Magento is no stranger to the e-commerce industry. After entering the realm of shopping carts, Magento quickly proved its mantle and rose to the top after being purchased by eBay. Joining the stir of online shopping platforms, Magento has served companies of all sizes and capacities with the best business solutions any carts can offer. But in the online universe, some customers and merchants need separate care. Some require off-the-shelf business solutions while others demand personalised settings to complete their day-to-day tasks. In this article, we will discuss how Magento can help serve different selling communities with respect to their needs by comparing the Magento Community Edition in contrast with its Enterprise Edition.
Community vs. Enterprise Edition
To understand how these two editions impact the user, let us first understand their basic features and mode of function. The Community edition is a free version of Magento and can be easily downloaded off the Internet. Being an open-source e-commerce platform, Magento Community Edition is quite versatile and can be customised according to the user’s preferences and needs. Due to this, the Community Edition has become quite popular in the online seller community as a payless solution to merchants from all across the globe. It is a highly-recommended platform for those merchants that are looking for a budget-friendly online shopping front to initiate their selling operations and develop their store into a better shopping experience.
Although Magento Community Edition has nearly everything an online business needs to become a fairly successful e-commerce entrant, there is also a percentage that thinks otherwise. The Community Edition has all the basic features for erecting an online store, but to fulfill the unique needs of online merchants, a better and more detailed solution is in order. Many large-scale corporations and business require premium-grade features to make money online. To address these concerns, Magento has made the Enterprise Edition. This Edition gives a detailed set of functions to conduct online selling with flexibility, scalability and control. It does have an edge on the overall performance of Magento Community but that comes with a price. For a yearly subscription, Magento Enterprise Edition can cost up to around $1500, something not every business is comfortable with.
Finding which Magento version suits your requirements is imperative before you invest on a website. This will help you optimise your content in time to come and prevent any risks that can spiral into costly catastrophes.
Pricing difference
Unlike the Enterprise Edition, the Community Edition comes free of cost. Being an open-source platform, Magento Community is quite the ideal choice if you want a budget-friendly hosting that does not require a yearly subscription of $15,000. The paid version has a price to it but a well-deserved one. Businesses that are aimed to grow and expand their operations in short deadlines and do not mind spending some extra for the exclusive features they get, then Magento Enterprise will come along just great.
Support
Support is available 24/7 for Magento Enterprise Edition. However, the community-centric version does not share the same benefits.
Security
Even for a free version, Magento is nearly impervious to any security threats and works immaculately. Now, with the Magento 2.0 release out this year, the Community Edition has been further beefed up with better coding structure and improved features. Magento offers a sturdy build shopping cart that can handle tons of load and spam attacks. The Enterprise Edition is much better in other aspects. It offers credit card tokenisation and highly secured payment gateway options unlike the Community Edition. Enterprise also incorporates PA-DSS payment bridge to meet the high standards of a safe and secure customer to merchant transaction. If you are planning to open multiple payment gateways for your customers and offer value added service with them then the Enterprise version will go with your business swimmingly.
Functionality and features
Functionality is a plus point for both the editions. The Community and Enterprise share nearly the same core functionalities in terms of online selling capabilities. However, functionality extends a little further with some advanced features such as customer segmentation, geo-targeting and full-page caching. You can create loyalty programs with reward points, private sales and store credits to enhance store conversions and get better revenues. PCI compliance with SOLR search is also the functionalities that paid users are more likely to benefit from. The Community version is also equipped with these features but effective only to a certain spectrum.
Performance comparison
The prime reason why most online merchants prefer Community version is its unlimited potential to producing a personalised experience out of an open source platform. The Community Edition is loaded with tons of features that can help with SEO, customer segmentation, layered navigation, targeted promotions and improving checkout process. The release of Magento 2.0 has integrated the Community and Enterprise with a mobile responsive design that allows all the elements on your website to be viewed and interacted on mobile handsets without forcing any visitor on a scrolling frenzy.
Internationalisation features are also supported and come with a vast library of extensions and modules. The Enterprise Edition is undoubtedly fast since it is a hosted with dedicated data. It is more scalable and flexible business solution that can deliver high-end functionality without breaking a sweat. This gives the premium version a huge advantage of giving access to top-notch extensions and Magento development services if you are comfortable spending the money’s worth.
We have compiled a basic comparison to Magento Community and Enterprise Edition by examining their pricing range and affordability, performance in the form the merchant’s perspective, the security features they offer, functionality and the performance they produce while running tasks online. The Community Edition is the answer to any small business erecting their online presence with a budget, while its enterprise-focused counterpart gives a wide range of features packed with top-notch performance for premium style selling.
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