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Adobe Experience Manager vs Magento
March 19, 2025 | Author: Sandeep Sharma
15★
A powerhouse combo for your content and digital asset management needs. Get personalized, content-led experiences into market faster with Adobe Experience Manager, which combines digital asset management with the power of a content management system.
13★
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. It uses multiple other PHP frameworks such as Laminas and Symfony. Magento source code is distributed under Open Software License v3.0.
Adobe owns both Adobe Experience Manager and Magento, which makes perfect sense because if you already own one complex, expensive, enterprise-level software, why not own two? Both platforms are quite good at managing digital experiences, supporting multiple sites and generally making sure that content ends up where it's supposed to be (which, let's face it, is often not where humans intended it to be). They both live in the cloud, integrate nicely with Adobe’s other expensive things and promise delightful personalization experiences—because who doesn’t love being followed around the internet by the exact pair of shoes they regret looking at once?
Adobe Experience Manager, known to its friends as AEM (if it had any), started life in Switzerland in 2010 and has since evolved into a sophisticated, highly expensive way for large organizations to control vast quantities of digital content. It’s especially useful for governments, enterprises and any other groups that enjoy workflows so intricate they require their own survival guide. Unlike its flashier cousin Magento, AEM isn’t really about selling things directly; it’s about managing things that might, at some point, need selling—or at least convincing people they were their idea in the first place. It also comes with a built-in Digital Asset Management system, which is a bit like an enormous, overly intelligent filing cabinet with opinions.
Magento, on the other hand, is all about eCommerce and has been since its birth in 2008 in the United States, where selling things is something of a national sport. Originally created by Varien before Adobe adopted it into the family in 2018, Magento is beloved by mid-size and large retailers who enjoy the freedom to customize their online stores within an inch of their lives. It comes in both an open-source version (for people who like tinkering with things) and a paid Adobe Commerce version (for people who like paying Adobe for things). Unlike AEM, which revels in its content management sophistication, Magento focuses on making sure businesses can sell things to other businesses, consumers, or, ideally, anyone with a credit card and a moment of poor impulse control.
See also: Top 10 Online Store Builders
Adobe Experience Manager, known to its friends as AEM (if it had any), started life in Switzerland in 2010 and has since evolved into a sophisticated, highly expensive way for large organizations to control vast quantities of digital content. It’s especially useful for governments, enterprises and any other groups that enjoy workflows so intricate they require their own survival guide. Unlike its flashier cousin Magento, AEM isn’t really about selling things directly; it’s about managing things that might, at some point, need selling—or at least convincing people they were their idea in the first place. It also comes with a built-in Digital Asset Management system, which is a bit like an enormous, overly intelligent filing cabinet with opinions.
Magento, on the other hand, is all about eCommerce and has been since its birth in 2008 in the United States, where selling things is something of a national sport. Originally created by Varien before Adobe adopted it into the family in 2018, Magento is beloved by mid-size and large retailers who enjoy the freedom to customize their online stores within an inch of their lives. It comes in both an open-source version (for people who like tinkering with things) and a paid Adobe Commerce version (for people who like paying Adobe for things). Unlike AEM, which revels in its content management sophistication, Magento focuses on making sure businesses can sell things to other businesses, consumers, or, ideally, anyone with a credit card and a moment of poor impulse control.
See also: Top 10 Online Store Builders
