Magento is a leading eCommerce platform. There are two versions of it – community edition and enterprise edition. Which version you choose depends on your requirements.
Cost
The community edition is free and targeted at developers. The expense is the domain name, web hosting and the services of a Magento programmer. If you are on a low budget choose community edition. However, if you invest in enterprise edition you get many more features as well as much superior performance. For your information license fees for the enterprise edition is $22,000 a year.
An eye on the future
Magento EE offers better scalability and includes much more enterprise-level features. Both platforms consist of all the features expected of a quality ecommerce solution. If you are not ambitious about your business or your enterprise is not going to grow significantly for a while go for the community edition. However, if you have big plans or expect the business to grow considerably select the enterprise edition as only it will be able to handle the greater load.
Easily Customizable
You can customize Magento community edition as per your preferences and needs. This is the reason behind its popularity in the online seller community. It’s ideal for merchants seeking an affordable online shopping platform to kickstart their selling operations.
Special needs of big players
Some organizations need premium-grade features to compete and operate online. The Enterprise Edition has been designed and developed specifically to meet the requirements of large players. Analyze your business and be clear about your goals before choosing community edition or enterprise edition.
Level of support
Magento Enterprise Edition comes with 24/7 support. The community edition lacks this. If you are okay with your site being temporarily down or facing issues then you can opt for the community edition. However, if you are a large or well-known brand site performance issues can adversely affect the reputation and ultimately the revenue of your business. So, you should take no chances and go only with the enterprise edition.
Security
Most customers rate this aspect as very important. Only if they trust the site’s security will they buy from it. Enterprise edition offers a far higher level of security than community edition. For instance, credit card tokenization, as well as highly secured payment gateway options, are offered only by the enterprise edition. If you are looking at offering multiple payment gateways then go for the enterprise edition.