Magento 2 continues to be a top choice in eCommerce websites for brands of all sizes. And mid- to enterprise-level businesses know that the benefits of the Magento Commerce license, specifically, can bring their online operations to the next level.
In this article, we’ll discuss 34 key features of Magento Commerce that make it truly stand out among other offerings—and why it’s worth the investment.
Magento Commerce vs Magento Open Source
First, let’s quickly cover a common question we often receive when speaking to customers about Magento: What‘s the difference between Magento 2 Open Source and Magento 2 Commerce?
It’s natural for business owners to want to fully understand the investment into Magento’s top-level offering. Some may not be aware that there are two versions of Magento 2—Open Source and Commerce—and knowing the differences between them could have a huge impact on your business.
To put it simply, Magento Open Source (formerly known as Magento Community) is the free edition of the Magento platform.
This version of Magento includes tons of extremely valuable features out-of-box, not covered in this article.
But Magento Commerce, the paid edition of the Magento platform, includes all of the features available in Open Source, plus additional powerful features.
Comparing Magento Product Features
Magento does provide resources to help customers compare Open Source and Commerce, including an in-depth PDF outlining the entire feature set of Magento Commerce, for instance.
But these files refer to features more abstractly, which could be a little confusing when you’re trying to make a purchasing decision, whether you’re looking to migrate from a different platform or build from scratch on Magento 2.
You can, however, find separate Magento User Guides. The only downside is that separate documentation means that the only way for you to compare actual features is to painstakingly search through each User Guide for differences.
We thought, who has time for that? So that’s why we’ve compiled this list of Commerce-only features, directly from Magento.
So, hopefully you can use this list to easily identify Commerce-only features and make educated purchasing decisions.
To skip ahead and find out whether Magento Commerce is the right fit for your business, contact us.
This article—originally written in 2018—has been updated in 2021; the current version of Magento at this time is 2.4. This list of features may change in the future, and we’ll continue to update it.
An eCommerce Agency With Expert Magento Web Developers
One more thing you might be asking… Who are we? At Shero Commerce, our team has built or migrated more than 300 websites over the last 10+ years; we have it down to a science. Our highly trained staff of nearly 40 eCommerce experts includes Magento 2 Certified Developers, focused on the long-term growth of your eCommerce site.
Now, let’s dive in!
34 Features That Make Magento 2 Commerce Worth The Investment
Quick links:
- Category Permissions
- Gift Cards
- Advanced Catalog Search
- Dynamic Blocks
- Content Staging
- Page Hierarchy
- Customer Segments
- Email Reminders
- Gift Registries
- Google Tag Manager
- Private Sales & Events
- Related Product Rules
- Rewards & Loyalty
- Visual Merchandiser
- Wishlists
- Additional Payment Methods
- Gift Options
- Order Archiving
- Order by SKU
- Returns
- Shopping Assistance
- Store Credit
- Customer Attributes Manager
- Action Logs Report
- Scheduled Import/Export
- Support Tools
- (B2B) Shared Catalogs
- (B2B) Company Accounts
- (B2B) Quick Order
- (B2B) Company Credit
- (B2B) Quotes
- (B2B) Payment on Account
- (B2B) Requisition Lists
- Additional Customer Account Dashboard Pages
Category Permissions
Category Permissions allow merchants to limit access to browse categories, view pricing, or add to cart for products within a category based on customer group.
Gift Cards
Gift Cards allow merchants to sell virtual, physical or combined gift cards online, and maintain a record of gift card issuance and usage via Gift Card Accounts, accessible within the Magento admin dashboard.
Advanced Catalog Search
Magento Commerce also supports Elasticsearch. This is a powerful and highly scalable distributed search engine that is used by such high-volume sites as eBay, Wikipedia, and GitHub.
Dynamic Blocks
The “Banner” option was removed in Magento Commerce 2.4.0. Its functionality is replaced by Dynamic Blocks.
Dynamic Blocks allow you to create rich, interactive content driven by logic from price rules and customer segments. (For a step-by-step how-to on using dynamic blocks, see Tutorial 2: Blocks.)
These features distinguish Banners from Content Blocks (a.k.a. static blocks, or CMS blocks), an Open Source feature which displays fixed information like text, images, and embedded video, or dynamic information from a widget.
Unlike carousels, Rotating Dynamic Blocks cycle in a specific sequence or random order. This allows merchants to create slide-show campaigns.
Content Staging
Content Staging allows merchants to easily create, preview, and schedule content changes to Products, Categories, Promotions (Shopping Cart and Catalog Price Rules), CMS Pages, CMS Blocks, and Widgets.
This can be extremely helpful when scheduling on-site marketing for a new promotion which must be published at a specific time. Especially at night or over the weekend, when your team may be out of the office.
Magento Commerce also provides an easy-to-use visual dashboard for scheduled content, the Staging Dashboard, which displays active and upcoming “campaigns” in a timeline view.
Page Hierarchy
Page Hierarchy allows merchants to organize content pages within a hierarchy and add pagination, navigation, and menus with an easy to use drag-and-drop admin interface.
Customer Segments
Customer Segments allow merchants to dynamically display content (banners) and promotions (shopping cart price rules) to specific customers, based on properties such as customer address, order history, shopping cart contents, and more.
Segment information is continuously updated, so customers may become associated and dissociated from a segment as they shop. This enables merchants to create highly-targeted campaigns based on customer activity.
Plus, Customer Segment Report allows merchants to measure the number of customers in each segment and export the data for external use.
Email Reminders
Email Reminders allow merchants to send automated emails based on the customer’s shopping cart or wishlist activity, to encourage the customer to return to the site and make a purchase.
Abandoned cart (or wishlist) emails can be automatically sent based on triggers such as “number of days abandoned”, “number of line items”, “item quantity”, “cart total”, and more.
Gift Registries
Gift Registries allow customers to create registries for special occasions. Customers can then invite friends and family to purchase their gifts using Magento’s Gift Registry Search widget, which allows a customer to search for another customer’s registry.
Magento keeps track of all items purchased off of a registry, as well as the quantities remaining.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager helps merchants manage the many tags (JavaScript “pixels”, or code snippets) required to track customer activity, measure engagement, personalize content, retarget, or conduct external marketing initiatives.
Support for Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce are provided natively only in Magento Commerce.
Private Sales & Events
Private Sales & Events allow merchants to create exclusive sale events for customers.
Optionally, you can configure events to be accessible only to logged-in customers. However, events are usually time-bound; the Event Ticker displays a countdown to the event end.
In addition, customers have the ability to send Invitations to other potential customers. The Private Sales Reports display information on the number of invitations sent, accepted, and discarded, along with the conversion rate for invitations to each event.
Related Product Rules
Related Product Rules allow merchants to specify which related products, up-sells, and cross-sells are displayed conditionally, rather than manually.
These rules can be associated with a customer segment for dynamic targeting. This is one of the most powerful time-saving features of Magento Commerce.
Rewards & Loyalty
The Rewards & Loyalty features allows merchants to offer a points-based loyalty program to their customers.
Customers can earn points for account registration, newsletter signup, purchases, inviting other members to create an account or place an order, and for submitting product reviews. A site administrator can manage points, allowing merchants to control point allotment, balance, and expiration.
In addition, customers can redeem points toward purchases, based on the Reward Exchange Rates—the relationship between reward points and currency. Also, points can be awarded to customers on the basis of a cart price rule.
Visual Merchandiser
The Visual Merchandiser allows merchants to merchandise, which means to define the order in which products appear within a category. This is done either visually via a drag-and-drop interface, or by applying rule-based conditions powered by “Smart” Attributes.
What do you think, so far? Does this sound like the right platform for your business? Contact Us for a quote, or to have any questions answered.
Wishlists
The Updating Wishlists feature allows customers and site admins to manage the wishlists on a customer’s account.
By using the Wishlist Search widget, site visitors can search for any public wishlist.
This feature is similar to the gift registries search widget, except that an item purchased from a public wishlist isn’t removed from the original wishlist.
Additional Payment Methods
Magento Commerce supports additional payment methods, including PayPal, Braintree, Klarna, and Amazon Pay.
Gift Options
Gift Options allow shoppers to add gifting options in the cart before checkout, such as a special message, or gift wrapping. A gift receipt and printed greeting card may also be added.
Gift wrapping and printed gift cards may be offered as an additional charge. Plus, taxes may be configured independently for these gift options.
The Gift Options configuration applies to the entire website, but can be overridden at the product level.
Order Archiving
Order Archiving allows merchants to clean up their workspace by archiving orders on a regular basis, which improves performance and keeps the admin interface free of unnecessary information.
Invoices, shipments, and credit memos can be archived automatically or manually. They can be viewed any time. This is not order tracking/history, which is available in both Commerce and Open Source.
Order by SKU
The Order by SKU widget allows the ability to add products to a shopping cart simply by entering SKU and quantity information.
Or, you can upload a CSV file from within a customer account.
This feature can be made available to either all customers or those in specific customer groups.
Returns
Returns (also known as Returned Merchandise Authorizations, or RMAs) activates the ability to make returns for a refund or replacement.
The customer may request a return by entering their order information within an “Orders and Returns” interface, for instance.
If approved, a unique RMA number is assigned to identify the returned product. You can enable RMA for all products, or for certain products.
The Returns grid lists the current returned merchandise requests (RMAs). This is used to enter new return requests.
RMAs are often issued for simple, grouped, configurable, and bundle product types. However, RMAs are not available for virtual products, downloadable products, and gift cards.
Shopping Assistance
Shopping Assistance means that any customer who has registered for an account on their store, can obtain assistance.
Merchants have the ability to edit the contents of the customer’s shopping cart in realtime from the Admin interface, for instance.
Additionally, Customer Service Representatives can see the contents of a customer’s shopping cart while the customer is on the phone, and the changes can be seen by the customer immediately after the page is refreshed.
Store Credit
Store Credit—you guessed it—allows merchants to refund customers for cash purchases.
Customers can use store credit to pay for purchases, and track the status of refunds or store credit from their account dashboard.
After an order is paid and invoiced, it can be refunded via a credit memo.
A credit memo differs from a refund. Credit goes back to a customer’s account, where it can be used for future purchases.
For example, a refund can be processed at the same time that a credit memo is applied to the customer’s balance of store credit.
Considering Magento Commerce? Contact us to see if this is the best platform for your business’s unique needs.
Customer Attribute Manager
The Customer Attribute Manager allows merchants to easily add additional customer attributes beyond the defaults that Magento includes to support the order, fulfillment, and customer management processes.
You can add custom attributes to the Account Information, Address Book, and Billing Information sections.
Plus, you can use customer address attributes in the Billing Information section during checkout, or when guests register for an account.
Action Logs Report
The Action Logs Report keeps a detailed record of all admin actions. Each record is time stamped, and records the IP address and name of the user.
The log detail includes admin user data and related changes made during the action.
As an example, if something within the store becomes misconfigured this report is an invaluable tool for determining who made the change and when.
Scheduled Import/Export
With Scheduled Imports/Exports, merchants can schedule imports and exports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is especially useful when integrating with third-party services.
Native import functionality supports Advanced Pricing, Products, Customers and Addresses, Customers Main File, and Customer Addresses. Native export functionality supports Products, Customers Main File, and Customer Addresses.
Support Tools
The Support Tools include the Data Collector and System Report. These tools may assist in identifying known issues in your system when issues emerge.
Additionally, these tools are a resource for the development and optimization of a site. Or, use them as a diagnostic tool to help Magento’s support team identify and resolve issues, as well.
(B2B) Shared Catalogs
(B2B) Shared Catalogs allow merchants to create “shared” catalogs with custom pricing, products, and permissions for different companies.
However, these catalogs are only available to specific customer groups, and custom catalogs may be created that are visible only to members of specific company accounts.
(B2B) Company Accounts
When the (B2B) Company Accounts feature is enabled, a visitor to the store can request to open a company account, or a company account may be created by a site administrator.
Once the company account is approved, the Company Administrator can set up the Company Structure, add Users and Teams, assign Roles and Permissions, and manage the Company Profile all from the storefront.
Plus, you’ll have the ability to manage all of this data from within the admin interface, and assign a Sales Representative to each company account as the primary contact.
(B2B) Quick Order
(B2B) Quick Order, similar to Order By SKU, lets customers add products to their cart simply by entering SKU and quantity information directly into the Quick Order interface, or by uploading a CSV file.
(B2B) Company Credit
(B2B) Company Credit allows merchants to extend a line of credit to B2B customers, who may then make purchases on their account up to their allowed credit limit.
Merchants can monitor issued and utilized credit from within the Credit Activity dashboard.
An offline payment made by a company toward the credit balance of their account (known as a “reimbursed balance”) may be entered via the admin interface, for instance.
(B2B) Quotes
(B2B) Quotes lets you add an authorized buyer from a company, who can then initiate a price quote, all from within the shopping cart.
Merchants can manage quote requests within the admin interface, view a history of the communication between buyer and seller, save views, and export data.
(B2B) Payment on Account
(B2B) Payment on Account is an additional offline payment method that allows companies to make purchases up to the credit limit that is specified in their profile.
This feature can be enabled globally, or per company, and appears during checkout—only if enabled.
Plus, when Payment on Account is used as a payment method, a message appears at the top of the order that indicates the status of the account.
(B2B) Requisition Lists
Requisition Lists gives B2B customers the ability to maintain requisition lists, which are similar to wishlist, except that products are not removed after they’re purchased.
The primary reason to maintain a requisition list is to make it easy to reorder products.
For instance, items from a requisition list can be easily added to the shopping cart, or moved or copied from one requisition list to another.
Additional Customer Account Dashboard Pages
The customer account dashboard with Magento Commerce contains the following items:
- Order by SKU
- Store Credit
- Gift Cards
- (B2B) My Quotes
- (B2B) My Requisition Lists
- (B2B) Company Structure
- (B2B) Company Credit
- (B2B) Company Profile
- (B2B) Company Users
Do It Yourself
We compiled this list of URLs by using wget to spider the User Guides for Open Source and Commerce, and then comparing the URL lists. Then, we manually reviewed and organized this list, which previously contained only URLs unique to the Commerce User Guide.
We used this command to generate the list:
comm -13 <(wget --spider -r -I /m2/ce -A html https://docs.magento.com/m2/ce/user_guide/getting-started.html 2>&1 | awk '$1 ~ /^--/ && $3 ~ /^https/ { print $3 }' | sort | uniq | sed -e 's#/ce/#/ee/#g') <(wget --spider -r -I /m2/ee -A html https://docs.magento.com/m2/ee/user_guide/getting-started.html 2>&1 | awk '$1 ~ /^--/ && $3 ~ /^https/ { print $3 }' | sort | uniq)
It took some time to crawl the User Guides ( about 20 minutes), and we also had to run a separate crawl for the B2B User Guide. So pour yourself a cup of coffee and relax while your computer does the heavy lifting.
Which features do you think are most valuable to Magento Commerce users? Or, what features do you wish were available?
Leave a comment below!
Gentian, CSO and co-founder of Shero Commerce, guides the company and client digital strategies. He's an expert in technical SEO, Inbound Marketing, and eCommerce strategy.
