Magento is one of the most popular Open Source e-commerce software. It was initially released in March 31, 2008 by Varien Inc. It is a PHP based software, uses Zend Framework and the proprietary “Varien” libraray.

Magento is a free as well as a paid software – How? It depends upon which Magento verision you are using – Magento Community Edition (CE) or the Magento Enterprise Edition (EE). But now the question comes – Why will I pay if I can get it for free? The answer is “Great things come for a fee”. Actuallay Magneto CE is as good as Magento EE. It all depends on you needs, business size and how much are you ready to invest.

If you have few products to some thousands of products then Magento Community works but if your catlog grows towards lakhs of products then you must consider the Magento Enterprise Edition.

You must think about the catalog size, marketing plan, security concerns, performance expectations and then decide the platform you want to go with.

Here is a comparison of the Magento CE and Magento EE which will help you decide the version you want to use:

• Features: Magento core code base is the same for Magento EE and Magento CE. Magento EE is built on top of Magento CE, so all functionality of CE is available in Magento EE. Magento EE offers addtional functionalities like – Manage Customer Attributes and Customer Attributes, Customer Segments, Staging Websites, Admin Action Logging, CMS Page Versioning and Hierarchies, Private sales, Gift Wrapping, Gift Registry, Reward Points, Return Management Authorization (RMA), Solr Search, Automated email messages for Abandoned Carts and Wishlists, Rule based product relations – Cross Sell / UpSell / Recommended Products, Auto-Generated Custom Coupons, Full Page Caching.

• Performance: Magento EE is fast as compared to the Magento CE. In Magento EE indexing has been optimized and it takes less time. Magento EE supports Incremental Indexing and also has “Full Page Caching (FPC)” support. Magento EE performs well under high load while Magento CE tends to slow down.

• Extensibility: Both Magento CE and EE can be extended by installing Free/Paid extensions and themes available. You can also create your own custom extension/theme. Magento EE paid extension are generally found to be costlier than Magento CE extensions.

• SKUs/Products supported: There is no limitation imposed on how many SKUs/Products you can add in Magento EE or Magento CE, its the number of products/SKUs by which you can get an acceptable performance. Magento CE is suggested for a small catalog but if you have lots of SKUs / products then think about Magento EE.

• COST: Magento EE costs around $15K per year which is a huge amount while Magento CE is free.

• Target Users: Magento CE is for developers and tech-savvy merchants while Magento EE is for mid-large size businesses.

• Security: Magento Enterprise gives merchants a secure payment bridge – “Magento Secure Payment Bridge” that is compliant with the PCI Security Standards Council.

• Support and Warranty: Magento does not provide any technical support for Magento CE but for Magento EE technical support is available for installation, configuartion, troubleshooting issues related to Magento core. It does not provide any support for custom development but can suggest you vendors. Online help is available at http://magento.com/ in the form on documentation and forums.

You can get some of the benefits of Magento EE in Magento CE by installing some free and paid extensions available.