

It’s better to hire an Magento eCommerce development company to develop Magento based eCommerce websites. We personally believe that Magento enterprise is a risky maneuver is you are planning to open a small time online store.

But once you get into the swing of things you can always get enough to upgrade and get more features for your business. While that is far ahead, it is wiser to start with the Community edition and establish a strong online presence.

Author Bio.:

Priya is a Technical SEO at Hopinfirst, a leading mobile app development company which provide best ios app development and Android app development Services.