In this edition of our eCommerce platform comparison series, we’ll be looking at Magento Commerce vs. Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce’s online eCommerce platform – and measuring how the two platforms stack up with one another.
Like our last post on Magento vs. BigCommerce, we’ll be comparing these platforms across 10 key metrics:
- Analytics & reporting
- Integration capabilities
- Scalability
- Product catalog
- Search
- Themes
- Security
- Vendor support & resources
- B2B eCommerce features
- Pricing
So, how do Magento Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud compare to one another, and which one is right for you? Read on, and find out!
1. Analytics & Reporting
Let’s start with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Despite being from Salesforce, it has a relatively limited amount of analytics features available. According to its documentation, you can view the following types of dashboard reports on your eCommerce store:
- Sales
- Products
- Promotions
- Traffic Technical
- Real-Time
While there are additional filters and tools you can use to refine your data sets, this is still pretty limited – especially compared to Magento.
Out of the box, Magento Commerce provides up to 20 different reports with its Advanced Reporting tool, specifically focusing on Orders, Customers, and Products. Overall, you’ll get a bit more detail about how well your store is performing, your KPIs, and how you can improve.
That’s not all, though. With Magento Commerce, you’ll get even more reports with the Magento Business Intelligence suite, which has a huge variety of data processing and visualization tools to help you dive deeper into your data, and reveal opportunities to boost your sales and the effectiveness of your eCommerce store.
2. Integration Capabilities
With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you can definitely get an integrated, feature-rich store that works well and provides a ton of different features and systems – such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and CMS (Content Management Software).
What’s the catch? You’re stuck in a “walled garden” with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. To make full use of its all-in-one capabilities, you need to either start with or migrate to Salesforce products – because integrating outside software is impractical.
That’s not to say you can’t get a good experience by using only Salesforce products – they’re a top SaaS company for a reason – but the process of migration can be costly, time-consuming, and inconvenient, and lead to lots of delays and unexpected hiccups along the way.
So if you use a CRM that’s not Salesforce, you’ll either have to switch to Salesforce or explore other options – like Magento. Magento is a free, open-source platform that supports APIs like RESTful and webhooks, and can be used to integrate almost any application with the right custom code.
If you use a lot of different SaaS platforms and tools and want to integrate them into your eCommerce store – without migrating to Salesforce – Magento is definitely a better option.
3. Scalability
Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers extremely good scalability. It runs on Salesforce’s servers as a cloud-based product – and the advanced technology used to build this platform allows it to scale to demand and traffic spikes instantly, without requiring you to intervene and provision more bandwidth.
Magento Commerce is similarly scalable, with a cloud-based infrastructure that automatically scales and provisions new hardware when you need it. Using Magento scaled architecture, your applications and eCommerce platform will be monitored and automatically adjusted to maintain steady, predictable performance, even during traffic spikes.
4. Product Catalog
When it comes to the product catalog, Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud actually have pretty similar features. They both support:
- Running multiple sub-sites using the same product catalog
- Multiple currencies and languages
- Personalized product recommendations and upselling
- Merchandising rules for limited-time sales
- Unlimited product storage
- Flexible product categories and attributes
Overall, they are pretty comparable, with no clear winner in this category. No matter which platform you choose, you’ll have the tools you need to create a robust, flexible, and extensible product catalog.
5. Search
Both Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento offer great search experiences. For Salesforce Commerce Cloud, their “killer app” is the Einstein AI that they first released in 2017 as part of their cloud services lineup.
Einstein is a very powerful AI tool, and is integrated closely into Salesforce Commerce Cloud with the following features:
- Personalized product recommendations
- Optimized search terms
- Predictive Sort to tailor results to each shopper
- “Type-ahead” search recommendations to reduce abandoned searches
However, Magento is no slouch in the search department, either. It uses Elasticsearch, one of the most flexible and powerful search engines available for use today, and provides accurate results.
And while it does not support type-ahead and predictive searches, Magento can be customized with extensions and third-party search solutions to enable these features – bringing it to the same level as SalesForce Commerce Cloud’s excellent search tools.
6. Themes
Both Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento offer a handful of off-the-shelf themes to use, allowing you to customize your storefront. All of these themes are fully optimized for mobile support, too.
When it comes to customization, though, Salesforce Commerce Cloud comes out ahead when it comes to quickly updating and changing your themes yourself – it includes a drag-and-drop page builder and theme editor that lets you change your theme without touching any code.
Magento Commerce has similar tools, though they’re not quite as extensive. If you choose Magento Commerce, you’ll also get access to its Page Builder tool, which provides a lot of code-free customization tools that you can use to adjust and edit individual pages on your website.
Not only that, but it’s easy to buy new Magento custom themes from the Magento Theme Marketplace and third party websites, which is not an option with Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
Magento also is more extensible and customizable when it comes to building a customized theme – so if you want a truly custom storefront that reflects your brand and products, it may be a better option.
7. Security
Salesforce has extremely good security, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud benefits from the robust, secure, and powerful Salesforce cloud environment that it runs on. Sites built using Salesforce Commerce Cloud are very secure, and you definitely won’t have any issues with PCI compliance.
Magento Commerce is actually quite similar, though, since both Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento Commerce are cloud-hosted, SaaS service options.
Similarly to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento Commerce is hosted by Adobe (Magento’s parent company) and is a cloud-based solution. That means you’ll get world-class security to protect yourself and your customers’ information. You can also use Magento and Adobe’s PCI compliance certifications to simplify the process of checking your own eCommerce store’s PCI compliance.
8. Vendor Support & Resources
Salesforce offers great support for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, with a dedicated Success Manager provided to each customer, and a lot of in-house training tools and resources to help you learn more about the product. And if you’re having any technical issues with your website, you can contact support at any time to submit a ticket and get assistance.
Support is pretty similar with Magento Commerce – and as a matter of fact, it’s actually better in some ways. This is because Salesforce Commerce Cloud has tiered support based on the plan you choose, with more “premium” plans offering faster and more robust support.
Magento doesn’t do this. As long as you have Magento Commerce you’ll get 24/7 support. if you or your development team run into any major technical hurdles or issues, you can submit a support ticket and get help right away from the Magento support team.
9. B2B eCommerce Features
In addition to its B2C features, Salesforce also has lots of useful B2B eCommerce features, including:
- Fast reordering
- Account hierarchies
- Contract-based pricing
- Custom catalogs for different companies
- The ability to build separate sub-websites and connect them to the same catalog
- Self-service online buying tools
- Built-in connectivity with the Salesforce CRM platform
- Expandable shopping carts to handle hundreds of items per order
- Complex shipping functionality for multiple delivery dates, fulfillment centers, and locations
Magento Commerce has all of these features except for native Salesforce integration – which can be added using custom code – as well as even more features and benefits like:
- Order by SKU and requisition list support
- Support for all major B2B payment methods including net terms, bank transfers, checks, credit cards and more
- Customer quote request functionality
- Minimum order values on a per-customer basis
Both platforms have a good lineup of B2B features, and while we think Magento ekes out a win due to its more robust feature set, it’s definitely a good idea to consider both platforms closely before making a decision.
10. Pricing
Salesforce Commerce Cloud doesn’t have a set monthly fee. Instead, it costs a certain percentage of your profits, and the exact amount is different for each eCommerce website. Salesforce doesn’t publish any information about the precise amount you’ll pay for your website, so the best way to get clear pricing information is to contact Salesforce and request a quote.
Magento Commerce operates similarly to Salesforce Commerce Cloud. However, it’s not based directly on your profits – but on your overall sales volume. The price of your license increases with your sales volume, which makes sense. After all, more sales mean you’re using more resources. We recommend consulting with Magento to learn more about how much you’ll pay for Magento Commerce Cloud.
Consider Your Options Before Choosing Magento Or Salesforce Commerce Cloud
We hope this overview of Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud has been helpful for you as you consider the pros and cons of each platform. Either one may be a good choice depending on your needs – and both have powerful B2C and B2B functionality.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a great option if you’ve already invested a lot into the Salesforce cloud ecosystem, but definitely lacks a lot of the customization and expandability that Magento has to offer.
In contrast, Magento is very powerful and flexible, but it requires more development work and is not quite as intuitive as Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It’s not quite ready to go out of the box.
Want more information? Interested in seeing if Magento is right for you? 121eCommerce is here to help. Contact us to schedule a consultation now. As certified Magento Solution Partners, we’re always here to help you explore Magento Commerce in further detail – and determine if it’s the right platform for your eCommerce store.
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