Adobe Commerce Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

it_user611913

Designer and Developer at a tech services company

Dec 5, 2017

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It is dedicated to e-commerce and has the most robust underlying architecture.

What is our primary use case?

I am a module developer. I also use it to make online stores for e commerce businesses.

What is most valuable?

I like the rigor with which it is architected. There is usually a right way to do something. It is dedicated to e-commerce and has a wealth of features to serve that purpose.

How has it helped my organization?

I am currently working on a module for Magento. My module will help organizations import a large amount of products efficiently. The way that Magento is built isn’t the friendliest for this kind of thing. However, the fact that Magento is so complete, well-supported, and recognized makes it difficult to consider another system. My clients will benefit by having the most thorough system for e-commerce that is built for extensibility.

What needs improvement?

I wound like the documentation to cover more of the internal classes in the foundational Magento framework module

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I didn’t have any stability issues. However, I have only been working with it on a local development server. I will eventually test it on a live server with a large amount of traffic.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I haven’t moved this version to a production server, so scalability is yet to be seen.

How are customer service and support?

I haven’t dealt with technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used WooCommerce. It is a fair option. However, it is based on WordPress and that system isn’t really built for e-commerce. It doesn’t have the rigor required to deal with the complex realities of a real e-commerce business. For example:

Under the hood: In terms of the code and the architecture
On the exterior: In terms of managing the store

How was the initial setup?

The setup is fairly straightforward as long as you have experience configuring a server to Magneto’s requirements. It’s definitely not as straightforward as the five minute install of WordPress.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Magento CE is free. There is an Enterprise edition which offers a few specific features. I would advise you to stick to CE until there is a need for the paid Enterprise edition version.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have worked with WooCommerce, Magento 1, and Shopify.

Shopify: I recommend it, if you are only interested in a simple store.
Magento 1: I would not recommend it, because it is old.
WooCommerce: I would not recommend it, because it is neither simple, well-featured, nor well-built.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1515501

Head of Service Delivery at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Apr 21, 2021

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Provides seamless administration and out-of-the-box features for OMS integration, but needs better performance and a better way to measure performance

Pros and Cons

"As compared to platforms such as ATG or Commerce Cloud, its interface is easy to use. Magento also provides seamless administration for business users. You can also integrate an OMS to an extent. You don't need to have a dedicated OMS. You can leverage the out-of-the-box features of Magento, which is very valuable for startups. Other platforms, such as Commerce Cloud, don't have an OMS, and you have to have your own OMS solution."

"I am still playing around and trying to catch up with the latest version to understand all the features, but I do feel that its CMS can be much more streamlined. They provide a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor, which many customers prefer, but based on the implementations that I have done for more than seven years, I have seen that many times, it is run by the marketing team, and they don't find it very comfortable to use. They feel uncomfortable managing and changing the content. As a business user, you need to have at least basic knowledge of HTML, which you cannot expect from all marketing teams. Some companies or organizations have that competency, but many organizations, especially in the Middle East, have a very small team, so it becomes quite difficult for them. This is a common challenge that I have seen across the platforms. Magento is better and easier than Oracle Commerce Cloud, but Shopify is much easier than Magento. A layman or my 10-year-old kid can go ahead and set up a store in Shopify in probably 45 minutes, which is not the case with Magento. Elasticsearch has really been a pain. It takes a toll on the performance. Starting with version 2.4, Magento requires Elasticsearch, which has been causing a lot of serious performance issues. We had a client in the US who was running a promo, and they lost a subsequent number of orders over one and a half hours. They were on the enterprise platform, not open-source. The team had to open a ticket with Magento. Its performance needs to be upgraded, or some kind of guidelines have to be provided for the setup. It looks like even Magento has no clue. When you go through the answers given in the online community, it seems that in spite of having the hardware configurations that they suggest, it is not performing at the optimal level. It should also have a better way to measure performance. Performance measuring has to be much easier. Many times, we see CPU utilization going up and down. We see spikes without any reason. Therefore, we need a better performance management system."

What is our primary use case?

I was working as a service delivery manager in the Middle East. That's where I did Magento implementation for B2B. Currently, I am refreshing my knowledge. I am using the open-source version.

How has it helped my organization?

One of our clients was the largest radiator manufacturers in the Middle East. They were into manufacturing radiators for trucks, cars, and construction equipment, and they wanted a solution to reach out to the B2B market in Europe and other geographical areas. We did a Magento implementation with just B2B functionality, which actually helped them to get more traction. They started getting quite a lot of leads through online channels, and they had their marketing team engaged. Previously, they had to send their salespeople literally all over the northern part of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. After implementing Magento, they could get a lot of potential leads.

What is most valuable?

As compared to platforms such as ATG or Commerce Cloud, its interface is easy to use. Magento also provides seamless administration for business users.

You can also integrate an OMS to an extent. You don't need to have a dedicated OMS. You can leverage the out-of-the-box features of Magento, which is very valuable for startups. Other platforms, such as Commerce Cloud, don't have an OMS, and you have to have your own OMS solution.

What needs improvement?

I am still playing around and trying to catch up with the latest version to understand all the features, but I do feel that its CMS can be much more streamlined. They provide a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor, which many customers prefer, but based on the implementations that I have done for more than seven years, I have seen that many times, it is run by the marketing team, and they don't find it very comfortable to use. They feel uncomfortable managing and changing the content. As a business user, you need to have at least basic knowledge of HTML, which you cannot expect from all marketing teams. Some companies or organizations have that competency, but many organizations, especially in the Middle East, have a very small team, so it becomes quite difficult for them. This is a common challenge that I have seen across the platforms. Magento is better and easier than Oracle Commerce Cloud, but Shopify is much easier than Magento. A layman or my 10-year-old kid can go ahead and set up a store in Shopify in probably 45 minutes, which is not the case with Magento.

Elasticsearch has really been a pain. It takes a toll on the performance. Starting with version 2.4, Magento requires Elasticsearch, which has been causing a lot of serious performance issues. We had a client in the US who was running a promo, and they lost a subsequent number of orders over one and a half hours. They were on the enterprise platform, not open-source. The team had to open a ticket with Magento. Its performance needs to be upgraded, or some kind of guidelines have to be provided for the setup. It looks like even Magento has no clue. When you go through the answers given in the online community, it seems that in spite of having the hardware configurations that they suggest, it is not performing at the optimal level.

It should also have a better way to measure performance. Performance measuring has to be much easier. Many times, we see CPU utilization going up and down. We see spikes without any reason. Therefore, we need a better performance management system.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have about four to five years of experience in using this solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is not stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Its scalability is actually good. You can start with the open-source version, and as you are scaling up, you can move to the enterprise version. Both options are there. In the enterprise version, you also get other benefits and advanced features. So scalability-wise, it is good, but there is a cost for scaling.

In terms of the number of users, we had the end-users and business users. The number of business users varied from four to ten. Up to ten business users were added for managing catalogs and content and for administration and other aspects. You need one person for deployment, code fixes, and maintenance. Apart from that, you need people for testing and catalog merchandising. A very small organization would require six to eight employees.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their enterprise platform support has not been great, but it has improved. As compared to Oracle and other platforms that operate on SaaS models, Magento support is better.

Their response is great. They normally provide immediate responses, but when there is an infrastructure issue, there are delays. I have seen them taking days to get back. There have been instances where we had the Customer Success Manager from Magento sitting with us on calls for eight hours to ensure that somebody from their side delivers a solution. They just need to handle the infrastructure issues better.

How was the initial setup?

It is slightly complex, and you need technical knowledge. It is not as easy as Shopify, where you just log in and create your domain and a store. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to set a store up in Shopify, and you can then start playing with its interfaces and other things, but that's not the case with Magento. It took me a couple of hours to set up Magento.

What about the implementation team?

For deployment, it definitely requires at least one Magento certified lead or a senior developer.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Many implementations were open-source. We also had a couple of enterprise-level implementations, but I didn't have visibility on the licensing cost.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution, but if you are not technically strong, I would suggest Shopify.

I would rate Magento a six out of ten. It is a decent choice.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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Michael Grove

Web Developer at Indiana

Jul 26, 2018

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We have the ability to resolve service issues since Magento enables us to invest more time in dealing with custom requirements

Pros and Cons

"We have the ability to resolve service issues since Magento enables us to invest more time in dealing with custom requirements."

"Should have a way to communicate properly with the team that builds the platform"

What is our primary use case?

The software application is extremely extensible if you are certified. It's really effective and versatile. With the best hosting on location it can be extremely quick. The admin is quickly personalized as well.

How has it helped my organization?

It provides structured ecommerce platforms for customers. We have the ability to resolve service issues since Magento enables us to invest more time in dealing with custom requirements.

What is most valuable?

My most significant suggestion is to not try to save money on hosting. Get an excellent and strong hosting environment handled by Magento professionals. Work with a qualified designer.

What needs improvement?

It would be great to have a way to communicate properly with the team that builds the platform because you can get stuck at certain points, and it's hard to search for solutions on forums and tutorials.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user10956

Director of eCommerce at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Oct 6, 2013

Lessons Learned from Launching an Online Store on Magento

For my day job, I manage a number of online properties, including a couple of online stores. We recently relaunched our main ecommerce store, Supercircuits.com, on Magento Enterprise Edition. Here are my thoughts about the experience.

The Supercircuits website was running on an custom-developed ASP.Net ecommerce platform, which I inherited when I joined the company. Over time it had become increasingly unwieldy, hard to update, and buggy, and I was desperate to move on to a more modern ecommerce platform.

I'd been interested in Magento for a while as it appeared to meet all of our functional needs as well as being very affordable, and so, after a short period of due diligence, we embarked on an implementation of the Enterprise Edition.

Little did I know then, that it would take over a year to launch the site. But that's what happens when you combine a very small team, with a lot of operational responsibilities, with the requirement to integrate with an internal order management system that's about 10 years old.

Lesson learned #1: If you are about to embark on a major Magento implementation, I highly recommend making use of their consulting services at the outset. An architectural advisory will set you back a few thousand dollars but will make sure you pick the right architecture plan so that your implementation goes more smoothly. We did a lot of learning as we went, which slowed progress as you might expect.

Another challenging area was the migration of product data from the old site. Although we have a little under 1,000 SKUs, because they represent video surveillance equipment, they each have a lot technical specs along with various other complexities.

We had originally intended to manage product data programmatically via a centralized master data management system, but in the end, this proved too much to try and implement along with everything simply developing and launching the site.

As a result, we did not make proper use of attribute sets for classifying different product types, the results of which we are living with today (one day we will have the product comparison tool set up correctly). On reflection, we would have been better off entering all the product data manually and using the extra time to clean up the organization of our technical specs.

One area where we did make the right decision was not to attempt a complete site redesign at the same time. The relaunch was intended to be a "copy exact" — use the base Magento Enterprise store template and overlay our design on top of it. This worked pretty well, as the base Magento template looked nicer than our old site anyway, and we were able to make some further visual improvements in addition to this.

The good news is that we are now in a place were we can start making some more aggressive site design enhancements, now that the back-end heavy lifting has been completed.

A significant reason to move to Magento is its extensibility and the wide range of extensions that have been developed for it. If you can think of a feature, chances are someone has developed an extension for it. The great thing about this is that it reduces implementation time and cost for new features dramatically. I'm like a kid in a candy store with all the additional ecommerce capabilities that are now available to me.

Lesson learned #2: Not all extensions are created equally. I recommend limiting the number of extension vendors you use so that you can be confident in their quality and reduce the potential for code conflicts. We have mostly used extensions from aheadWorks and Amasty. Not only do they create great products, but the support of both vendors so far has been excellent.

Another reason I like Magento is that, as with Google Analytics and Wordpress, because the basic edition is open source it has a huge install base with lots of people developing for it, figuring things out, writing blogs and tutorials, and answering questions.

Consequently, if you have a question about or an issue with Magento, it's likely that someone has run into it and someone else has come up with a solution. The value of this wealth of information cannot be overstated.

One final downside of the extended development time for this website launch is that Magento Enterprise has moved on to version 1.12 while we are still on version 1.10. I do not intend to underestimate the effort to upgrade to the latest version, but it is something that we will need to tackle in the near future. If you don't, as you move further away from the current version, the cost and effort to upgrade just gets larger and more daunting.

A feature that we intend to take full advantage of over the months ahead is Magento's multi-store capability. At some point in the future I intend to have all of our sites running on the Magento platform which will be a huge efficiency gain for my team in terms of managing multiple websites and stores with a common product set.

One area where we have learned a lot is in regards to SEO. While we did all that we could in terms of onsite SEO, we (by we, I mean I) only redirected about 1500 URLs in our htaccess file. However, we have thousands of old product documentation PDFs which I did not have the time or will to get to before the launch which were still receiving links and traffic.

As I started seeing 404 errors pop up in Google Analytics for those pages and files, I began a multi-week process of updating the htaccess file, so that we now have over 6000 redirected URLs.

I am now keeping our htaccess file updated on a monthly basis by running the URLs being redirected to through Xenu's Link Sleuth, which lets you check an imported list of links (very handy). As redirected URLs break (for example, when products are discontinued and are removed from the site) I'm updating the redirect to keep it working. It's very manual, but worth it in my opinion.

We're now on a two-week release schedule for new features, which is aggressive but achievable. One module that we are replacing as soon as possible is our site search. Magento's default search algorithm is garbage. Incredibly, instead of using AND for an operator it uses OR, which means that the more terms you use to refine your search, the more results you get. It's completely backwards!

There is a truism when it comes to learning Drupal — once you've built your first site, throw it away and use what you've learned to build it again correctly. There were a few times along the way that I thought this about our Magento development process as there is certainly a learning curve and a 'right way' to architect it.

Now that we've launched, I've certainly got no regrets about choosing Magento as an ecommerce platform, and I'm looking forward to everything we can do to expand and enhance it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer2040081

Technical Architect at a consumer goods company with 51-200 employees

Apr 4, 2023

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A powerful and scalable platform for developing e-commerce websites

Pros and Cons

"The platform provides an easy way to customize its features."

"The product needs to improve its security. Also, they need to improve B2B features."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution for mainly B2C e-commerce. We use the product to develop e-commerce websites.

What is most valuable?

The platform provides an easy way to customize its features.

What needs improvement?

The product needs to improve its security. Also, they need to improve B2B features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The platform is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. My company is big and we have plans to increase the platform’s usage.

How are customer service and support?

I have no issues with the tool’s tech support.

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s setup is not complex. It’s just like any regular platform implementation. The number of people required for the platform’s implementation depends on the size of the project.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI with the solution’s use.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. Magento is a powerful platform with many options for customization. It is a competitive platform compared to other similar products. Before making a decision with Magento, you need to investigate other platforms. You need to choose a platform depending on your needs and industry type.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user11025

VP of Development at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Oct 7, 2013

Hosting Magento Enterprise on AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most popular and robust Cloud Hosting Infrastructure. Millions of sites and some of Internet’s most popular sites, portals and eCommerce Sites run on Amazon.

Deploying Magento Enterprise on AWS for serving millions of users and a large catalog size would require a deeper understanding of Magento and AWS.

This article talks about the architecture and points to consider while deploying Magento Enterprise on AWS.

The diagram below shows a recommended minimum architecture to deploy Magento for High Concurrent Traffic.

Given the architecture above the following points / settings need to be considered while setting up the servers

Make your App Servers Stateless:
What this essentially means is ensure that none of the user specific information like sessions, shopping bag contents etc are not stored on the server. The sessions storage must be moved to the DB or Memcache. This will allow you to easily add or remove an app server, without the online users getting logged out out or losing their shopping basket contents.
Do not enable sticky sessions on the Load Balancer:
A load balancer is usually programmed to re-direct users to the app servers on a round robin method. However if sticky sessions are enabled then the load balancer will direct all traffic from one user to that one single server where his session is created. While this works fine in most cases, there could be scenarios where the users connected to one server would be more active than the ones on the other, this would lead to an overload of one server while the other is relatively low on load. This would obviously affect the response times for users connected on the loaded server.
Ensure that the Media Folder is stored in an S3 bucket and it served via Cloud Front.
I’ve seen many deployments where the media folder, which contains all the product images and other static content is being duplicated across the multiple app servers and is being rsynched each time a change happens. This is not ideal as the replication take times and while users would be able to see the images, the other would not be able to. The ideal way is to have the media folder on a S3 bucket and have it served via Cloud Front (CDN) so that the images are served from the nearest node.
Put your CSS and JS also on CloudFront:
Well that’s a no brainer, all static content should be served out of cloudfront. Don’t forget to concatenate, merge and minify the JS and CSS files. Magento is notorious to have 12-16 different JS files. in their default and Enterprise themes.
Enable IOPS for your RDS database:
Relational Database Service (RDS) is usually the most preferred way to get your MySQL on AWS. RDS will make it really easy for you to get your database in Master Slave mode, and schedule automated data backups. However RDS can turn out to be a bottle neck when it comes to high read writes to the DB which Magento does a lot. This is because the RDS is essentially stored on a SAN which comes with its own latency problems. The one way to overcome that is to enable IOPS for RDS to make sure the app servers can read and write data to the RDS database sufficiently fast.
CPU over RAM:
Magento users a lot more CPU than it uses RAM, so while choosing an Instance try and go for one that gives you more CPU power than RAM.
Use Memcache:
User a Memcache server this will significantly improve the sites performance. Also importantly ensure you have a bank of memcache servers running and have it properly configured in Magento, else your memecache server can become a single point of failure.
Use Nginix instead of Apache:
During most of our load tests, we notice the web servers being overworked most of the time and using most of the CPU power. Nginx has a much smaller foot print as compared to Apache and can server a significantly higher number of concurrent users than Apache.
Varnish can be a double edged sword:
Many architects think simply throwing in a reverse proxy like varnish before the app servers will help boost performance, that’s quite wrong. Putting Varnish in front of Magento Enterprise with full page caches on can actually be counter productive especially if Varnish is configured to server only images and static content. In many scenarios its actually good not to use APC instead of Varnish to improve speeds.
Disable xDebug:
xDebug comes default within the Magento Installation and is quite useful for debugging the application during development. However it will slow down the site while running in production mode. Significant performance benefits can be achieved by disabling xDebug in Magento.

With the above configurations we’ve been able to have our Magento Enterprise Portals server 50+Million visitors with under 5 seconds of page load times during peak loads.

Disclaimer: The company I work for is partners with several vendors

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user2721

IT Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 15, 2012

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Magento is the best open source, fully-featured eCommerce platform which can be tailored to fit your needs

Valuable Features:

・ Comprehensive and feature rich ecommerce platform : Magento is generally considered to be the most advanced e-commerce program available in the market. This means that if your business has some complex needs that must be met, Magento is probably the platform that will be able to do it. ・ Open Source : One of the biggest advantages of using Magento is that it is an open source program. With an open source code such as this, it makes it possible for you to modify the platform to fit your needs. ・ Community : Magento has a large community of developers, users, and providers. Since it is an open source project backed up by a huge community, it has gone through a number of upgrades over the years ・ Integration : Magento can easily be integrated into many other third-party resources.

Room for Improvement:

・ Very Complex : Although having a lot of features with your e-commerce site may be nice, the Magento platform is very complex. Because of this, it may be difficult to figure out how to use it. ・ Not Many Good Developers : Because of the complexities of the platform, there aren’t really that many good developers in the industry. Good Magento developers are difficult to find. If you are in the market for a developer, you may have a hard time finding someone who can meet your needs ・ Needs the Right Environment : Magento has to be hosted in the perfect environment to work properly.Since it is such a big and complex platform, it needs to be hosted on a good server.People who are using Magento first time, will find it difficult to install on a server and setup properly.Magento is an open-source platform that makes it possible to create a fully-functional e-commerce site.I have installed myself the Magento couple of times and to be frank it is not easy to install, but it works flawlessly once it is installed successfully.

Other Advice:

Magento is on the top of the list of preferred eCommerce solution globally. More and more companies now prefer Magento as their eCommerce platform when it comes to using open source eCommerce solution. It's used by 30,000 merchants and is the world’s fastest growing eCommerce platform.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Feb 24, 2013

Magento also supports various shopping addresses for the online shopper's convenience within a single transaction.

reviewer1553469

Digital Strategy Consultant at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

May 20, 2021

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Plenty of analytics, integrates social media, and customization

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature in this solution I have found to be that I have the ability to find all the analytics that I need. It has very good integrations with social media platforms and other tools."

"The analytics are good but there is room for improvement. There are some limitations due to new regulations causing customer data time delays."

What is our primary use case?

My clients use this solution for an e-commerce platform, mostly for retail.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature in this solution I have found to be that I have the ability to find all the analytics that I need. It has very good integrations with social media platforms and other tools. From the client's point of view, it is customizable, it has high performance, you can find a lot of tools and install them, and the developers are happy with it too.

What needs improvement?

The analytics are good but there is room for improvement. There are some limitations due to new regulations causing customer data time delays.

In a future release, I would like the solution to be easier to find tools. If you are new to using it, it can be difficult. Additionally, there could be some additional training material available.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable even when you have a large product catalog.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My clients have found when it comes to scalability the solution can expand well. I had one client who created his own plugins for the solution. It is similar to an open-source platform. The solution is geared more towards larger product-sized companies. I would not recommend it for those having more than 1000 products. However, it does operate well for all-size companies.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This solution is cheaper than some of its competitors. However, the price depends on which country you are in. In some countries, such as Greece or some Southeastern European countries, the price for the client can be expensive. If you look at the center of North America and the North European countries, I think the price is very reasonable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated Shopify.

What other advice do I have?

I think it is one of the best e-commerce platforms right now along with Shopify.

I rate Magento an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementor