What is Adobe Commerce?

What is Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce is an enterprise-level, licensed platform for running online stores. It’s built for high-volume B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) businesses.

The platform gives merchants a highly scalable, customisable framework. You can build fully customised stores, run multiple sites at once, and handle complex product setups.

The Magento Connection

To understand Adobe Commerce, you need to know its history.

In 2018, Adobe bought Magento. At the time, one of the most popular e-commerce platforms around. Adobe paid $1.68 billion for it.

After the deal, Adobe split the platform into two paths:

• Magento Open Source: the free, community-supported code. Anyone can download it, host it, and change it.
• Adobe Commerce: the paid, enterprise version. It’s built on top of the open-source foundation, but adds proprietary modules, cloud infrastructure, and dedicated technical support.

Key Adobe Commerce Features

Magento Open Source gives you the structural core. A paid Adobe Commerce licence unlocks extra, built-in capabilities on top of that. Here’s what you get:

• Managed Cloud Infrastructure: Often called Adobe Commerce Cloud. This bundles your software licence with fully managed hosting, built on AWS or Azure (Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud platforms). It includes automatic scaling, a fast content delivery network (a CDN, which speeds up load times for visitors in different locations), and enterprise-grade security.
• AI-Powered Personalisation: Powered by Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s AI tool. It gives you automated product recommendations and Live Search;  a smarter search bar that adapts to how each shopper behaves, in real time.
• Content Staging and Scheduling: Marketing teams can build, preview, and schedule site-wide changes (like price drops or new homepage layouts) to go live automatically, at a set date and time. No developer needed.
• Native B2B Suite: Handles corporate account hierarchies, custom pricing per customer, bulk ordering, and automated RFQ (Request for Quote) workflows.

Benefits of Adobe Commerce

So what do these features actually mean for your business, day to day?

• Faster Campaign Launches: Because marketing can schedule and preview changes themselves, campaigns go live faster — without waiting on a developer.
• Higher Conversion, Less Manual Work: Personalised recommendations and smarter search mean shoppers find what they want faster. That tends to mean fewer abandoned carts.
• Clearer Decision-Making: Centralised dashboards show you customer data, average order value, and retention numbers — all in one place, across every storefront you run.
• Guaranteed Support: You get 24/7 technical support directly from Adobe, for troubleshooting the core platform itself.

What is Magento Commerce?

Before the Adobe branding fully took hold, the paid version of the platform went by a different name.

Magento Commerce is that older name. It’s the direct predecessor to what’s now called Adobe Commerce.

If you come across the term “Magento Commerce” in documentation or developer discussions, they’re talking about the same thing: the commercial edition of the platform, built for high-volume, mid-market, and enterprise businesses. You’ll also see it written as “Magento 2 Commerce,” referring to the same product on the Magento 2 platform.

What is Magento Enterprise Edition?

Magento Enterprise Edition is an even older name. It’s what the paid, self-hosted enterprise tier was called before 2017.

You might also see it written as Magento 2 Enterprise, referring to the same tier on the Magento 2 platform.

The Name Timeline

Here’s how the naming actually changed over time:

• Magento Enterprise Edition (before 2017): The original name for the paid, self-hosted enterprise tier.
• Magento Commerce (2017–2021): Renamed after the release of Magento 2. This version put a heavy focus on cloud infrastructure, known as Magento Commerce Cloud.
• Adobe Commerce (2021–present): After Adobe’s $1.68 billion acquisition of Magento, the commercial edition was renamed again, this time to Adobe Commerce — bringing it in line with the rest of Adobe’s Experience Cloud products.

Adobe Commerce vs Magento Open Source

When you’re building your enterprise store, you’ll eventually face this choice: the paid, licensed path, or Magento Open Source.

The paid edition comes with corporate features built in from day one. But there’s a strong case for Magento Open Source instead, even at enterprise scale.

Here’s why. Both versions run on the same core framework. The engineering power, the security standards, the raw scalability — none of that changes based on which one you pick. Magento Open Source isn’t a lighter version. It’s the same engine underneath.

The real advantage of going open-source comes down to cost and control:

• No Licensing Fees: Adobe Commerce charges a licence fee based on your store’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) — the total value of everything you sell through the platform each year. Fees typically run from $22,000 to over $125,000 a year. Open source skips this cost entirely.
• More Budget for What Matters: Without a licensing fee, you can put that money into things that directly drive sales instead — UX design, local marketing, or better hosting.
• Full Stack Control: You own your code and infrastructure outright. No corporate lock-in.
• A Large Developer Community: Because a global community builds on the open-source code constantly, most premium enterprise features can be replicated using community extensions or custom development — without the licence fee attached.

How Much Does Adobe Commerce Cost?

How much does Adobe Commerce actually cost? It depends. Adobe uses a custom, quote-based pricing model rather than a fixed monthly fee.

Instead of charging a flat rate like entry-level SaaS builders do, Adobe bases its licence fee on your store’s annual Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) — the total value of what you sell through the platform each year.

Here’s a rough breakdown of annual licence fees by GMV tier, comparing self-hosted deployments to the bundled cloud infrastructure option (sometimes called Magento Cloud pricing):

These are estimates. Actual pricing depends on your specific contract with Adobe.

Factoring in Total Cost of Ownership

The licence fee is only part of your actual budget. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) also includes:

• Initial Implementation: Custom builds for enterprise architecture typically cost $50,000 to $250,000+, depending on how complex your setup is and how many third-party systems you connect.
• Ongoing Retainers: Keeping a large store secure, updated, and running well takes an active development team or agency.
• Extensions and Integrations: Connecting external systems — like a PIM (Product Information Management system), an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system), or global payment gateways — comes with its own recurring licensing or maintenance costs.