What is our primary use case?
My use cases for Adobe Commerce involve projects with specific customers and different industries. Most of them were projects where customers were migrating from either an open-source version of Adobe Commerce or from another vendor, and they wanted to get more flexibility, so they moved to Adobe Commerce. I was responsible for the leadership of the project and support and maintenance as well.
I am currently using the AI capabilities of Adobe Commerce. We are trying to experiment a bit on the value that we can get out of it and also provide to the customer. It is still in a POC phase as of now.
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate best about Adobe Commerce is the flexibility to adapt to the scenario that you're looking for. The possibility to add multiple modules from third-party vendors is very useful as well. These are the two most important features I can think of currently.
The benefits I have seen from using Adobe Commerce include being able to successfully deliver what the customer needs in terms of capabilities, performance, and user experience. The journey to get there has not been easy, but in the last few months, there have been many improvements and new ways to use Adobe Commerce. Now it is a bit easier than before, so it gives the customer the chance to be more creative about what they want or the user experience they're planning to provide to the end user.
What needs improvement?
An additional feature I would want to see included in the next release relates to integrating or moving data from one environment to another. There is no automated way to do that, so if we have a platform with multiple environments, such as staging, pre-prod, and production, moving content is not automated and has to be done manually, which takes significant time and effort, especially in a migration project with hundreds of pages.
It would be beneficial to see an automated way to handle this, not just for content, but also for customer data. Moving from one version to another, even within Adobe Commerce, requires transformation of the data and many validations. I would appreciate a tool that would facilitate this process to a point where it could be automated at least 90% of the time, allowing focus on ensuring data cleanliness rather than customizing or cleaning data manually.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Adobe Commerce since 2019.
How are customer service and support?
The support teams from Adobe are, from my perspective, the least favorite part. The support team is struggling; when I request support, they're very slow, communication is difficult, and we don't get the answers we're looking for. They're not the greatest support team. I would rate their support a five.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
To have Adobe Commerce out of the box is very straightforward. To actually get it ready for orders, it takes time and effort.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have experience regarding pricing and costs. Adobe Commerce is not inexpensive. It is not set up for customers with low budgets. Depending on the version you're implementing, the environment will not be inexpensive either because Adobe Commerce is heavy, requiring good environment, processing, and memory, which is expensive. However, once you get the environment you're looking for, scaling is not as expensive as other platforms. In the beginning, it requires a significant investment with many necessary purchases, but in the long term, you will not spend much on scalability.
What other advice do I have?
It is not really an easy tool to use. Anyone can learn how to use it, and it is intuitive in that sense. However, it has extensive functionality and many configurations that must be done before getting your first order, so it takes time to learn. There are many features that remain unknown until you need to set them up. It is not easy to learn how to use it completely.
I have used the integration with Adobe products specifically with Experience Manager, and we are using Builder, Edge Delivery Services, and Catalog Services. Many products can be integrated, and the integration is very straightforward with Adobe products. The complicated part is integrating with other vendors, which can be challenging, but once figured out, it becomes straightforward.
I have used the advanced reporting tools multiple times and the multilingual capabilities extensively. The multilingual capabilities have been very helpful. There are many ways to implement it, and all the features that Adobe Commerce has around that are very beneficial.
From my experience and based on the customers I have worked with and their unique business approaches, I definitely see the value of Adobe Commerce. It is not easy and very complex, but I do not know another tool with the same level of capabilities that Adobe Commerce has today.
We are partners of Adobe. I have used old versions of WooCommerce, Shopify, and a plugin for WordPress as well.
I would recommend Adobe Commerce to others if they need the requirements and their business model supports a tool of this caliber. Overall, I would rate the tool a seven out of ten.