Adobe Commerce Review: Is it Right for You? Features, Pros, Cons

Written by

Darren DeMatas

Updated

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Written by

Darren DeMatas

Updated

Reviewed By Our team of writers and content creators are experts in ecommerce and we fact-check every claim in our work to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date. (Learn about our editorial guidelines.).

In addition to receiving commissions generated through affiliate marketing, we are able to fund our independent research and reviews at no extra cost to our readers. Learn more.

Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento is one of the top options for running a store online in the United States, though it is growing in popularity around the world. Available as an open-source, self-hosted platform and a hosted platform, it works for any level of comfort with technology.

Product
Summary
Ratings
Robust and Feature Rich
Strong SEO
1-Click Selling Apps Available
Pricey Themes
Easily Slowed Down
Requires Development Skills
Value 3.5
Features 4.4
Performance 2.8
Ease of Use 2.2
Design & Themes 3.7
Integrations 3.6
3.4
Overall Score
User Rating
3.8
10 reviews

This Adobe Commerce review will uncover more about the features, pricing, pros, and cons. We’ll also help you decide between the self-hosted version of Adobe Commerce and the hosted version.

What to Consider Before Choosing an Ecommerce Platform

No matter where you are in your ecommerce journey, the key is to find the right platform for your needs. Investing in one only to find it doesn’t meet your needs is a headache – because migrating from your current ecommerce platform to another option means more money and lost sales while you make the transition.

Doing your research ahead of time can help save you time and effort.

Overall
User Ratings
Best For
Pricing
Pricing Based On
Payment Gateways
Additional Transaction Fees
Value
Features
Performance
Ease of Use
Design & Themes
Integrations
Adobe Commerce
Overall : 3.4
User Ratings :
3.0 (10 votes)
Best For : Custom development
Pricing : Free + Hosting/Apps
Pricing Based On : Build + Features
Payment Gateways : 100+
Additional Transaction Fees : None
Value : 3.5
Features : 4.4
Performance : 2.8
Ease of Use : 2.2
Design & Themes : 3.7
Integrations : 3.6
Woocommerce
Overall : 4.0
User Ratings :
4.0 (3 votes)
Best For : Content driven brands, small to medium stores.
Pricing : Free (Hosting Not Included)
Pricing Based On : Hosting, Features, Extensions
Payment Gateways : 100+
Additional Transaction Fees : None
Value : 4.5
Features : 3.9
Performance : 3.1
Ease of Use : 3.3
Design & Themes : 4.3
Integrations : 4.1
Shopify
Overall : 4.2
User Ratings :
4.0 (28 votes)
Best For : Drop shipping, print on demand, small stores, boutiques, brick and mortar.
Pricing : $29 - $299
Pricing Based On : Features, User Accounts, Transaction Fees
Payment Gateways : 100+
Additional Transaction Fees : 0 - 2%
Value : 4.0
Features : 3.8
Performance : 3.9
Ease of Use : 4.9
Design & Themes : 4.0
Integrations : 4.6

When choosing the right platform for your ecommerce business, you need to consider a variety of factors such as:

  • Your budget
  • Level of technical expertise
  • How well the features support your chosen business model
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) options
  • Features
  • Scalability
  • The presence of an integrated blog
  • And more.

Adobe Commerce Overview

Online Selling Platform Magento Commerce 1

Adobe Commerce was first released in 2008. First acquired by eBay and then sold to Adobe, the platform handles $100 billion+ in annual gross merchandise volume.

Adobe Commerce powers over 200,000 websites online today. The main software is recommended for experienced developers. It’s best suited to medium-sized and enterprise-level businesses with large websites with a budget for development. With Adobe Commerce extensions from the Adobe Marketplace, it is possible to customize your Adobe Commerce store to whatever you need. The Adobe Commerce community is available to support your endeavor.

Adobe Commerce Cost and Pricing

The self-hosted version offers a free, entry-level, open-source plan. You will need to purchase hosting on your own, with features strong enough to support your Adobe Commerce website.

You will still need to pay for your web hosting, but you have more control over what you spend. While shared hosting is the cheapest, it’s not the best hosting for ecommerce stores, so we recommend you at least opt for a virtual private server or managed hosting. Some companies like Nexcess offer managed hosting to make things easier for you.

The Adobe Commerce Cloud, or Enterprise version, comes with a hefty price tag. The pricing isn’t made publicly available on the website – you have to fill out a form for a custom quote. We’ve heard reports of pricing ranging from $15K to $50K per year, making it unaffordable for small businesses. There are other ecommerce platforms out there better suited for startups and small operations.

Payment Gateways and Transaction Fees

Adobe Commerce itself doesn’t charge any fees for transactions. You will still have transaction fees based on the payment gateways you choose to accept payments with.

Adobe Commerce Features and Plans

1-Click Upsells
Landing Page Builder
Abandoned Cart Email
Digital Products
Personalized Products
Product Export/Import
Product Search
Ratings & Reviews
Real Time Shipping Rates/Tracking
Reward Points
SEO Tools
Subscription/Recurring
Zoomable Product Images
Upselling & Cross Selling
Community Edition
1-Click Upsells :
Landing Page Builder :
Abandoned Cart Email :
Digital Products :
Personalized Products :
Product Export/Import :
Product Search :
Ratings & Reviews :
Real Time Shipping Rates/Tracking :
Reward Points :
SEO Tools :
Subscription/Recurring :
Zoomable Product Images :
Upselling & Cross Selling :

Adobe Commerce Features

Adobe Commerce has quite an impressive feature list – and it’s hard to beat. A lot of what’s available as a premium feature or missing altogether in other ecommerce solutions can be found in Adobe Commerce. And what you don’t have natively, you can surely find in a Adobe Commerce extension. Core features include:

  • Inventory management
  • API for web services
  • Support for multiple languages
  • Blogging features
  • Built-in SEO features
  • Mobile responsive and optimized
  • Customer segmentation with groups
  • Multiple options to accept payments, one-click payments
  • Built-in Marketing tools and advanced marketing features
  • Built-in customer loyalty tools
  • Product bundles
  • Easily handle shipping charges and shipping estimates
  • Newsletter management
  • Coupon management
  • Site management
  • Customer service
  • Gift cards
  • Guest checkouts
  • Custom checkout

If you need something that’s not already part of the Adobe Commerce platform for your store, there’s a network of more than 5,000 extensions to use across your Adobe Commerce stores. The Enterprise version offers more advanced features and Enterprise-grade tools.

Adobe Commerce Integrations and Plans

Amazon 2 Way Sync
Amazon Checkout
Amazon FBA Integration
Fulfillment Center Integration
Drop Shipping Integration
Ebay 2-Way Sync
Facebook Sync
Google Ecommerce Analytics
Google Product Data Feed
Review Snippet Structured Data
Email Marketing Automation
Paypal Checkout
Printing On Demand Integration
USPS Integration
WordPress Integration
User Generated Content Automation
Community Edition
Amazon 2 Way Sync :
Amazon Checkout :
Amazon FBA Integration :
Fulfillment Center Integration :
Drop Shipping Integration :
Ebay 2-Way Sync :
Facebook Sync :
Google Ecommerce Analytics :
Google Product Data Feed :
Review Snippet Structured Data :
Email Marketing Automation :
Paypal Checkout :
Printing On Demand Integration :
USPS Integration :
WordPress Integration :
User Generated Content Automation :

Selling Online with Adobe Commerce

Using Adobe Commerce with or without advanced extensions makes it easy to sell online. You’ll have everything you need with the Community Edition, such as catalog management, order management, customer accounts, and customer service.

Additional features with the Enterprise Edition include customer segmentation, gift registry, returns management authorization (RMA), and more. While these EE features are impressive, if your business generates less than $1 million in annual revenue, it’s likely cost-prohibitive to use the platform.

Adobe Commerce Designs and Themes

Adobe Commerce doesn’t offer any themes or designs for your website. You have to work with a third party or design the responsive theme yourself. If you’re not a coder or design expert, designing your own Adobe Commerce theme from scratch is a massive undertaking. The good news, you can find an affordable developer to help you with custom theme creation.

You can browse the catalog in Adobe Commerce Connect to find theme designers and developers. Alternatively, you can visit the ThemeForest marketplace to scope out premade Adobe Commerce themes or look for a third-party theme generator to help you out.

Ease of Use

Once you have everything set up, the Adobe Commerce interface is fairly simple to use. The open-source platform means you have more control over the features and customizations you use on your site, but it also means you have to develop your own support strategy. If you’re not a technical expert with experience with PHP, you may find it more difficult to use – but that’s where managed hosting can come in to help.

Adobe Commerce U is available to help people learn how to use the platform. There’s an extensive knowledge base available to help you address issues.

Adobe Commerce Alternatives

WooCommerce

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that turns your WordPress website into an ecommerce store. It is the best platform for SEO and is the ideal choice for WordPress experts. There are a ton of service providers for people who need help with managing their websites, too.

A drawback to WooCommerce is that it can be difficult to troubleshoot. Many features require additional plugins and extensions, increasing your overall business operation expenses. Most WooCommerce extensions are charged annually rather than a one-time fee. Still, while it’s not quite as feature intensive as Adobe Commerce, it offers extensive features for great flexibility.

Like the Adobe Commerce ecosystem, WordPress and WooCommerce are open-source and free, but you need to invest in a quality hosting provider to make the most of your experience.

If you’re not already familiar with WordPress, you may need to hire experts to help you. You can, of course, take the time to learn things yourself, but this will slow down your growth and progress. If you’re willing to learn to save yourself money, think about how this will affect your launch timeline and operations.

Product
Summary
Ratings
Woocommerce
Woocommerce
Try For Free Review
Best Platform For SEO
1-Click Selling Apps Available
Lots of Service Providers
Hosting Can Be Expensive
Difficult To Troubleshoot
Needs Lots of Extentions
Value 4.5
Features 3.9
Performance 3.1
Ease of Use 3.3
Design & Themes 4.3
Integrations 4.1
4.0
Overall Score
User Rating
4.8
3 reviews

BigCommerce

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a hosted ecommerce platform. It allows you to build your store with little to no technical knowledge or expertise. As one of the most popular platforms on the market today, it powers tens of thousands of stores.

You don’t have to worry about hosting or the technical aspects of running your site, but with that freedom comes losing some control. That is a worthy trade-off for the tech novice or those on a tight budget. You’ll pay a monthly (or annual) subscription fee to use the platform in exchange.

BigCommerce is a great solution for those who need something scalable and flexible. It’s also an ideal choice for multichannel selling. It performs well in search engines but still doesn’t beat WooCommerce in that regard.

That said, BigCommerce does have some issues with inconsistent loading speed. Sometimes, you’ll get a lightning-fast experience, and others, not so much. There are no one-click selling features, and if you’re a high-volume store, you’ll pay more for the platform.

BigCommerce may not be the best solution out there if you’re just getting started, but it is often the best for large and complex product catalogs with a high SKU count.

Product
Summary
Ratings
BigCommerce
BigCommerce
Try For Free Review
Flexible and scalable.
Excels with multi-channel selling.
Strong SEO Performance.
Inconsistent loading speed.
High volume stores pay more.
No 1-Click Selling
Value 4.0
Features 3.9
Performance 4.5
Ease of Use 4.8
Design & Themes 3.8
Integrations 4.2
4.3
Overall Score
User Rating
4.7
27 reviews

Shopify

All In One Commerce Solution Ecommerce Software And Point Of Sale Shopify

Shopify, like BigCommerce, is a user-friendly hosted ecommerce platform that offers decent features. That means you’ll pay a subscription fee for access to the service in exchange for not needing to worry about hosting or technical issues.

It is one of the leading platforms on the market today for sellers of all sizes. Why? Because it’s easy to use, loads fast and is great for a dropshipping business model.

There is some room for improvement as great as Shopify is, though. In terms of SEO performance and content marketing, Shopify lags behind the competition. You cannot customize the checkout experience, which may be a dealbreaker for some users. Many extra features require paid app subscriptions, which could drive your costs up. At first glance, Shopify may look to be the most affordable for your business, but after you add up your monthly app costs, striking out on your own with Adobe Commerce or WooCommerce may be more cost-effective.

Product
Summary
Ratings
Fast Loading & Easy To Use
Excels With Multichannel Sales
1-Click Selling Apps Available
Weak at SEO/Content Marketing
Checkout Not Customizable
Apps Are Expensive
Value 4.0
Features 3.8
Performance 3.9
Ease of Use 4.9
Design & Themes 4.0
Integrations 4.6
4.2
Overall Score
User Rating
4.7
28 reviews

Is Adobe Commerce Right for Your Ecommerce Website?

There’s no doubt Adobe Commerce is a powerful ecommerce platform, but it may not be the best solution for your business. If you don’t have a huge product catalog and are just getting started, it may be too much for your needs.

If you’re not what you’d consider tech-savvy enough to handle development on your own, you’d need a budget to hire a Adobe Commerce developer or to pay for Adobe Commerce support. Depending on your needs, you may need both a frontend developer and a backend developer for expertise.

On the other hand, if you’re an established ecommerce brand, Adobe Commerce has a ton of ecommerce features you may find useful and is easy to scale. It offers a comprehensive solution for enterprise-sized businesses. You can use a migration service to transfer your store to Magento.

Leave Your Adobe Commerce Review

Have you used Adobe Commerce in the past? Do you currently use it to power your online store? Leave your review to help our readers decide what to use for their ecommerce solution.

Product
Summary
Ratings
Robust and Feature Rich
Strong SEO
1-Click Selling Apps Available
Pricey Themes
Easily Slowed Down
Requires Development Skills
Value 3.5
Features 4.4
Performance 2.8
Ease of Use 2.2
Design & Themes 3.7
Integrations 3.6
3.4
Overall Score
User Rating
3.8
10 reviews

About the author

Photo of author
Darren DeMatas
Darren has an MBA in Internet Marketing and 10+ years of experience marketing retail, manufacturing and Internet marketing corporations, 7-figure brands and startups online. Follow him on TwitterLinkedIn

User Reviews:

3.8/5 (10 votes)

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