Magento Commerce is expensive because of the amount of enterprise-level functionality it offers. It provides merchants with access to Magento’s Page Builder, B2B module, and Adobe Sensei, which uses AI and machine learning to tailor product recommendations and boost sales.
Magento Commerce Cloud takes the premium offering a step further by providing a fully managed PaaS offering hosted on enterprise-grade software. Its subscription is offered in two plans — Starter and Pro.
Businesses subscribed to the Pro plan get access to high-availability, enterprise-grade servers along with access to the B2B module and dedicated technical advisors that assist with setting up their stores on Magento Commerce Cloud from the time their subscription begins up to its launch.
Let’s take a closer look at the functionality offered with Magento Commerce to understand why it’s so expensive.
Magento Commerce functionality
Page Builder
The Magento Page Builder is only available for Magento Commerce users, and it provides pre-built controls that enable content creation using a drag-and-drop style method. In addition to the drag-and-drop functionality, users also get live previews and form editors.
It simplifies website content creation for both store owners and developers as there’s no coding required. This brings down the cost of development and increases the speed at which stores can develop and deploy content for their website.
Customer segmentation
Magento Commerce allows merchants to create customer segments using customer information like their order history, address, shopping cart contents, and previously viewed products to dynamically display content and promotions relevant to those customers.
It works in tandem with Magento’s advanced promotional functionality to tailor promotions to customers and improve conversions. Furthermore, merchants can generate reports of individual customer segments to gain deeper insights into their audience and their shopping habits.
Advance merchandising functionality
Magento Commerce delivers advanced merchandising functionality in visual merchandising, gift registries, rewards and loyalty points, and private sales and events.
The visual merchandiser allows merchants to position products in the catalog based on a group of preset conditions. These conditions update the product listings based on real-time changes in product attributes, thus creating a dynamic listing.
Magento Commerce supports the creation and management of gift registries. This feature allows customers to create a gift registry by adding products from their cart or wishlist to their registry, which can be shared with their friends and family using a link to allow them to make purchases from the registry.
To increase customer engagement and promote loyalty, merchants can leverage Magento Commerce’s rewards point system to award points for a wide range of customer activities and transactions. It also supports issuing refunds in the form of reward points to be redeemed for future orders.
Content Staging
Magento’s Content Staging functionality allows store admins to create, preview, and schedule content updates from within the admin panel. It supports updating page layouts and designs based on preset schedules.
Merchants can create campaigns from the Content Staging Dashboard and configure changes to update and revert based on their preferred schedules. They can configure updates for products, categories, CMS blocks and pages, widgets, and catalog and cart price rules.
Product Recommendations
Perhaps the most valuable tool in Magento Commerce, Product Recommendations takes a business’s marketing strategy to the next level. On the frontend, customers are presented with recommendations in the form of ‘Most purchased’, ‘Most viewed’, ‘Trending’, and ‘Recommended for you’.
However, on the backend, Magento connects with the AI-powered Adobe Sensei service, which uses a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to analyze visitor data and tailor product recommendations.
Combined with the store’s catalog, Adobe Sensei helps create a personalized and highly engaging shopping experience for store visitors.
B2B module
Magento’s B2B module is designed for businesses that sell primarily to other businesses instead of end-users. It supports creating and managing complex organizational structures for multiple users within an organization and user roles and permissions.
It also offers support for per-unit and bulk pricing that is particularly useful for wholesale businesses. With self-service tools and support for quotes with price negotiation, it creates the perfect environment for B2B trade.
24/7 Support
Exclusive to Magento Commerce users, Adobe offers 24/7 email support for the core application. This means access to the platform’s development team when things go wrong.
Merchants on the Magento Commerce Cloud Pro plan are assigned technical advisors who advise and assist merchants with their Magento accounts from their subscription begins until their website launches.
All things considered, although Magento Commerce is expensive at first glance, when you break down the amount of functionality it offers, it provides more value than it costs.
