Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento), has, for years, been the go-to platform for enterprise eCommerce brands. Thanks to the platform’s flexibility and customization features.
However, with evolving markets and requirements for scaling businesses, many merchants are finding the platform to be complex.
In this blog, we look at 12 reasons why Adobe Commerce is slowing down enterprise eCommerce teams, and why many are considering moving to Shopify Plus.
TLDR
-
Rising costs - Total cost of ownership increases over time with infrastructure, hosting, and maintenance expenses.
-
Disruptive upgrades - Updates require months of planning, extensive testing, and often break custom integrations.
-
Developer dependency - Even simple changes require technical expertise, creating bottlenecks and slowing down marketing teams.
-
Slow time-to-market - Launching new features or campaigns can take weeks or months due to developer availability.
-
Constant performance issues - High-traffic periods require ongoing optimization and troubleshooting, especially during peak sales.
-
Infrastructure burden - Businesses must manage hosting, scaling, uptime monitoring, and incident response internally.
-
Fragile integrations - Custom connections with ERPs, CRMs, and other tools increase system complexity and failure points.
-
Multi-store complexity - Managing global storefronts across regions involves complicated configurations for currency, language, tax, and compliance.
-
Security overhead - Manual security updates and compliance requirements (PCI-DSS, GDPR) demand significant ongoing effort.
-
Innovation barriers - Adding new technologies or tools is time-consuming, costly, and risks breaking existing systems.
-
Operational inefficiency - As businesses scale, teams spend more time managing systems than driving strategic growth.
-
Alternative solution - Many enterprises are migrating to Shopify Plus for managed infrastructure, reduced complexity, and faster operations
12 reasons Adobe Commerce is slowing down enterprise eCommerce teams
Here are 12 reasons why Adobe Commerce enterprise brands are choosing to shift to alternative platforms like Shopify Plus. And why you must consider it too.
1. Total cost of ownership keeps rising over time
Setting up Adobe Commerce requires significant investment. However, it doesn’t end there. The platform demands continuous expenses related to infrastructure, hosting fees, performance tuning, and optimization. As businesses grow and the setup becomes more sophisticated, the platform demands more investment.
Brands have to hire long-term agencies and retainers. Costs that were earlier predictable, can keep increasing over time. The platform demands a lot of investment and resources to keep it functional.
2. Upgrade cycles are disruptive and resource-heavy
Upgrades on Adobe Commerce aren’t simple. Its planning can take months, it requires cross-functional coordination, thorough testing, and careful staging. Custom extensions and integrations can break during upgrades.
Moreover, every upgrade requires thorough QA, which takes a significant amount of time. This can keep developer teams from working on other aspects of the business. Because of all these issues, a number of teams purposely delay upgrades.
However, delays only increase risks and issues of the platform becoming outdated and redundant.
3. Developer dependency is built into the platform
Adobe Commerce requires developers for every change required on the website. For example, updating a promotion, adjusting a product, making changes in the checkout flow, etc., requires the involvement of developers. As it requires technical knowledge, marketing or merchandising teams cannot make any changes independently.
This means simple updates and changes that would take just minutes take hours or days. Thus, in this case, scaling means hiring more developers to handle the growing needs. This dependency on developers ends up creating bottlenecks and backlogs, impacting business.
4. Time-to-market slows as the business scales
With Adobe Commerce, it is difficult to maintain speed. Launching new features requires the involvement of developers and can take weeks or months. For instance, if you want to launch a new campaign, you’d be dependent on the web developer’s availability.
Moreover, you cannot easily experiment with features because it would mean added developer costs. Competitors might end up incorporating new features, run tests, and adapt quickly to customer behavior, while Adobe Commerce merchants lag behind. All these factors make time-to-market slow when the business scales.
5. Performance optimization is constant, not occasional
High-traffic periods can stress out Adobe Commerce users. eCommerce websites require constant performance optimization; it is not a one-time task. For instance, the platform has to be continuously monitored and optimized to be able to handle high traffic periods. That’s because the website’s performance can vary based on hosting setup, caching strategy, and third-party integrations.
During high-traffic periods, such as Black Friday sales, developer teams might find themselves solving slowdowns, troubleshooting, and ensuring there’s no major breakdown.
6. Infrastructure ownership stays with the business
With Adobe Commerce, your business has to take all the responsibility of the infrastructure. For instance, hosting, scaling, uptime monitoring, and incident response have to be managed by your internal teams or your managed hosting partners.
Even if you integrate tools for monitoring and alerting, those tools become your added responsibility. Downtime is often common during high-traffic and high-revenue periods. These traffic increases pose operational risks. So, if something goes wrong, you have to take responsibility and fix the matter.
7. Custom integrations increase system fragility
Another reason why Adobe Commerce is slowing down enterprise eCommerce teams are the custom integrations on the website. Enterprise businesses generally have many integrations, such as ERP systems, CRMS, order management platforms, marketing automation tools, etc.
Adobe Commerce requires customization to integrate these into the system. Each of these integrations is added responsibility for the merchant. So, when something breaks down, it requires multiple teams to work on fixing it.
Now imagine what this means for scaling integrations across regions or business units. The work of fixing the issues becomes more complex and time-consuming.
8. Multi-store and global expansion add complexity
Enterprise businesses often have multiple storefronts. With Adobe Commerce, managing them increases operational work and expenses. Each region might have its specific requirements for configurations, unique product catalogs, and localized content. Moreover, factors such as currency, language, tax rules, and shipping demand additional setup.
Global multi-stores also involve legal and tax compliance, which add operational tasks. Ensuring consistency and updates across regions becomes difficult. For instance, making small updates and changes can require a lot of coordination, and take time.
9. Security and compliance require ongoing oversight
Another reason why Adobe Commerce slows down enterprise setups is the security and compliance requirements. Security updates have to be done manually. This adds the risk of breaking something. Add to this threat from third-party extensions.
With Adobe Commerce, compliance requirements, such as PCI-DSS, GDPR, etc., become internal responsibilities. Teams have to spend a lot of time and effort on compliance. Moreover, as the business scales, these security and compliance tasks double.
10. Innovation gets blocked by platform constraints
Modern businesses are accelerating growth by integrating new innovations and technologies. However, with Adobe Commerce, adding any new tool or workflows can be a challenge. Incorporating new tools takes time, running experiments with new tools becomes costly and risky.
Incorporating new technologies or workflows can harm the existing system and break it down. Innovation and tools that should help accelerate business processes might actually break down or slow down the enterprise systems.
11. Operational complexity grows faster than revenue
As businesses grow, order volumes increase, the operational complexity also grows. It involves more processes, and requires more coordination. Teams end up spending time on managing systems, troubleshooting, and coordinating, rather than focusing on strategic matters.
With scale, complexity increases and efficiency decreases. Automation and streamlined workflows can help businesses become more efficient, but with Adobe Commerce, these processes require a lot of resources and effort.
12. Shopify Plus reduces complexity through managed infrastructure
Many enterprise businesses on Adobe Commerce are choosing to switch to Shopify Plus. Shopify handles hosting, scaling, security updates, and infrastructure management. Internal teams do not have to worry about these aspects.
Moreover, since there are fewer things to manage, accountability is clear and internal operations become predictable, ensuring a streamlined approach. Internal teams can focus on strategic matters, such as growth, innovation, and customer experience.
Wrapping up: Should you switch from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus?
Adobe Commerce is an efficient platform but only until businesses start scaling. The platform has many limitations that keep it from meeting the demands of modern commerce. With limitations in flexibility and agility, growth can become slow. Enterprises choosing a platform with a long-term approach might not be able to extract the most out of Adobe Commerce.
Many enterprise brands are choosing the alternative to Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus. Shopify Plus is a managed service platform handling hosting, security, and infrastructure management. This takes away the burden from your in-house teams, creating more time and energy for things that really matter for your business growth.
If you’re looking to make a shift to Shopify Plus, contact our experts to guide you.
