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Adobe Commerce vs HCL Digital Commerce comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Commerce
Ranking in eCommerce Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HCL Digital Commerce
Ranking in eCommerce Platforms
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the eCommerce Platforms category, the mindshare of Adobe Commerce is 6.3%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Digital Commerce is 2.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
eCommerce Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Adobe Commerce6.3%
HCL Digital Commerce2.3%
Other91.4%
eCommerce Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew Christodoulou - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Product Manager at Swoon
Customization supports complex needs, though speed challenges persist
We don't use the reporting tools from Adobe Commerce as we have our own reporting infrastructure. Adobe Commerce can be complex in terms of ease of use, as it's such a large platform. From the development side, you can customize everything, but that does require substantial resources. When working on Adobe Commerce, I would want Adobe Commerce specialist developers. Although it's all built in PHP, and there are many PHP developers, I would want Adobe Commerce specialist developers working on it because they have knowledge about what to customize and more importantly, what's best not to touch. There are always site speed issues with Adobe Commerce. It seems to be an ongoing issue with performance. When comparing it to Shopify, you don't tend to need to worry about that, but with Adobe Commerce, it remains an ongoing issue. Additionally, there are all the upgrades, which can be quite painful, including the regular patches, both on the open-source and licensed version, on-premises. The initial setup for migrating to Adobe Commerce from another e-commerce platform is not straightforward; it's a very big job. The pricing for Adobe Commerce varies dramatically. Quite often, you see their list prices and then you are able to negotiate very hefty discounts. My understanding is that they're moving away from heavily discounting. Although our license where I am at the moment is heavily discounted, I'm hearing that they're trying to move away from that practice.
Nirav Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior QA Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Unified complex B2B commerce has streamlined workflows and now supports faster global ordering
While there are no specific pain points, HCL Digital Commerce's complexity does require a unique architecture, and it would be beneficial to have an integrated architecture that simplifies end-user integration with other AWS cloud services. Additionally, an improvement in speed would be advantageous; for example, if orders could be processed within a minute instead of three to four minutes, we could boost selling time.Optimizing for sales productivity to minimize processing time while maximizing sales time would also be valuable. Regarding challenges, the complexity of the structure due to large product catalogs, complex pricing, multiple brands, and regional requirements does create challenges. Reducing these complexities through HCL Digital Commerce's features could streamline our operations, particularly regarding ERP, CRM, payments, security, performance, and scalability.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We have the ability to resolve service issues since Magento enables us to invest more time in dealing with custom requirements."
"Magento provides a strong backing, meaning it can handle the order processing, customer management, configuration, third party payment integration, and shipping matters. There is a standard, very well set up architecture already present in Magento that helps them set up their online shops with much precision. Clients can see their reports, their daily sales, their best selling products, and their best buying customers so that they can target them through mails or just follow up with them. These are the main default features which make Magento so attractive."
"The customization capabilities of Adobe Commerce are great."
"However, the fact that Magento is so complete, well-supported, and recognized makes it difficult to consider another system."
"The open-source PHP code allows our developers to customize pretty much anything on the platform, including allowing us to add some of the most complex shipping and inventory features for clients who have very specific, industry-related business specifications."
"Magento has changed over the years, but one of the most interesting aspects is that it gets the job done, and a vast community of experts is knowledgeable about the solution."
"Magento is generally considered to be the most advanced e-commerce program available in the market."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ease of integration with any upfront platform or CMS solution."
"The most valuable solution is that it allows you to adapt it according to the customer's needs."
"I haven't faced any issues with the product's stability."
"It is a very mature product, it has a lot of features, and it can also be very easily customized in order to reach goals or features that are not available, but mainly the fact that it's a very mature platform with all major features that are normally required by the clients is most valuable."
"The promotion engine is definitively one of the highlights, facilitating precision marketing and dynamic segmentation based on shopper insights and behavior, with business users able to set up promotion and segmentation rules simply by dragging and dropping the component icons."
"The tool is easy to use and flexible. It is flexible enough to tailor to your requirements."
"HCL Digital Commerce has automated customer self-service and contract pricing, allowing approximately 80 to 90% time saving per order."
"The best feature HCL Digital Commerce offers, in my experience, is flexibility, and during these years, the growth of the solution, especially in the integration area where I worked extensively, has been outstanding because we started by sending more than 15 files to load the catalog, and now on the API-first side, there is a huge benefit of integration with HCL Digital Commerce."
"Has all the modules needed for an order management solution."
 

Cons

"Elasticsearch has really been a pain; it takes a toll on the performance, and starting with version 2.4, Magento requires Elasticsearch, which has been causing a lot of serious performance issues."
"More technical knowledge is required to keep a Magento website running smoothly compared to many other platforms like OpenCart."
"The way that Magento is built isn’t the friendliest for this kind of thing."
"The solution takes a huge amount of time to complete the root cause analysis."
"The analytics are good but there is room for improvement. There are some limitations due to new regulations causing customer data time delays."
"It would be great to have a way to communicate properly with the team that builds the platform because you can get stuck at certain points, and it's hard to search for solutions on forums and tutorials."
"At the moment, Magento is stuck in the middle of a nobody-wants-me market."
"I am still playing around and trying to catch up with the latest version to understand all the features, but I do feel that its CMS can be much more streamlined. They provide a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor, which many customers prefer, but based on the implementations that I have done for more than seven years, I have seen that many times, it is run by the marketing team, and they don't find it very comfortable to use. They feel uncomfortable managing and changing the content. As a business user, you need to have at least basic knowledge of HTML, which you cannot expect from all marketing teams. Some companies or organizations have that competency, but many organizations, especially in the Middle East, have a very small team, so it becomes quite difficult for them. This is a common challenge that I have seen across the platforms. Magento is better and easier than Oracle Commerce Cloud, but Shopify is much easier than Magento. A layman or my 10-year-old kid can go ahead and set up a store in Shopify in probably 45 minutes, which is not the case with Magento. Elasticsearch has really been a pain. It takes a toll on the performance. Starting with version 2.4, Magento requires Elasticsearch, which has been causing a lot of serious performance issues. We had a client in the US who was running a promo, and they lost a subsequent number of orders over one and a half hours. They were on the enterprise platform, not open-source. The team had to open a ticket with Magento. Its performance needs to be upgraded, or some kind of guidelines have to be provided for the setup. It looks like even Magento has no clue. When you go through the answers given in the online community, it seems that in spite of having the hardware configurations that they suggest, it is not performing at the optimal level. It should also have a better way to measure performance. Performance measuring has to be much easier. Many times, we see CPU utilization going up and down. We see spikes without any reason. Therefore, we need a better performance management system."
"Lacks option to purchase individual modules."
"HCL Digital Commerce should improve its integration capabilities with other platforms."
"The product catalog is an area that needs improvement. It is forcing us to look and test other solutions."
"I see a lot of room for improvement in HCL Digital Commerce, such as making customer reviews less cumbersome, enhancing promotion coupons and e-marketing features, improving CMS options compared to other CMS systems like Adobe Commerce, and addressing the lack of user-friendly features for building mobile apps, along with the challenge of tightly coupled systems that hinder autonomy."
"Another area of improvement is the user-friendliness of the back office stuff. This issue is still valid, and it is still a problem, but I know they are currently working on it."
"Their support is not amazingly good. We had a lot of trouble moving from version 8 to version 9."
"One important way HCL Digital Commerce can be improved is by reducing the learning curve, as developing is not straightforward, which I have observed from my activity as a project manager in HCL projects, where customization inside the platform takes time."
"The Product information Management is very basic, and the template for front-end coding could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is cheaper than some of its competitors. However, the price depends on which country you are in. In some countries, such as Greece or some Southeastern European countries, the price for the client can be expensive."
"The cost of implementation is cheap compared to other solutions."
"The product offers an open-source version, which is free. There are licensing options for Adobe Commerce's cloud version."
"We transitioned from the platform's commercial license to the open-source version, which helped optimize costs without affecting our sales."
"The price of the solution increased after Adobe acquired Magento. At this point, we know the price of Magento and SAP, and while they may have lower entry tickets, they are ultimately comparable."
"Many implementations were open-source. We also had a couple of enterprise-level implementations, but I didn't have visibility on the licensing cost."
"I believe that HCL Digital Commerce is one of the most expensive products on the market."
"For our companies and our users, the price is quite high."
"HCL Digital Commerce's licensing costs are annual. It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Magento?
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 p...
What is your primary use case for Magento?
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 Ad...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Magento?
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HCL Digital Commerce?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, while I am not entirely certain of the specifics, I know that the setup and licensing costs are relatively cheaper compared to other systems.
What needs improvement with HCL Digital Commerce?
While there are no specific pain points, HCL Digital Commerce's complexity does require a unique architecture, and it would be beneficial to have an integrated architecture that simplifies end-user...
What is your primary use case for HCL Digital Commerce?
Our main use case for HCL Digital Commerce is to manage the front-end and back-end side, with the more data and more complex structure we have on the back-end side. HCL Digital Commerce helps us to...
 

Also Known As

Magento, EPiServer Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce, IBM WebSphere Commerce
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Magento has over 200,000 customers worldwide, including Bjorn Borg, Heath Ceramics, Harper's Bazaar, Kidstuff, International Military Antiques, Gifts That Gives, and Rovio Entertainment Ltd.
CEWE, J.J. Keller, Shop.ca, 360training.com, Bon-Ton, HH Gregg, Dahl Sverige AB, Terranova, Lindt
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Commerce vs. HCL Digital Commerce and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
903,118 professionals have used our research since 2012.