Oct 07, 2014
These are very different solutions built for differing business and technology strategies. Demandware is regarded (and priced) at the high end of the SAAS based eCommerce solution alternatives, and has a very robust enterprise class solution. Magento is not SAAS, gives you even more development flexibility and extensibility, but runs the risk of a higher total cost of ownership if you are extending their framework very far outside of their core feature-set. Magento also has a reputation for poor usability; it is is very powerful, but for many business users, it's just too complicated (which renders all that capability ineffective; usability truly matters).
With regards to scalability, in my experience this is less of the point of differentiation than it used to be unless we are talking about massive scale.
A may be useful to consider these directional thoughts:
1) Is your business strategy to create a highly unique and differentiated eCommerce customer experience? If so, Magento Enterprise (open source) or Oracle Commerce (ATG; licensed) would be worth considering. Both will have a heavy development effort and maintenance cost burden relative to SAAS options.
2) If you are putting an eCommerce capability in place to sell online using best practices and methods as, say, an e-retailer might, then I would suggest you look exclusively at SAAS solutions. Lower up front cost, pre-build and pre-defined best practices and methods, with development and maintenance expense spread across 100's or 1,000's of customers. Demandware slots into this category, however they are, as others have noted, quite expensive and potentially overkill for a company under ~$100,000,000 in revenue, loosely speaking. Numerous other viable solutions in the SAAS space, at varying price points, UX, and capability.
Hope this helps! Best of luck,
Bill
