Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Magento: Which to Choose?

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Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Magento: Picking the Right E-commerce Platform

November 6, 2023 eye-glyph 2965

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    Striving to find which eCommerce platform is the right choice for your business among Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Magento? This detailed comparison helps you decide which is right for you.

    When it comes to the best eCommerce platform– Magento and Salesforce are the two leading platforms that top the list. Both eCommerce systems are among the most highly sought-after cloud-based eCommerce platforms available, with comprehensive and cutting-edge capabilities.

    Magento vs Salesforce Commerce Cloud, both platforms offer a wide range of customizable solutions for SMBs to large enterprises. Magento is a widely used eCommerce platform being used by business owners for years now; on the other hand, Salesforce is a more innovative and recently proposed alternative. It provides merchants and users with a highly optimized eCommerce experience that is second to none.

    Let’s have a detailed comparison of these two prominent players to help you choose the best one for your business that can adapt to suit your needs to support the growth of your business.

    So, let’s get started, with a brief introduction to Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento.

    What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud was previously known as Demandware bought by Salesforce in 2016.

    It is a cloud-based SaaS platform with pre-built hosting to enable eCommerce businesses to host their website on it, eradicating the need for third-party hosting. Commerce Cloud offers solutions for both B2B and B2C businesses to support them in creating a unified and intelligent shopping experience.

    Commerce Cloud also has customer-first order management giving it a competitive edge over its competitors. This order management system enables merchants to sell wherever their customers are be it social media, email, web, or anywhere else.

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud also offers rich localization features by adding more languages, currencies, and tax formatting to help you expand your business without worrying about geographical boundaries. Furthermore, it also offers easy and seamless integration capabilities with third-parties systems, thereby businesses can extend the platform’s raw capabilities to meet specific needs.

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud recently launched Einstein GPT for Commerce enabling businesses to grow seamlessly with the power of generative AI for sales.

    What are the Benefits of Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

    benefits of commerce cloud
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    1. All-Inclusive Platform

    As a primary differentiator, Salesforce Commerce Cloud provides marketers with an all-in-one platform to handle several marketing efforts across several channels. It enables the organization to create a highly personalized shopping experience for their customers across all channels like social media, smartphones, the web, and so on.

    2. Commerce Cloud Endless Aisle

    Using SFCC, you can integrate your shopping channels and simplify the shopping experience for everyone involved in the transaction, including both consumers and employees. It allows you to give tailored customer experiences while also providing your team members with access to customer databases and inventory information on the Internet. Your clients will be able to construct a wishlist with the things they want to purchase due to this. Additionally, advertising special discounts in your online business might help you boost the visitor number and the conversion rate.

    3. Omnichannel Capabilities

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a SaaS system that brings together e-commerce, order management, and offline shop operations into a single platform. This platform strongly emphasizes enabling merchants to manage their businesses across many channels (e-commerce, social, mobile, etc.) from a single platform. It is widely regarded as a leader in simplifying processes, sales, and fulfillment at scale. In addition, Salesforce Commerce Cloud enables merchants to deploy their services (such as ‘purchase anywhere, fulfill anywhere’) through their order management system, which provides customers with a variety of flexible purchasing alternatives, such as in-store pickup, ship from store, and so on.

    4. Offers a Headless Commerce

    Other than Salesforce Commerce Cloud, there is no other technology that is as good at enabling shop owners to manage many storefronts from a single back-end for different areas of the world. With the high-end features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a user may manage numerous languages, currencies, and procedures, which are necessary for managing storefronts that cater to clients worldwide. It also makes a variety of linked tasks more manageable, such as product availability, billing, and handling price, among others.

    5. Predictive Intelligence

    As the organization expands the amount of data that needs to be analyzed also rises. However, analyzing a vast amount of data and visualizing it can be lengthy and resource intensive. To make things easier and save time, Salesforce developed Einstein GPT to broaden the application of generative artificial intelligence in eCommerce enterprises. It is no longer necessary to use third-party add-ons or perform manual data analysis with this next-generation artificial intelligence platform. SFCC now allows you to incorporate third-party artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to assist with data analysis and automate all of your digital marketing operations.

    Who is using the Salesforce Commerce Cloud?

    B2C and B2B Commerce are the two commerce products available for consumers, brands, and retailers. Both B2C and B2B organizations want to provide their clients with an outstanding eCommerce experience through eCommerce websites; therefore, they must employ various practical solutions to achieve this goal. B2C Commerce is often used to manage eCommerce websites with a significant number of guest shoppers and improve the buying experience for the customers who visit the site.

    Salesforce B2B Commerce is meant to help B2B businesses to strengthen their relationships with customers and find new ways of growth. Cloud Commerce fulfills the needs of both B2C and B2B businesses.

    What is Magento (Adobe Commerce)?

    Magento is a content management system (CMS) for eCommerce businesses (CMS). In layman’s words, Magento offers company owners the technology they require to operate an online store or marketplace successfully, or it is an operating system for an eCommerce website.

    Magento was acquired by Adobe Inc. in May 2018 and renamed Adobe Commerce Cloud. The latest version of Magento is 2.4.3 which was released on June 29th, 2021.

    Magento offers customers total freedom and control over their eCommerce site making it one of the best choices among businesses. To do this, Magento delivers a comprehensive list of essential features that provide shop owners with the flexibility to design and configure their online businesses to meet their specific company requirements best while maximizing advantages.

    Benefits of Magento

    Benefits of Magento
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    1. Advanced SEO Suite

    As a result of Magento’s SEO-friendly design, your items will have a better chance of ranking highly in search engines. It is simple to modify your SEO settings, whether for pages, categories, or layered navigation. With Magento, you’ll also have access to enhanced rich snippets and a Google sitemap optimized for search. Furthermore, you would be able to generate meta-tags using templates while also receiving an SEO analysis of every page.

    2. Content Management

    Prices, components, and functionality of products are constantly changing. Magento offers a powerful web page editor that enables businesses to make relevant changes to the web page to meet those changes. With the help of CMS, businesses can make those changes without having any coding knowledge using a user-friendly interface. As a result, anyone may use it with relative simplicity and make modifications to their websites.

    3. Customizable

    Everything about your website, from the design to the way you arrange your product categories and features, is unique to you and your business when you use Magento. However, it’s crucial to note that nearly everything must be programmed from the ground up from scratch because of the high amount of customization required. Even though Magento offers a few design options on its website, most company owners who use the content management system (CMS) choose to employ a Magento developer to create a unique and personalized site.

    4. Affordability

    Being built on advanced technology, Magento ensures that your websites will operate well and help you remain competitive in the marketplace. Magento Open Source is available for free download from the Magento website (no license fee). The cost of Magento development and operational services will be necessary to ensure that your website is fully functional.

    Who is using Magento?

    As the fastest, most optimized, and user-friendly multi-channel eCommerce platform available, Magento is the ideal choice. The level of competition is growing, and internet sales are reaching new heights. Magento enables eCommerce businesses to compete and grow in this competition.

    Some of the world’s most popular eCommerce businesses like Ford, Coca-Cola, Jaguar, Land–and the list goes on.

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud Vs Magento

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud Vs Magento
    Salesforce Commerce Cloud Vs Magento dark

    Even though Salesforce and Magento are both well recognized for their comprehensive functions, which aid online merchants in efficiently setting up eCommerce businesses, there are some significant distinctions between the two platforms.

    1. Internationalization

    The internationalization capabilities of Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento Commerce are nearly identical, as both systems aim to serve merchants that generate a significant amount of revenue internationally.

    A site built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud may be customized and modified to meet the diverse demands of customers from a variety of different geographic locations. It contains a range of localization capabilities to assist in the worldwide expansion of a company’s products and services. From the storefront to the Business Manager, you have the option to localize your store design.

    Multi-site management allows for the development of several sites and their administration from a single interface. Furthermore, the Business Manager interface offers built-in language support for English, French, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese and the other supported languages. It will assist in including local individuals in the administration team, allowing for more tailored, localized material to be created.

    Adobe Commerce Cloud also offers support for multiple languages, currencies, localized pricing, and tax rates to help businesses expand globally. From a single interface, an administrator can manage multiple eCommerce websites for multiple locations.

    2. Architecture

    When comparing Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Magento based on architecture, both platforms have pros and cons.

    Commerce Cloud is proposed as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), while Magento is offered as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Traditionally, Magento was stored on local servers and served as an on-premise solution, later on, it launched a cloud-based version. While, Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based solution that promises improved scalability, flexibility, and reliability compared to Magento.

    Furthermore, Magento necessitates third-party hosting, which results in added complications and maintenance. Commerce Cloud has a pre-built hosting option to offer more security with no additional overhead.

    3. Managed Services

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud, as said earlier offered to businesses as Software-as-a-Service. This means all the accountability related to infrastructure management, security, and updates will be taken care of by Salesforce. As a result, businesses can emphasize more on achieving their business goals rather than sleight of hand in the technical complexities of the platform. Salesforce also holds accountability for the performance improvements, and new feature releases without asking businesses for additional investments.

    Magento, on the other side, is a self-hosted platform relying on third parties for hosting. This might require businesses to invest additional resources to ensure the reliability of the hosting.

    4. Integration Capabilities

    Integration refers to the eCommerce platform’s compatibility to work with other systems to improve business performance. Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a wide range of seamless integration capabilities with Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and so on to unify all business operations. Additionally, Salesforce AppExchange enables businesses to integrate Commerce Cloud with third-party solutions.

    On the other hand, Magento also offers integration capabilities. However, the option of integrations and seamless compatibility is limited. This makes Commerce Cloud a better choice than Magento.

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Magento: Which One is the Right Choice?

    Following your review of Magento vs Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it’s time to put the knowledge to work for you to decide which platform to choose. Salesforce Commerce Cloud emerged as the preferred choice over Magento for commerce. Be it internalization, architecture, managed services, and integration, Commerce Cloud has better offerings.

    Do you want to build your business on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud? Cyntexa is a Salesforce Crest (Gold) Consulting Partner with more than 300+ Salesforce experts. With our expertise, we can build a customized solution that will speak about your business.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Yes, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is suitable for all sizes of businesses including SMBs. It doesn’t cost you any upfront amount. For instance, the starter plan for B2C Commerce Cloud costs you 1% of the gross merchandise value. With this plan, a small business can launch an eCommerce website and take advantage of the great capabilities of Commerce Cloud to grow.

    Commerce Cloud vs Magento both offer AI-powered capabilities for commerce. Salesforce has Einstein AI and recently it also introduced Commerce GPT to help businesses to streamline their operations with generative AI. On the other hand, Magento or Adobe Commerce has introduced Adobe Sensei.

    Both Magento and Commerce Cloud offer customization options. Commerce Cloud has wider customization options and a smooth learning curve. Magento has limitations for customization and involves great technical complexities.

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