Magento Community vs Enterprise Edition Comparison [2024]

Magento is a highly customizable eCommerce platform offered by Adobe that enables store owners to create user-friendly and professional online stores. It is a versatile platform and is used by some of the renowned businesses from various industries. Some of the popular brands such as Samsung, Coca-Cola, Nike have also established their online stores using Magento.

Mainly, two different versions of Magento are offered by Adobe, out of which one is free of cost while the other is paid. Many of the store owners may get confused between the Magento community or enterprise version. Magento Community Vs Enterprise or Magento CE vs EE comparison guide will help the eCommerce businesses to choose the well-suite Magento version for their online store.

Before moving towards the Magento CE vs EE comparison part, let’s consider having look at both of the available Magento versions.

What is Magento 2 Community Version?

Magento 2 community version or community edition is the free version of Magento offered by Adobe. Recently, it has been renamed Magento 2 Open Source. This version of Magento comes with limited features, however, it can be customized as per the requirements. It is well suited for startups and small business owners that have a lesser budget.

However, the free version of Magento is not just limited to the in-built features and functionalities. Store owners can add more features and functions by installing Magento extensions. They can also get custom Magento extensions developed as per the requirements by the certified Magento developer.

What is Magento 2 Enterprise Version?

Magento 2 enterprise version, also known as Magento 2 commerce version is the paid version of Magento offered by Adobe. This paid version of Magento 2 provides store owners with advanced features and added security. It is suitable for larger businesses at the enterprise level.

It provides the store owners with a cloud-based online store that is powered by artificial intelligence merchandising and analytics.

Magento Community Vs Enterprise

Online business startups may often get confused when it comes to choosing the right Magento version for them. This is where they may require to compare Magento community and enterprise version.

Here, we have provided a complete point-wise comparison between both of the Magento versions from various aspects.  This Magento 2 Community Vs Enterprise comparison will help the store owners to choose the one that suits them.

The table provided below depicts the overall differences between both of the Magento versions from different aspects.

Each of the aspects of Magento Community vs Enterprise version comparison is discussed in detail in this post.

Magento Community Vs Enterprise – A Detailed Comparison

The main difference between Magento Community and Magento Enterprise Edition is that the community version is absolutely free, while the enterprise version is a paid one. The paid version of Magento is fully-fledged with built-in functionalities and features that allow more powerful store creation.

Along with the core features, the enterprise version comes with a wide range of additional features business intelligence, integrated B2B functionality, advanced marketing tools, and much more. And these features are worth the cost.

On the other hand, the community version of Magento comes with core functionalities that can be further extended through third-party Magento extensions. Thousands of extensions are already available on the Magento marketplace to choose from.

Cost

Most of the eCommerce startups and small store owners prefer using the Magento Community edition as it is open source and free to use. This is where it beats the enterprise version in the Magento community vs enterprise comparison.

Online business owners can easily create online stores using the Magento 2 community version without paying the hefty licensing fees. On the other hand, the enterprise version of Magento is paid one that comes with additional functionalities.

The Magento Enterprise price depends on the store’s annual revenue that starts from $22,000 and can go up to $125,000 depending on the gross annual revenue.  The annual cost of the Magento 2 enterprise version is tabulated below.

Performance & Scalability

On comparing the Magento community vs enterprise version on the performance basis, the paid version wins the race when it comes to handling a hefty amount of data. The community version is good at handling smaller stores and startups, whereas the paid one works well for the stores with a high volume of orders and traffic.

The difference in performance is mainly due to the additional features that are offered in the enterprise version such as enterprise cloud. Also, the enterprise version is a scalable version designed to provide out-of-the-box performance and handle copious amounts of data.

The overall performance of both of the versions can be further improved by adding third-party extensions.

Security

Security is the first and foremost concern of online shoppers while making an online transaction. The free version of Magento 2 is not PCI compliant and does not allow credit card tokenization or secure payment bridges. Therefore, the store owners have to rely on third-party Magento 2 security extensions to add a layer of security.

However, the enterprise version of Magento 2 comes with in-built payment integrations such as Paypal, CyberSource, WorldPay that allow secure and reliable online transactions. Apart from this, Magento provides regular scanning, testing, and bug bounty programs to ensure utmost security.

Support

Factually, it is not fair to compare the difference between Magento community and enterprise version in the terms of support. Magento provides round-the-clock technical support to enterprise version store owners. However, the free version of Magento lacks Magento support and the users have to hire Magento developer or service-providing company for support.

In both of the versions, the store owners still have to spend almost 5-10% of their total revenue on store maintenance to ensure utmost customer satisfaction & minimize down-time. However, the 24×7 customer support in the enterprise version can not be ignored totally.

Conclusion

Overall, the Magento community edition is well-suited for small business owners and start-ups. However, high-level eCommerce business owners can take the feature-rich enterprise version into consideration. The ultimate decision of choosing the right Magento version for your store depends on various factors such as estimated revenue, traffic, and budget.

Having compared the major difference between the Magento community edition and enterprise edition, we can say that the well-known phrase – “You get what you pay for!” seems to be followed here.