Magento Alternatives for Enterprise Commerce (2026)

An Adobe Commerce alternative is an ecommerce platform used in place of Adobe Commerce for catalog management, storefronts, checkout, and integrations. Adobe Commerce developed from Magento’s commercial product. Adobe continues to offer Magento Open Source as a separate product.

According to a leading independent consulting firm, Shopify has up to 33% better total cost of ownership (TCO) than competing platforms. The study compared Shopify with Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Adobe Commerce gives businesses extensive control over code and integrations, but that control can also create more technical and operational work for enterprise teams. For businesses evaluating Magento alternatives, that trade-off can shape costs and how quickly teams can make changes. This guide explains why brands evaluate alternatives, how to compare them, and how Shopify differs.

Why brands look for Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) alternatives

Enterprises explore Adobe Commerce alternatives for four main reasons: 

1. Costs rise as the store becomes more complex. 
2. Business teams depend on developers, which can create bottlenecks. 
3. Slower development cycles can delay launches and testing.
4. Enterprise teams also handle much of the security and reliability work across custom code and integrations.

Total cost of ownership

Adobe Commerce can carry high costs beyond its license. Total cost of ownership covers implementation, hosting, integrations, extensions, upgrades, security work, monitoring, and ongoing technical services.

Maine Lobster Now estimated that they spent $1 million on Magento across development and creative resources. After moving to Shopify, the company:

• Increased their overall conversion rate by 69%
• Increased their mobile conversion rate by 97%
• Reduced fraud-related chargebacks by 93%
• Built their Shopify store for about 90% less

The Shopify store included more features at the lower build cost. “We had fewer features than we have on Shopify now,” founder and CEO Julian Klenda says. “The numbers are staggering.”

A Shopify-commissioned TCO study by an independent consulting firm found that Adobe Commerce had higher average costs than Shopify across three categories:

• Implementation and setup costs were 42% higher.
• Platform and ecommerce stack costs were 42% higher.
• Operating and technical service costs were 24% higher.

Past spending does not reduce future platform costs. Instead, compare the five-year cost of staying on Adobe Commerce with the five-year cost of migration. Include migration fees, parallel platform costs, retraining, and annual operating costs for both options.

Shopify includes hosting, platform monitoring, disaster recovery, and core platform security in its service. Account for those services within the platform fee when comparing Shopify with Adobe Commerce.

Team agility and developer dependency

Adobe Commerce has an admin interface for business users, but extensive customization places some routine changes inside development and release workflows. Upgrades, patches, extensions, and custom code add engineering work.

For enterprise teams, a store update can move from ecommerce to engineering, then through QA and release management. Each handoff adds time. Campaign work competes with platform maintenance for the same developers.

Developer dependency creates continuity risk when only a few people understand the custom code. An agency exit or employee departure can delay maintenance while another developer learns the implementation.

Apparel brand Gresham Blake encountered this problem on Adobe Commerce. “I was building a brand, and the website built on Magento just didn’t have the functionality I needed to make any changes,” says cofounder Fal Blake. “I always had to go to developers.”

After the brand moved to Shopify Plus, implementation time fell by 98%. Online sales increased by 68% during the first four months of 2024 compared with the same period in 2023. On Shopify, business users can manage promotions and catalog changes directly. Developers can spend more time on integrations and customer-facing improvements.

Commerce focus and technical debt

When a project calls for functionality outside the core platform, teams add an extension or custom code. Each new component brings more testing and maintenance. Typically, launches take longer, and fewer experiments reach customers.

Clothing brand Lakor had this problem with Magento. Basic catalog work went through cofounder and CTO Jesper Unna because employees found the back end difficult to use. Site failures kept him on call during personal time.

Since moving to Shopify, Lakor has expanded from one market to three. The company adopted Shopify POS and now passes all Google Core Web Vitals assessments on both mobile and desktop. Their team grew from 15 to 32 employees.

Security, compliance, and reliability

Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure uses a shared-responsibility model. Adobe secures the core application and cloud infrastructure. 

Enterprise teams apply Adobe Commerce patches to their customized deployment, secure custom code and integrations, and keep third-party dependencies and extensions on vendor-supported versions. Adobe’s PCI certification covers Adobe’s infrastructure and services. Retailers remain responsible for their custom code, system and network processes, and organizational compliance.

All PCI DSS v4.0.1 controls became mandatory on March 31, 2025. Two controls address payment-page security:

• Requirement 6.4.3 covers script authorization and integrity checks. It calls for an inventory of payment-page scripts.
• Requirement 11.6.1 covers monitoring for unauthorized changes to payment-page content and security-related HTTP headers.

These controls target e-skimming by governing the scripts that execute during checkout. They cover changes made to the page before it reaches the customer’s browser and changes made inside the browser. The PCI Security Standards Council guidance explains how the controls apply to merchants and service providers.*

By comparison, Shopify manages its platform infrastructure and core checkout runtime. Checkout UI extensions run in an isolated sandbox and have no access to sensitive payment information or checkout-page HTML.

Shopify’s current compliance reports include a service-provider PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance completed by a Qualified Security Assessor. Shopify publishes quarterly external vulnerability scan attestations as well. 

How to choose an Adobe Commerce alternative

Choosing an Adobe Commerce alternative starts with the way the company runs ecommerce. That operating model will shape costs, team workflows, and platform ownership long after the migration ends. 

Review the operating model first, test the migration plan next, and assign ongoing ownership before making the final choice.

Match the platform model to the operating model

Begin with the people who will run the platform each day:

• Managed software as a service (SaaS) places hosting and core upgrades with the provider, which reduces the platform maintenance handled by internal teams. Business users can take greater control of routine store changes.
• Open-source ecommerce platforms give developers access to the underlying code. That control comes with responsibility for hosting and security patches. Extension compatibility creates another maintenance task.
• Composable or headless architecture separates the storefront from the commerce back end. It gives teams more control over customer experience and channel delivery, but adds engineering work across APIs and integrations.

Price each model over five years. Count the platform fee and internal labor first, then add agency work and third-party software. This produces a more realistic view of TCO than licensing costs alone.

Then, use business requirements to narrow the options further. Global sellers can compare market setup and currency handling, then review how each platform manages tax and localization. 

For wholesale businesses, B2B on Shopify provides company profiles and customer-specific catalogs. Buyers can receive payment terms, and Shopify APIs integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Pressure-test migration risk

Once the platform model is settled, test whether the business can migrate safely. Document how product and customer data will move. Decide how much order history belongs in the new system, then rebuild integrations in a test environment.

Search engine optimization (SEO) planning belongs in the same process. Create a redirect map before URLs change and give the analytics team time to verify tracking. Ecommerce and customer service teams can then test customer-facing processes. Finance and fulfillment teams can verify order processing and reconciliation.

Use those findings to set the cutover window and acceptable downtime. If Shopify is on the shortlist, use its Adobe Commerce migration guide to plan the technical work and prepare a rollback process before launch. 

Once the new store is live, compare conversion and revenue with pre-migration baselines, then track search traffic and technical errors during the stabilization period.

Compare governance, security, and integration ownership

Finally, review how the platform will operate after launch. Assign ownership for platform configuration and each integration. Set access rules for employees and agencies, then apply the same controls to technology vendors.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 places governance within cybersecurity risk management. Companies can use it to assign responsibility for safeguards and risk detection, then plan how teams will respond and recover.

Review vendor contracts for incident notification and data handling. Confirm service levels and exit provisions before signing. Use those ownership and governance requirements to compare which platform is the best long-term fit for the business.

Adobe Commerce alternatives: How do they stack up?

Adobe Commerce alternatives fall into three main groups:

• Managed SaaS platforms place hosting and core software updates with the provider. 
• Open-source or self-hosted platforms give businesses direct control over the code and infrastructure 
• Composable or headless platforms separate the storefront from the commerce back end, giving technical teams more freedom to choose services at each layer.

Best Adobe Commerce alternatives at a glance

Use the operating model to build the shortlist before comparing individual features. The table shows what each option gives enterprise teams and where extra cost or responsibility can enter.

For businesses with an established Adobe Commerce implementation, staying with the platform may make sense when its level of code and infrastructure control remains a good fit for their operating model.

Use the table to narrow the shortlist around the technical team’s capacity and the business roadmap.

TCO and cost predictability

TCO measures the overall cost of a product or service throughout its entire life cycle, including initial purchase, installation, and ongoing operation. 

A TCO study from a leading independent consulting firm compared Shopify with Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

According to that study, Shopify has up to 33% better total cost of ownership than the platforms compared. 

• Adobe Commerce had 42% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to inflexible pricing.
• WooCommerce had 32% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to an increased need for support and version upgrades.
• BigCommerce had 32% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to limited native functionalities.
• Salesforce had 14% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to inflexible pricing.

Checkout conversion

Checkout performance is another way to compare Adobe Commerce alternatives. 

To see how checkout conversion differs across platforms, we partnered with a Big Three global management consulting company to complete a study examining conversion rates from some of the biggest ecommerce platforms.

On average, Shopify's checkout converts:

• 5% better than Adobe Commerce's checkout, which results in a 0.5% TCO offset.
• 17% better than WooCommerce's checkout, which results in a 1.7% TCO offset.
• 12% better than BigCommerce's checkout, which results in a 1.2% TCO offset.
• 36% better than Salesforce, which results in a 3.6% TCO offset.

Each result assumes a 10% margin on goods sold.

Site speed and reliability

Site speed is another factor to consider when comparing Adobe Commerce alternatives. 

To see how different ecommerce platforms compare on site speed, we collected a representative sample of sites and captured speed data from Google Core Web Vitals. These metrics showed that 93% of Shopify stores are fast.

• 53% of Adobe Commerce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render twice as fast as Adobe stores.
• 34% of WooCommerce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 2.4 times faster than WooCommerce stores.
• 80% of BigCommerce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 1.4 times faster than BigCommerce stores.
• 65% of Salesforce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 1.5 times faster than Salesforce stores.

Reliability also factors into platform performance. Shopify reports 99.9% average platform uptime and manages core infrastructure scaling.

Shopify research also found that improvements to site speed of half a second can increase conversion rates and lower bounce rates.

Why Shopify is the strongest Adobe Commerce alternative

For businesses comparing Adobe Commerce alternatives, Shopify brings together the criteria covered above: lower TCO, greater team agility, managed platform infrastructure, extensibility, and enterprise commerce capabilities.

For more complex use cases, Shopify supports extensibility through apps, APIs, and integrations. The unified platform also manages sales channels, including POS, B2B, and direct-to-consumer (DTC).

When Julian Klenda of Maine Lobster Now used Adobe Commerce, he felt stuck rather than empowered. Julian estimates the company spent about a million dollars on Adobe Commerce. Even then, he says, "We still couldn't get descriptions to work. We couldn't get checkout to work. It was just a money pit."

* This content is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or compliance advice. Consult legal counsel about the obligations that apply to your business. Your acquiring bank or a Qualified Security Assessor can confirm your PCI DSS scope and validation responsibilities.