The question of Magento Community vs Magento Enterprise confuses a lot of new Magento merchants. Most get fixated on the price, with Community being free and Enterprise coming with a large price tag.
But is that the only thing one should consider? Probably not. While most Web 2 Market clients use the CE edition, some clients absolutely require the EE edition. Here are two quick lists that will help you make the decision quickly.
Do I choose Door A or Door B?
Magento Community vs Magento Enterprise
Why Magento Community (CE)?
- First of all, it is free; you just can’t beat the price.
- More than 3,000 extensions are available
- It is designed for small and medium owners.
- Handles 10,000 visitors per month with less than 500 orders.
- Install Responsive Designer themes without messing up the core code files.
- Setup payment modes like Credit Card transactions, PayPal and PayPal Express, Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, Money Order, Checks etc.
- Set up Shipping Rules for Free Shipping, Ship by Weight, Flat Rates etc.
- Integrate Shipping Options like USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL etc.
- Setup Tax Rates per location.
- Setup more than one store in many languages and local currency or retail and wholesale sites.
- Single admin interface to monitor and maintain the stores.
- Persistent Shopping Cart.
- Layered Navigation for filtering products in categories and search results.
- Manual cross sell and up sell of products.
- Setup promos and coupons using the Pricing Rules.
- Web Services API to connect with 3rd Party software.
- In addition, the ability to edit customer info.
- Create newsletter subs and Polls.
- Bulk upload products and images.
- Create virtual, download and digital products.
- Create single, configurable (size, color, brand), Bundled and Grouped Products.
- Full page Caching for quicker loading time of the page.
- Auto-generated site map and Google site map (XML) so search engines can index all the pages.
- Create search friendly URLs.
- Add keyword rich Page Titles and Meta Description.
- Allow Gift Messages.
- 24 x 7 x 365 Customer Support.
- Finally, it includes Google Analytics links.
Why Magento Enterprise (EE)?
- To start with, it includes all the above Magento Community Features.
- Caters to large scale merchants.
- More than 3,000 extensions are available
- It runs fast with more than 3,000,000 products in a store.
- Accommodates more than 50,000 visitors per month with orders over 1,000 per day.
- Scales so that the high traffic load is spread over several servers.
- In addition, fast indexing of Large Catalogs.
- Instantaneous update of price and new products.
- Quick and easy Rollback System so mistakes are easy to correct.
- Gift Wrapping for certain products.
- Gift Registry.
- Privileged Private Sales function.
- Loyalty Programs.
- Store Credit and Gift cards.
- Restricted Permissions Access and Login for admins on per site basis.
- Built in Returns Management System so you have fewer customer service calls.
- Automated cross sell and up sell for selling more products.
- Advanced Tax Management according to Zones, States and Country so you can sell in any country.
- Finally, a personalized Shopping Experience with Customer Segments.
Magento Community vs Magento Enterprise
In conclusion, which is best? Generally, we’ll recommend EE for clients with higher volumes of traffic and/or large numbers of products. However, there are other factors to consider as well. In doubt? Talk with one of our Magento Certified Solutions Specialists.