Adobe Commerce - the practical guide.

Adobe Commerce, formerly Magento, is an enterprise open-source ecommerce platform now owned and maintained by Adobe. It powers complex B2C, B2B and multi-brand catalogues, with deep customisation, native B2B features (company accounts, quotes, custom catalogues), and integration into the Adobe Experience Cloud. Magento Open Source remains free for self-hosted use, while Adobe Commerce adds managed cloud hosting, advanced features and Adobe support.

Mid-market and enterprise retailers, B2B sellers and multi-brand groups with complex catalogues, multi-store and multi-currency requirements - and the engineering or agency capacity to run a heavy platform. Less of a fit for small DTC brands or teams without development support.

Magento Open Source is free, but you pay for hosting, development and ongoing maintenance. Adobe Commerce is custom-quoted, typically as a percentage of GMV with annual licences in the high five to six figures. Implementation by a Magento agency is usually £100k+. Plan for ongoing dev retainers regardless of edition.

Right when you need deep B2B features, multi-store/multi-brand setups, or extreme catalogue/business-rule customisation, and you have the engineering muscle to run it. Wrong fit for small DTC brands (use Shopify), or for teams that want a clean composable architecture (consider commercetools).

Total cost of ownership is high - hosting, dev, security patches and Magento upgrades are non-trivial. Performance tuning is a recurring job. Talent pool is shrinking as agencies move to Shopify and headless. Adobe's roadmap pushes paid editions; OSS users should plan for divergence over time.