I originally wrote this article in early 2018, as we started seeing more brands looking at both Shopify Plus and Salesforce Commerce Cloud and also more SFCC users reviewing Shopify Plus as a potential migration option. Since I originally wrote the article, lots has changed with both platforms and we’ve done a lot more with both platforms, so I decided to update it now (May 22).

With most of the retailers we work with being mid-market (within the ~£5m – £25m bracket), in the past, I’ve discounted Salesforce Commerce Cloud (previously Demandware) when reviewing platform options with clients – due to a combination of build costs and licensing costs (which many others I know have done also). However, in this article, I’ll run through some changes that Salesforce Commerce Cloud have made to their pricing to make the platform more feasible for smaller retailers.

I originally wrote this article in 2015 and decided to update it in June 2019, as both platforms have evolved a lot over the last 2-3 years (including the names) and I was previously focusing on Magento 1.x and Demandware, pre the Salesforce acquisition. The latest version of this article is focused on Magento 2.3 and Salesforce Commerce Cloud as of January.

Whilst SaaS (software-as-a-service) software has been enthusiastically taken up across various sectors over the last decade, it’s only in more recent times that enterprise eCommerce platform options have been made available to retailers. The SME end of the retail market may have been well served with cloud-based SaaS solutions, with the obvious ones being Shopify and BigCommerce, however, it’s taken longer for most of the enterprise platforms to enter this space, with the exception of Demandware / Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Since its launch back in 2008, Magento has dominated the SMB and mid-market eCommerce platform space. A decade is a long time in the eCommerce world, and for much of that time, Magento has appeared to be a clear leader, in terms of reliability, extensibility and depth of functionality.