Most eCommerce platforms make you pick a lane: sell to businesses or sell to consumers. Adobe Commerce doesn’t force that choice.
It’s one of the few platforms built to run a wholesale portal with tiered pricing and a retail storefront with slick product discovery, from the same codebase. That’s a big part of why it still holds roughly 12% of the B2B commerce platform market, according to Digital Commerce 360’s 2025 data, and why it remains the platform of choice for around 20% of the top 1,000 US retailers tracked by Internet Retailer’s annual rankings.
This isn’t a “Magento is the best platform, full stop” argument. It’s a look at what actually makes Adobe Commerce fit for both B2B and B2C operations, backed by numbers, and where it genuinely competes against alternatives like Shopify Plus and BigCommerce.
What Adobe Commerce Actually Is
Adobe Commerce is the enterprise edition of Magento, acquired by Adobe in 2018. It kept Magento’s open architecture and added AI-driven merchandising, B2B account management, and cloud infrastructure on top.
Two things set it apart from most competitors:
- It was built B2B-first, then extended for B2C, not the other way around.
- It’s fully customisable at the code level, so businesses aren’t stuck waiting on a vendor roadmap to ship a feature they need today.
That combination is why so many mid-market and enterprise brands still turn to Adobe Commerce development services when their catalogue, pricing logic, or customer segments get too complex for templated platforms.
The B2B Case for Adobe Commerce
B2B eCommerce isn’t a side channel anymore; it’s the bigger half of the internet. Grand View Research pegs the global B2B eCommerce market at roughly $28 trillion in 2026, and McKinsey’s B2B Pulse research found that 75% of B2B executives now view digital commerce as a permanent part of how they sell, not a pandemic-era stopgap.
That shift rewards platforms that were designed for B2B complexity from day one.
Complex Pricing and Account Hierarchies
Adobe Commerce natively supports customer-specific catalogues, negotiated pricing, quote workflows, and multi-user company accounts with role-based permissions. A distributor can give one buyer approval rights and another view-only access, all inside the same account structure.
On Magento-built stores specifically, average B2B order values run about 2.5 times higher than B2C order values on the same platform, according to platform usage data compiled by Adobe partners. That’s the natural result of supporting bulk ordering, reorder tools, and account-based pricing properly, instead of bolting them onto a consumer cart.
Built for Buyers Who Use Many Channels
McKinsey’s B2B Pulse research also found that B2B buyers now use 10 or more channels during a single purchase journey, roughly double what it was five years ago. Buyers move between a sales rep, a self-service portal, email, and a marketplace listing before they commit.
Adobe Commerce’s API-first architecture makes it realistic to connect a sales rep’s CRM, a self-service B2B storefront, and an ERP system without rebuilding the platform. That’s a harder ask on platforms designed primarily for single-channel retail checkout.
The B2C Case for Adobe Commerce
Adobe Commerce doesn’t stop being useful once you add consumer sales. For B2C ecommerce website development, its strength is depth: personalisation, merchandising control, and performance at scale, rather than speed of setup.
Personalization at Scale
Adobe Commerce includes AI-powered product recommendations and merchandising tools (via Adobe Sensei) built into the core product, not as a paid add-on from a third party. Brands can run different pricing, promotions, and catalogue views by customer segment, region, or channel from one instance.
That matters because shopper expectations keep rising. Baymard Institute’s long-running cart abandonment research puts the average online cart abandonment rate at just over 70%, and a large share of that is tied to a poor, generic browsing and checkout experience. Personalization and a fast, relevant storefront are direct levers against that number.
Performance and Scale for High-Volume Retail
Adobe Commerce Cloud is built to handle high-traffic events like Black Friday and flash sales without the storefront buckling, with built-in CDN, caching layers, and horizontal scaling. For retailers running six or seven-figure sales days, that infrastructure headroom is worth more than a lower monthly fee on a simpler platform.
Adobe Commerce vs. Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce
| Feature | Adobe Commerce | Shopify Plus | BigCommerce Enterprise |
| Best suited for | Complex B2B + B2C, large catalogues | Fast-moving D2C brands | Mid-market B2C, some B2B |
| B2B account hierarchies | Native, deeply customisable | Add-on/app dependent | Limited native support |
| Customisation depth | Full code-level access | Limited by platform constraints | Moderate, API-driven |
| Hosting | Self-managed or Adobe Cloud | Fully hosted by Shopify | Fully hosted by BigCommerce |
| Multi-store/multi-brand | Strong native support | Possible, needs configuration | Supported, less granular |
| Typical setup timeline | Longer, more complex builds | Faster to launch | Moderate |
| Ideal business size | Mid-market to enterprise | SMB to mid-market | SMB to mid-market |
No platform wins on every row. Shopify Plus is genuinely faster to launch. BigCommerce is a solid middle ground. Adobe Commerce earns its place when the business has outgrown templated logic, particularly around B2B pricing, catalogue complexity, or multi-brand operations.
Why the Development Partner Matters as Much as the Platform
Adobe Commerce’s flexibility is also its catch: the platform is only as good as the team building on it. A rushed or under-resourced build shows up fast, in slow page speeds, clunky checkout flows, or B2B pricing logic that breaks under real order volume.
This is where working with an experienced Magento web development company changes the outcome. The right partner brings:
- Proven experience with Adobe Commerce’s B2B module, not just the B2C storefront
- A track record of performance optimisation for high-traffic stores
- Familiarity with headless and PWA implementations where a faster front end is the priority
- Post-launch support for security patches, since Adobe ships regular updates for known vulnerabilities
Adobe Commerce rewards businesses that invest properly in the build. It punishes those that treat it like a plug-and-play platform.
Is Adobe Commerce Right for Your Business?
Adobe Commerce tends to make sense when a business:
- Sells to both business and consumer customers from one operation
- Needs custom pricing, quoting, or account structures
- Has a large or complex product catalogue
- Expects high traffic volumes or seasonal spikes
- Wants full control over the codebase and infrastructure
It’s a heavier lift than a hosted SaaS platform, and it’s not the right fit for a small store just getting started. But for brands with real B2B complexity, or B2C brands that have outgrown simpler tools, it remains one of the few platforms built to handle both without compromise.
Read More!
7 B2B Commerce Platforms That Let Buyers Manage Their Own Accounts
15 Best Paid Media Agencies for Global Brands
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Adobe Commerce good for small businesses?
Generally, no. Its strength is complexity and scale, so smaller stores with straightforward catalogs usually get more value from a simpler, faster-to-launch platform.
What’s the difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce?
Magento Open Source is the free, self-hosted core platform. Adobe Commerce adds enterprise features like B2B tools, AI merchandising, cloud hosting, and dedicated support on top of it.
Can Adobe Commerce run both B2B and B2C on one platform?
Yes. That’s one of its defining strengths, native support for both models, including shared or separate storefronts, from a single back end.
How long does an Adobe Commerce implementation typically take?
It varies with scope, but complex B2B or multi-store builds generally take longer than templated platforms, often several months for a full enterprise implementation.
Bhumi Patel, Client Partner at Magneto IT Solutions
Bhumi Patel has been working closely with businesses in Australia and New Zealand to drive successful digital commerce projects. With extensive experience in project execution and operations management across multiple industries, she specialises in ensuring seamless communication and efficient project delivery. Bhumi helps brands build and optimise their eCommerce ventures by aligning project strategies with their business goals to create long-term success.