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.
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.
