Magento or Salesforce Commerce – Comparison Between the eCommerce Platforms

Both Salesforce Commerce and Magento are popular e-commerce platforms meant to help businesses create an online storefront. They are not rivals per se, in that they have traditionally catered to different niches in the market. However, both have been trying for some time to break into the other’s segment and the results have been mixed. Of course, we must consider that these changes are relatively recent, and both deserve some time to strengthen their systems. It is only after significant time, upgrades, and patches that we can truly assess how well these new offerings are performing. However, here, we will be comparing the features of the two to arrive at the decision of which is a more suitable option for different demands.

Where Does Magento Score?

Magento has over 160,000 e-commerce clients while Salesforce Commerce is yet to cross 2000. This means Magento is definitely tapping into a more active market. Here’s why it has become the choice of so many:

Magento is an on-premise system, allowing clients to customize it extensively to create an online store aligned perfectly with their vision. While it has introduced a cloud-based PaaS option, it still has some issues and bugs that can make its functioning jaunty. It is better known and more widely used for its on-premise solution. Many Magento mobile app development companies exist which can create a fully customized solution for your store.
Magento is open-source and has a strong community of developers providing a massive library of integration and extensions to support the needs of the business.
Magento is the more capable one in the B2B front, with Salesforce focusing more on B2C capabilities.
Its SEO and content management features are more powerful. It provides Page Builder, a user-friendly drag-and-drop, component-based page set-up solution with many templates and block customization options.
Its product catalog and customer data management system are quite robust.
In maximum instances, Magento is the more affordable solution, since there are lower infrastructure maintenance, upgradation and licensing costs. It targets mostly small and medium-sized businesses, so it is expected.
The number of Magento mobile app development companies and developers are much more than that for Salesforce Commerce. Since Salesforce is a SaaS service, it is harder to find a Salesforce development company than a Magento mobile app development company. And even among those, not all are as highly experienced in the system as the average Magento mobile app development services provider. The reason is that there is a higher demand for Magento mobile app development services due to the greater number of clients and its on-premise system. Also, Magento is open source, so it is easier to gain expertise in it than in Salesforce Commerce.

Where Does Salesforce Commerce Score?

Seeing the numbers in the previous section, you might have wondered how at all can Salesforce Commerce be a competition to Magento. But the truth is, Salesforce caters mostly to the enterprise customer base while Magento is for SMBs. Thus, despite lower numbers, its turnover is often better. Let us talk about what makes Salesforce a powerful contender:

Salesforce is a cloud-based, fully managed, highly scalable, multi-tenant SaaS platform, which means the Salesforce team itself takes care of all servers and other infrastructure, platform maintenance and upgrades, security patching, etc.
One of the strongest points of Salesforce Commerce is its native merchandising capabilities, including in-built testing, scheduling, superior visual merchandising, complex product category support, multi-point promotion applications, and much more, which makes it the favourite in the fashion industry.
The other area where it overtakes Magento is its omnichannel features like order and inventory management, endless aisle, etc. that allows customers of its clients to seamlessly jump from one channel to another for making a purchase.
Salesforce uses Einstein to implement machine learning for the purpose of 1:1 and 1:many personalization to suit customer behavior.
Another winning feature is its internalization, which provides native multi-store, multi-currency, multi-brand, and multi-language features.
While Salesforce charges way more than Magento, it is because it takes care of all the infrastructural needs and provides guarantees and SLAs, so the client does not have to maintain and pay salaries to an IT team to look after the on-premise resources.
Salesforce clients get 24/7 support, including training, special assistance during sale surges, load balancing, etc., which is a major advantage over the demand-based support system of Magento.

Which One Should You Choose?

Laying it out as it is – by asking a vanilla question like “Is Salesforce Commerce better or Magento?” – will not yield a yes-or-no answer. The two e-commerce platforms are created to cater to entirely different segments of the market. Even though both are trying to foray into each other’s niche, it is still from opposite directions. For example, Salesforce Commerce now provides three different options – Starter, Growth, and Unlimited – for businesses of different sizes. Whereas, Magento has introduced the Cloud Starter. But still, they both would obviously perform better in the segments they dominate in.

Salesforce suits enterprise-level and fashion industry clients more, like L’Oréal, Adidas, Converse, GAP, Godiva, Kate Spade, Lacoste, and Ugg. Magento rules the SMB niche with Sugarfina, Paul Smith, Agent Provocateur, Brewdog, Missguided, HP, and so on. You should make your choice depending on which segment you belong to.

Moreover, your needs also play a big role here. If your focus is on building up your e-commerce site, Magento is the better choice. If you rather want to strengthen your CRM capabilities, Salesforce would be better, which makes sense since it is B2C-oriented. Magento, on the other hand, is stronger on the B2B front, so if you want to improve your B2B performance, go for Magento. Magento helps you construct your entire e-commerce system from scratch. For businesses that are already well-established and drive in good sales, and only want to build up its online e-commerce persona, Salesforce would be the preferred option.

Price is obviously also a driving factor. Salesforce, in general, is pricier. This again kind of veers back to the discussion of how big your business is. Corporations with an annual turnover in the billions bracket will not bat an eyelid about Salesforce. But for the smaller companies whose earnings revolve around millions, Magento is the clear winner. In the end, you must carefully consider your requirements, budget, and goals to conclude which will serve your business needs better.