The world of e-commerce has embraced advanced technology in a big way. This has helped enhance the reliability and flexibility of online stores. Within a short span of time, most online stores have experienced a sharp rise in their sales figures, which has prompted them to look for the better e-commerce platform.
Many businesses have swiftly switched to the Magento platform for several reasons like strong admin management capacity, lots of customization options, SEO friendly features, prompt checkout, mobile friendliness and much more. If you have already chosen Magento theme then here’s some great news for you!
Magento has launched its 2.0 version with two distinct editions i.e. Magento Community and Magento Enterprise. While they both support all the existing features but each has some uniqueness of its own. This, however, poses some problems for users who just can’t decide which one of the two editions to pick up to fulfil their online store requirements.
Here we take a look at 7 important points which should be considered while choosing between the Magento 2 Community and the Enterprise editions.
1. Cost
The Magento 2 Community edition can be installed for free. The prime cost involved though is the development cost for which you need to hire an expert Magento developer. The Enterprise edition, on the other hand, is quite expensive as it costs around $15,000 or more, a year.
2. Visitors / Users a Month
The community edition is typically advised for small businesses or online stores that expect footfalls below 50,000 visitors a month. The Enterprise edition is best suited for medium to large sized enterprises that expect more than 25,000 visitors each month.
3.Business Volume
The Enterprise edition comes with lots of useful features that aim at controlling bigger business volume/transactions. It allows maintenance of separate master databases for products, orders, and checkouts. You get the deferred stock update and much more. To maintain a similar high volume store with the Community edition, you need to add extensions separately at an extra cost.
4.Built-in Features
With EE you get to enjoy a whole range of integral features like:
- Preparation of Product wish list,
- Generation of Gifts and reward points
- Categorization of products by SKU
- Setting up promotions for special events/occasions
- Multiple payment gateways
- Creation of customized mobile shopping apps with special software kit
- And much more
Similar features and functions can be incorporated into the Community edition by adding and customizing third-party extensions. Any competent Magento developer can design and customize necessary plug-ins matching the business needs and budget.
5. Admin Management Flexibility
There are several admin features that you get with EE like advanced permission, multiple team member support, seamless return management, easy system reporting along with lots of backend management features. These are not available in the Community Edition.
6. Security
CE does not support credit card tokenization either it offers secured payment gateways as needed for banking transactions. The Enterprise edition, however, offers a separate platform or payment bridge which is PA-DSS certified. It meets all necessary safety standards as set up by the banking and credit card industries.
7. Promotional Activities
The Enterprise edition offers multiple marketing and promotion options to target specific customer groups. You can set up campaigns after analyzing the order history, wish lists and shopping cart contents. You can even target new customers based on their product browsing trends! Such features are totally absent in the Community Edition.
Magento makes for a profitable e-commerce platform, provided you use it the right way. If in doubt, always consult certified Magento experts to get optimized solutions matching your online business needs.
