Magento stands tall as one of the leading e-commerce platforms, renowned for its versatility and robust capabilities. It comes in a spectrum of versions catering to different business needs. Figuring out which version is which can get pretty baffling. Especially after Adobe bought Magento in 2018 and changed the naming. Nowadays, some product versions don't even have "Magento" in their name. It's enough to make you scratch your head and wonder if it's still the same platform. Well, this article is here to sort out the names and tell you what's what.
What is Magento Open Source?
At the foundation of Magento lies Magento Open Source, previously known as Magento Community. It's the free and open-source version with a huge amount of integrations with third party services and a rich community. This edition grants full access to the platform's codebase, allowing merchants and developers to customize the software according to their specific needs.
What is Adobe Commerce?
Formerly known as Magento Commerce or Magento Enterprise Edition, Adobe Commerce requires a license fee. This premium version retains all the capabilities of Magento Open Source while introducing additional features and support from Adobe itself.
Additionally, Adobe Commerce has become a part of Adobe Experience Cloud - a set of digital experience tools. Integrating Adobe Commerce with other Adobe products can give data-driven and AI-powered insights and personalization that enhance customer experience.
What does "B2B" refer to?
B2B is an add-on available exclusively for Adobe Commerce. It enhances the platform with specialized business-to-business functionality, catering to wholesale, distribution, and manufacturing enterprises.
What is Adobe Commerce Cloud?
Adobe Commerce on Cloud is a Platform-as-a-Service solution that is an extension of Adobe Commerce. In addition, it provides an automated hosting platform with a self-service approach to building, deploying, and managing e-commerce applications in a cloud-native environment.
Future of Magento Open Source - Mage-OS
Although Mage-OS isn't offered by Adobe itself, it's relevant when we think about the future of Magento Open Source. To understand why, here's a bit of background.
Adobe continues to support Magento Open Source through regular security updates, bug fixes, and minor improvements. However, new features and functionalities are no longer being added to this version as Adobe focuses on other projects. This poses a thread to businesses depending on Magento Open Source.
For this reason, Mage-OS has been created. It's a community-driven initiative that aims to secure Magento's long term viability. The Mage-OS distribution is an independent fork of Magento Open Source. You can think of it as an independent version of Magento. It's based on Magento source code but it will be further maintained and improved by the community. The initial focus is improving performance and usability of Magento Open Source. Mage-OS Association wants to integrate changes that have been suggested as Pull Requests to Magento Open Source by the community, but haven’t been included by Adobe due to lack of resources for Magento Open Source.
