Migrating from Magento to Adobe Commerce: decision guide, differences and migration process

Migrating from Magento to Adobe Commerce is one of the most frequent platform decisions we see in the Mexican and broader LATAM market. The question is almost never technical at first — it's a business one: a store running on Magento Open Source (the open source edition) or, worse, on Magento 1 (unsupported since 2020) reaches a point where the product roadmap stalls, maintenance costs climb, and features the business needs simply aren't included out of the box in the current edition. That's when the decision to migrate to Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Commerce) — the commercial edition with official Adobe support — comes into play.

This guide explains the real difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, why and when migrating makes sense (and when it doesn't), what a well-executed migration looks like —including the SEO piece that costs the most rankings when done poorly— and which risks to mitigate. This is a planned, proactive decision; if your project is already in crisis and needs emergency intervention, that's a different scenario, covered in our guide to rescuing and replatforming Adobe Commerce projects.

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce: aren't they the same?

No. This is the most common confusion, and it's worth clearing up before any decision, because nearly the entire "migration to Adobe Commerce" conversation starts with understanding where you're coming from and where you're going.

• Magento Open Source is the free, open source edition of the platform. You download it, self-host it, and maintain it on your own. It includes no official Adobe support, nor the enterprise features (native B2B, Page Builder, Live Search, advanced segmentation). It's what many Mexican stores implemented years ago, frequently on top of Magento 2 or, in legacy cases, Magento 1.
• Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Commerce) is the licensed commercial edition. It shares the same open source core but adds an enterprise feature set, official Adobe support, SLAs, and integration with the rest of Adobe Experience Cloud. It comes in two flavors: on-premise (self-hosted) and Adobe Commerce Cloud (Adobe's managed cloud on AWS + Fastly).

Put differently: migrating from Magento to Adobe Commerce isn't changing technology at the root — it's moving up an edition within the same family, preserving the team's knowledge of the platform. That makes the migration more predictable than replatforming to a completely different stack.

Why migrate from Magento to Adobe Commerce?

The reasons we see repeatedly in client discoveries in Mexico fall into five groups:

1. End of life (EOL). Magento 1 stopped receiving security patches in June 2020. Running on Magento 1 today makes PCI-DSS compliance impossible and leaves the store exposed to known, unpatchable CVEs. It's the most urgent reason to migrate and can't be deferred indefinitely.
2. No product roadmap. A Magento Open Source store without a version-upgrade plan accumulates debt: each upgrade gets more expensive, extensions fall out of date, and the Luma frontend ages without a modern path. The business roadmap stalls because the platform can't keep up.
3. Enterprise features Open Source doesn't include. There are capabilities Adobe Commerce ships out of the box that, in Open Source, you'd have to build or buy as third-party extensions (with the maintenance risk that implies). We detail them in the next section.
4. Official support and SLAs. Adobe Commerce comes with Adobe support and, in its Cloud version, managed infrastructure (AWS, Fastly CDN, scaling). For operations with traffic peaks (Hot Sale, Buen Fin, Black Friday), formal backing changes the risk equation.
5. Integration with Adobe Experience Cloud. If the business already uses —or plans to use— Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target or Real-Time CDP, Adobe Commerce integrates natively, enabling personalization and unified data that isolated Open Source can't reach.

Features Adobe Commerce ships that Magento Open Source doesn't

These are the native capabilities that weigh most heavily in the decision to migrate:

• Native B2B. Corporate accounts, purchase lists, quotes, hierarchical approvals, per-customer catalogs and pricing. In Open Source, all of this requires third-party extensions or custom development. If your operation is B2B or hybrid, this is usually the deciding factor — we cover it in Adobe Commerce B2B.
• Page Builder. A drag-and-drop editor to create pages, PDPs and campaigns without depending on a developer for every change. It notably reduces marketing's time-to-market.
• Live Search. AI-powered search (Adobe Sensei) with semantic autocomplete, merchandising rules and synonyms. Internal search is one of the biggest conversion drivers, and Open Source ships only basic search.
• Adobe Sensei. Adobe's AI/ML layer: product recommendations, intelligent merchandising and personalization, integrated into catalog and search.
• Advanced segmentation and targeting. Content and price rules by customer segment, dynamic customer segments, and native data-driven promotions.
• Official support + managed scalability. Especially relevant in Adobe Commerce Cloud: infrastructure, CDN and scaling operated by Adobe.

Key differences: comparison table

This is the comparison we use in discovery to align expectations. It summarizes the functional and operational differences between the source edition and the target one.

Dimension	Magento Open Source	Adobe Commerce
License	Free, open source	Commercial, licensed by Adobe
Official support	No (community / partner)	Yes (Adobe + SLAs)
Native B2B	No (requires extensions)	Yes (accounts, quotes, lists, approvals)
Page Builder	No	Yes (native drag-and-drop)
Live Search (AI)	Basic search only	Yes, with Adobe Sensei
Adobe Sensei / AI	No	Yes (recommendations, merchandising)
Customer segmentation	Basic	Advanced, data-driven
Hosting	Self-managed	On-premise or Adobe Commerce Cloud (managed)
Experience Cloud integration	Manual	Native (AEM, Analytics, Target, CDP)
Cost	No license; cost in infra + development	License + infra; lower cost of features to build
Ideal for	Simple catalogs, tight budget, in-house tech team	Complex operations, B2B, enterprise, high traffic

A note on cost: we don't publish Adobe license pricing — it's a matter of a direct agreement with Adobe based on business volume (GMV) and configuration. What we do evaluate with you in discovery is the comparative total cost of ownership: what it costs today to maintain and extend Open Source vs. the Adobe Commerce model, including the features you'd no longer have to build.

When does it make sense to migrate, and when not?

Migrating isn't always the answer. Here's our honest read on when it is and when it isn't.

Migrating to Adobe Commerce makes sense when:

• You run on Magento 1 (EOL, no patches): there's no debate here — migration is mandatory for security and PCI.
• Your operation is B2B or hybrid B2B/B2C and you're paying for extensions or custom development to cover features Adobe Commerce ships natively.
• The business roadmap is stalled by limitations of the current platform: personalization, segmentation, search, multi-brand/multi-country.
• You handle high traffic peaks and need SLAs and managed infrastructure with formal backing.
• You already invest in Adobe Experience Cloud (AEM, Analytics, Target) and want native integration with commerce.

It probably does NOT make sense to migrate yet when:

• Your catalog is simple and stable, traffic is moderate, and an up-to-date Magento Open Source covers your needs well. Migrating for its own sake generates no ROI.
• You're on a recent, supported version of Magento Open Source with no relevant technical debt and no features blocking the business.
• The budget doesn't account for license + project, and enterprise features don't solve a real, measurable pain.

In these cases, the best recommendation is frequently to optimize and upgrade Magento Open Source (version upgrade, frontend modernization, Core Web Vitals improvement) instead of migrating. At WolfSellers we'd rather tell you not to migrate than sell you a project that won't pay for itself.

What does a well-executed migration process look like?

A professional Magento-to-Adobe Commerce migration is a phased project, not a "switch." The technical core has six components we work on in parallel and in a controlled sequence.

1. Discovery and migration plan

Before touching code: an inventory of the current store (version, extensions, custom code, integrations, data volume), defining the target edition (Adobe Commerce on-premise or Adobe Commerce Cloud), and a plan with scope, risks and cutover. Deliverable: a prioritized roadmap and business case.

2. Data migration

Products, categories, customers, order history, reviews and configuration. Adobe provides the official Data Migration Tool to move data between versions; even so, legacy data almost always requires cleanup, attribute mapping and validation. This phase defines much of the risk: dirty data migrated without validation produces errors that surface in production weeks later.

3. Extensions and custom code

Every third-party extension and every custom module in the current Open Source is evaluated: is it still needed? Is there a native Adobe Commerce equivalent (e.g. B2B, Page Builder, Live Search) that replaces it and lets us retire the extension? Is the custom code compatible with the target version or does it need a refactor? This is where debt gets eliminated — you don't drag what no longer adds value into the new platform.

4. Theme and frontend

The frontend is a strategic decision. Options: update the current theme to the new version, modernize to a lightweight frontend, or use the migration to move to headless / composable commerce with PWA Studio. The migration is a good moment to resolve the debt of an old Luma frontend, but it doesn't force you to do it all at once.

5. SEO migration (the part that costs the most rankings)

This is where most projects lose organic traffic and where we apply the most care. A poorly executed migration drops Google rankings by 30% to 80% within weeks. What can't be missing:

• A 1:1 URL map and 301 redirects from every old URL to its new equivalent. No 404s.
• Metadata preservation: titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, heading structure.
• Schema markup / structured data (Product, BreadcrumbList, Organization) migrated, not lost.
• Sitemap.xml and robots.txt updated and resubmitted to Search Console.
• Post-cutover validation: monitoring coverage in Search Console, crawl errors and rankings by keyword in the first weeks.

6. Testing and cutover

E2E tests of critical flows (guest and registered checkout, payments, installments/MSI, OXXO/SPEI, CFDI invoicing, B2B if applicable), load tests against expected peak traffic, and a cutover plan with a defined window, post-go-live validation and a rollback ready in case something goes wrong. The cutover is rehearsed before it's executed in production.

Typical risks and how we mitigate them

Risk	How we mitigate it
Loss of SEO rankings	1:1 URL map, exhaustive 301s, metadata and schema preservation, post-cutover monitoring
Corrupt or poorly mapped legacy data	Data Migration Tool + cleanup and prior validation; a staging environment that mirrors production
Incompatible extensions	Early inventory and evaluation; replacement with native functionality where it exists
Cutover downtime	Planned window, prior rehearsal, documented rollback plan
Bugs in checkout / local payments	E2E tests of OXXO, SPEI, MSI and CFDI before go-live
Cost overruns from fuzzy scope	Formal discovery with closed scope and business case before committing to execution

How long does a Magento-to-Adobe Commerce migration take?

There's no single number — it depends on data volume, the amount of custom code, the integrations (ERP, OMS, PIM, payments) and the frontend decision. As a reference for the ranges we work with:

• Low-complexity migration (contained catalog, few extensions, a frontend that's updated rather than rebuilt): typically 2 to 4 months.
• Medium-complexity migration (B2B, several integrations, relevant custom code): typically 4 to 8 months.
• Complex migration (multi-brand/multi-country, headless/composable, critical integrations): 8 months or more.

The factor that moves these ranges most is usually not the data migration itself, but the amount of custom code and the integrations that have to be rebuilt or adapted. That's why the initial discovery is decisive for giving a realistic estimate.

How we help

At WolfSellers we are an Adobe Gold Partner with more than 10 years in LATAM and 40 specialists certified in Adobe Commerce. Migration to Adobe Commerce from Magento Open Source and Magento 1 is one of our most mature practices: discovery with a comparative business case, validated data migration, evaluation of extensions and custom code, SEO migration with rankings preservation, and a rehearsed cutover with a rollback plan. If you're evaluating migrating from Magento to Adobe Commerce —or you're not sure it's right for you yet— we can run a discovery to define the path with data. Let's talk.