Adobe Commerce launched as a cloud-based service earlier in 2019, solidifying Adobe's position as a leader in digital experience. Forrester acknowledged Adobe as a top performer on Digital Asset Management for 2022 Forrester Wave; Gartner named Adobe as a leader for the Digital Commerce category again - marking six consecutive years they lead this category!
Adobe users and Magento enthusiasts will relish the enhanced shopping experience that Adobe Commerce and Magento bring across industries and channels. Learn what Adobe Commerce can do if it fits your business objectives, and how it compares against other ecommerce platforms.
What Is Magento?
Magento was released as an open-source PHP ecommerce platform in 2007 for developers to download and add their modules for customization of functionality enhancement. Magento has always offered both free versions of its platform: Community Edition and Enterprise Edition - paid versions that contain additional features and functionalities. Magento Commerce Cloud was initially available only as an on-premises product.
Adobe purchased Magento in 2005 when Magento Community became Adobe Commerce. Magento Open Source remains available so merchants and developers may continue customizing and self-hosting their ecommerce solutions.
Open Source Vs. Adobe Commerce
Magento Open Source is an open-source version of Adobe Commerce - their premium counterpart - providing users with an ideal basis to launch an e-commerce store online. Both platforms share some similarities, but each has distinct qualities to help create successful eCommerce stores.
Both versions provide responsive web experiences across devices, payment options, checkouts, shipping capabilities, and site administration features. Magento Open Source delivers enough functionality for building an ecommerce store; however, there may be restrictions. Adobe Commerce is an advanced cloud platform offering B2B Suite, ElasticSearch, CMS capabilities, custom shipping options, and other advanced cloud features.
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Adobe Commerce Pricing
Adobe Commerce follows a licensing model similar to Magento Enterprise Edition; pricing for Adobe Commerce depends upon your company size, projected annual turnover, and yearly gross revenue projections.
Your store requires either an agency or an in-house team of developers to design, deliver, and manage its Adobe Commerce site - the cost will depend upon its complexity, features, integrations, and average order value. Building at an enterprise scale should take 6-8 months with an approximate budget of $500,000.
The Benefits Of Adobe Commerce
Flexibility
Magento remains one of the most versatile ecommerce platforms available; Adobe Commerce provides another, more versatile alternative that can be utilized across various scenarios.
Adobe Commerce stands out as being more flexible than Magento by providing external services and making use of APIs; custom modules used to be developed within Magento itself, which could impede system performance issues; now, with Adobe Commerce, you can build modules outside and sync them via APIs for modularity purposes.
Power And Efficiency At The Back End
Adobe Commerce features an intelligent backend capable of hosting thousands of SKUs while auto-adjusting for high traffic volumes, accommodating various business models seamlessly, and automating front and back-end processes using AI workflows and built-in extensions to increase operational efficiencies. Strong backends make an ideal foundation for any headless or composable project.
Omnichannel Commerce
Adobe Commerce makes managing multiple brands, channels, and sites (including hybrid B2C/B2B shops ) simple and cost-efficient from a single backend. Reach any audience seamlessly using best-of-breed tools and infrastructure; your team can reduce manual tasks while offering their customers relevant engagement options that maximize efficiency and reduce manual processes. Adobe Omnichannel capabilities are ideal for businesses operating multiple languages, stores, channels, and physical locations.
B2b Integration
Adobe gives your B2B customers the ability to manage their accounts in a frictionless manner.
Adobe B2B Suite includes the following:
- Customer Portal
- Multiple levels of buyers can be set up with different roles and permissions
- Orders and Quotes Tracking
- Set purchase approval rules
- Manage your credit
- Catalogs with content and pricing that are tailored to the customer and targeted content.
- Quick order forms
- Upload lists of SKUs
- Save shopping lists
- Request quotes
- Seller assisted shopping
- Limitless Scalability
Speed-to-market
Adobe Commerce comes equipped with features out-of-the-box that will give your store agility. Speed is key when introducing a new product, restructuring an organization, or entering new markets; digital commerce relies heavily on speed for success in staying ahead of competition and growing revenue streams.
Adobe Commerce allows your team to focus on strategic development and innovation without spending unnecessary time implementing changes. Customize customer experiences quickly without spending your day planning new implementation efforts.
Magento boasts an expansive ecosystem of developers, experts, and partners; Adobe Commerce boasts a vast partner community but lacks experience at mid-tier/lower tier levels compared to Magento, although more partners exist at enterprise levels. You have access to an entire ecosystem of Magento experts ready and waiting to assist your project with our expertise in all development tiers and beyond.
Headless compatibility
As one of the most pliable platforms available, Adobe is an excellent foundational element in building hybrid or headless approaches. Here's why:
Magento began by supporting extensions and modules within its application while slowly adopting its headless architecture design, now enabling clients to connect their front end directly to an external CMS and run it.
Magento also provides seamless integrations for catalog, product information management (PIM), search capabilities, and more. Adobe Commerce makes an ideal modular choice, as its external functionality, tools, and services scale with your build. Numerous clients have successfully utilized its robust backend in headless or composable solutions.
Also Read: Why Magento Ecommerce Development is the Best Option for Startups
Does Adobe Commerce Work For My Business?
Adobe Commerce is an ideal ecommerce solution for medium to large-sized companies who need an established, user-friendly ecommerce solution that's both fluid, extendable, and flexible - three hallmarks that set Adobe Commerce apart.
Adobe Commerce stands out as an open and feature-packed e-commerce platform that seamlessly ties in with supporting technologies to deliver an adaptable or headless approach. There are no limitations or constraints attached to Adobe Commerce as other ecommerce platforms do: you have complete freedom over how it's deployed on any domain or environment you choose from this powerful tool!
Adobe Commerce provides an ideal, modular approach that is best-of-breed while being adaptable and agile enough to easily expand into new markets, technologies, and channels. With Adobe Commerce as your platform, you can grow quickly into new markets while adding composable agile delivery engines later if necessary. Adobe Commerce can be an ideal option for small businesses or startups needing extensive storefront customization.
Why Did Adobe Buy Magento?
Adobe's 2018 acquisition of Magento was expected, given its position among enterprise ecommerce software leaders such as IBM, Oracle, and SAP. Their purchase made sense given Adobe EUR(tm's) recent investments in marketing automation products like Gainsight, as well as competition among major software vendors to get embedded within large organizations with integrated suites of their own. Adobe intended to improve its enterprise offerings, while Magento was an independent e-commerce leader.
What Has Adobe Been Up To Since Purchasing Magento?
Adobe allowed Magento to remain independent for at least the initial year after purchasing them with an expanded marketing and sales team. Adobe wants Magento's flexibility and extensibility within e-commerce to remain. No disruption of this huge community that has grown over ten years is intended, and no changes (at least at this stage) to Open Source software development are designed either.
Magento Open Source can provide the ideal starting point for merchants who require customization and flexibility regarding their e-commerce storefronts. As one of the world's most widely adopted e-commerce systems, it has quickly become one of the go-to solutions for startups with complex business requirements or integrations requiring customizations or modifications. Adobe, looking to rival Salesforce.com and Oracle in terms of enterprise marketing suite market share gain, has established Magento Commerce as its go-to choice - linking this platform directly with new Adobe Marketing Suite products via API links now embedded directly within Magento Commerce itself.
The Focus of 2018 was placed on exploring and understanding Magento 2 features, functionality, and value proposition.
- Magento Commerce Cloud offers native B2B functionality that enables an enterprise to build a unified commerce experience (one platform that serves both B2C and B2B transactions).
- Magento 2 stands out as an upgrade over Magento 1 in terms of customer and administrator experiences and integration ease, quality extensions, and content management features. These enhancements include improved checkout experiences, themes, and reporting features. Furthermore, integration capabilities provide greater comfort, and reporting functions simplify writing for administrators.
- Magento 2 is an engine for global business growth with features to enable localization and do business abroad. It also has the features and extensibility required to grow a business.
- Magento 2 is the most powerful platform for global and complex ecommerce. It is customizable but has all the power and convenience of SaaS thanks to its Magento Commerce Cloud PaaS offering (platform as service).
- The strong MagentoaEUR(tm) partnership program allows 3rd-party technologies to easily integrate with the platform: CRM, ESP, and ERP, just about any type of software.
- Adobe is ready to help Magento! Imagine (the Annual Magento User Conference) will only get bigger under Adobe!
What Do We Predict Adobe Will Do With Magento Next?
Adobe and Magento plan to focus their 2019 efforts on several initiatives related to Experience Cloud:
- Adobe will change its name to Adobe Magento Commerce or something similar.
- Adobe will place Magento in the suite of Experience Cloud Products (Marketo is a key product that was acquired recently) and emphasize the benefits merchants can reap if they adopt the platform and decide to run their business on the Adobe Experience Cloud.
- Adobe offers discounts to Magento Cloud users on other Adobe Experience Cloud Products
- Imagine (the annual Adobe conference) will take place simultaneously with Adobe Imagine.
- Magento's feature set will be expanded to include more B2B features, and companies can engage in expansion plans, including unified commerce.
- Magento will continue to move up in the Gartner Magic Quadrant;
- Magento 2 will grow exponentially with the aEURoesunsettingaEURof Magento 1. They will also add entry-level prices for smaller companies, which will allow Magento 2 to compete further in the SMB B2B marketplace;
- Adobe Sensei, the AI engine of the company, will be integrated into the Magento feature set. The Magento feature set will be able to offer enhanced personalization, as well as several automated functions for customer behavior management.
Magento And Adobe Have Joined Forces
Companies cannot afford to become complacent in an oversaturated and highly competitive market, both mom-and-pop stores and Fortune 500s. Constant innovation is important across industries, yet even Goliaths could fail without adapting.
Mergers and acquisitions provide major players with a powerful way of adhering to this philosophy of constantly optimizing their products.
Adobe, the multinational software company, follows this business strategy too. Over its 35-year history, they have acquired more than 25 companies to establish themselves as major players in tech. Adobe expanded its product lineup further in 2018 when it bought Magento's successful ecommerce platform at $ 1.68 billion for further expansion in product offerings.
We will explore the motivations for and benefits of Adobe Magento integration to consumers. Magento was released as an open-source, free ecommerce platform in 2008. Since its debut, Magento has proven an immense success within the ecommerce sector - particularly since they were one of the first commerce technologies available to all merchants and sellers alike. They aimed to give merchants an accessible yet flexible and innovative platform to sell their goods or services - something their team accomplished and more!
Since its debut, Magento has quickly established itself as the go-to e-commerce solution for small and midsize businesses.
What Does The Adobe-Magento Integration Mean?
Adobe saw Magento's platform and Adobe's marketing platform as being compatible and saw its combination as being worth $1.68 billion to expand reach while creating more effective ways of selling products online.
Adobe and Magento understood that cooperation would be required to compete against Google and Amazon, according to Magento CEO Mark Lavelle: "You need a platform which not only offers technology and feature functionality but also has this living and breathing environment of data which learns and provides intelligence back into your product to make your job simpler."
Magento was determined to give their clients access to scaling capabilities, knowing this feat wouldn't be possible without Adobe. Both businesses have expanded their capabilities and product offerings by integrating Adobe Commerce-powered Magento suite tools, naturally leading to an incremental price hike but providing both small and large brands significant advantages in marketing their brand online.
Expanding Adobe's capabilities
Adobe Experience Cloud will integrate Magento Commerce Cloud into the Adobe Acquisition. Adobe previously had no native commerce solution despite owning or partnering with numerous ecommerce stores.
Magento's commerce platform could bridge that chasm. Furthermore, its various unique features surpassed just being an ecommerce system - these included an innovative shipping platform allowing retailers to offer same-day, overnight, and next-day shipping; back office systems to manage orders, product catalogs, content configurations, and carriers as well as managing multiple pages effectively; among many more features.
Adobe can utilize these features to gain an advantage over competing enterprise platforms like Shopify. As per Adobe: Magento extends Adobe Experience Cloud's digital commerce capabilities with order orchestration across industries, including consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, wholesale, manufacturing, and public sectors...[it offers thousands of prebuilt extensions such as payment processing, shipping, and tax]."
Magento gives businesses the power to easily expand operations quickly. Scalability becomes possible thanks to Magento.
Extending Magento's Capabilities
Magneto has long seen increased demand from enterprises operating within diverse industries like entertainment, financial services, insurance and retail. They could meet these business requirements by partnering with Adobe, an organization known for its strong brand presence and advanced technological offerings.
Adobe and Magento Commerce have come to an agreement that will see Magento Commerce transformed into Adobe Commerce Cloud to capitalize on Adobe's brand. The merger provides the customer base with an all-encompassing marketing and commerce solution without being dependent on third-party tools like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla for marketing or commerce needs.
Magento's cloud-based commerce platform is now compatible with Adobe Analytics Cloud, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and Adobe Advertising Cloud - providing access to powerful ecommerce dashboards and AI. In addition, Amazon Marketplace and API integration are now possible via Magento's commerce solution.
Also Read: Magento Website Development Cost: Affordable & Flexibility
How Has Magento Supported Ecommerce Merchants?
We've seen how the Magento-Adobe merger can benefit businesses. Consider these three case studies:
Kate Somerville
Kate Somerville Skin Care Line, founded on science-backed treatments and products developed with medical science for over twenty years, required relaunching to reflect this philosophy with new web designs that reflect her goal to improve customer service, ratings for products as well as enhance shopping experiences for their consumers.
Step one was switching platforms and adopting Adobe Commerce (Magento). This extremely scalable platform allowed sales channels to accelerate at an impressively rapid rate. Amazon Web Service added even greater functionality and infrastructure support to this solution.
At checkout, our primary objective was to improve customer experience. Utilizing Magento's customization key features, we added a vector image of Kate Somerville Clinic Bag as the shopping basket - giving online presence customers an enhanced shopping experience and the appearance that they were communicating directly with a real person! Furthermore, wishlist items and upsells could now be managed in their carts. Kate's team can access all the latest updates to software, infrastructure, and functionality with Magento. Her website will easily handle spikes during holidays or sales and scale to meet demand.
Aspen Medical
Aspen Medical, an innovator of spinal brace design that aids patients' healing processes while simultaneously improving outcomes, was dissatisfied with their website. This primarily content-centric website relied heavily on phone sales for sales transactions. They sought a B2B experience fostering stronger engagement at every point in the customer journey. They wanted something better to help enhance it.
Ecommerce system requirements included handling current demand and scaling to accommodate future growth. Our migration of their site from Joomla to Adobe Magento enabled them to make this switch seamlessly from their previous Joomla-only environment; working closely with IT and Marketing departments ensured Magento addressed any UX concerns related to product displays.
Magento allows us to make modifications that provide customized advanced features, including B2B ecommerce functionality logged-in for each client, improved client management key features, and multiple user experience placing orders within a client profile.
T3 micro
T3 Micro has an innovative business model. Combining tech startups with beauty styling services, T3 has attempted since its 2003 debut to reinvent women's hair styling experiences through revolutionary hair techniques and innovations. Their website should reflect this brand ethos as part of an identity project for their website development team.
Although some sites had previously utilized Magento, their versions varied considerably. We decided to consolidate all 13 into one codebase using Magento 2 and create a customized checkout process, which not only increased conversion rates but also provided customers with an improved journey.
After conducting interviews and performing advanced analytics, we utilized Magento page builders for an impressive redesign project. The client desired something modern yet minimalist to showcase their premium products to appeal to sophisticated customers, therefore creating an elevated yet accessible brand experience.
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Conclusion
Since Adobe acquired Magento in 2013, the market has experienced dramatic transformation. Now is an opportune time to switch over, particularly if your ecommerce business is experiencing rapid expansion and complexity. Adobe may continue to encourage their Experience Cloud integration; however, Magento remains popular enough that many new online merchants opt for it first as their commerce or PaaS architecture.
