Open-source e-commerce platforms: Magento and WooCommerce

An open-source e-commerce platform is software you can download, change and host yourself without paying a licence fee. The two that matter for UK retailers are Magento Open Source (owned by Adobe, with a paid sibling called Adobe Commerce) and WooCommerce (a plugin for WordPress). They make sense when your business needs something a hosted platform will not let you build, and you have the budget and the people to look after it.

The licence is free. Nothing else is. You pay for hosting, for developers, for security patching and for every upgrade, and those costs do not stop after launch.

That is not an argument against open source. Some of the best stores we work on run on Magento, because nothing else would do what the business needs. It is an argument for choosing it deliberately.

The short version

• Open source gives you full control of the code and the data, and full responsibility for keeping it running and secure.
• Magento Open Source is free; Adobe Commerce is the licensed edition with B2B, content staging, customer segments and Adobe support.
• WooCommerce suits content-led businesses already on WordPress with a modest catalogue.
• Budget for hosting, patching and upgrades every year, not only for the build.
• For a conventional catalogue sold to consumers, a hosted platform is usually cheaper and faster.

What does open source actually give you?

Control. You can change how prices are calculated, how the checkout behaves, how products are structured and how the store talks to your other systems. The data sits in your own database, on servers you choose. No vendor can raise your rent, retire a feature or change its terms.

What it takes away is the safety net. On a hosted platform, the vendor keeps the lights on. Here, that job is yours, or your agency's, and it needs a named owner.

Magento Open Source vs Adobe Commerce

Magento has been Adobe's since 2018, and the naming still confuses people. There are two products built on the same core:

• Magento Open Source is the free edition. You download it, host it and maintain it.
• Adobe Commerce is the licensed edition. It adds features aimed at larger and trade businesses, plus Adobe's support. You can host it yourself, run it on Adobe's cloud infrastructure, or buy Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, a fully hosted version that Adobe updates for you.

The features that most often justify the Adobe Commerce licence are the B2B suite (company accounts, shared catalogues with customer-specific pricing, quotes, requisition lists and purchase approvals), content staging (schedule and preview changes before they go live) and dynamic customer segments. If you need none of them, Open Source is the same engine without the invoice. If you need all of them, building them yourself on Open Source rarely works out cheaper. Adobe does not publish licence prices, so get a quote early.

Both editions follow the same release line. The current version is 2.4.9, released in May 2026, and Adobe lists regular support for it until May 2029. Each version has an end date: 2.4.6 passed the end of regular support in August 2026, and stores still on it are now running on borrowed time. You can check any version on Adobe's released versions page.

Magento done properly is very capable. For Notcutts, we built on Magento because the store had to stay in step with their existing Mercatus and Epicor systems. We integrated Microsoft Dynamics for real-time synchronisation and built a bespoke loyalty system inside Magento that syncs with their CRM and ERP. That is the sort of project where open source earns its keep.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free plugin, made by Automattic, that turns a WordPress site into a shop. If your business is content first (a publisher, a membership organisation, a brand with a strong editorial site) and the shop is part of it, WooCommerce keeps everything in one place and your team already knows the editor.

Its weakness is that it is assembled, not designed. A typical store is WordPress, plus WooCommerce, plus a theme, plus a dozen or more plugins from different authors, each updating on its own schedule. Every update is a small risk, and plugin vulnerabilities are the most common way WordPress sites are compromised. It can be run well, but it needs disciplined maintenance, and it gets harder as order volume and catalogue size grow.

WooCommerce's own pricing page is refreshingly direct about this: it puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, at the time of writing (October 2026).

Shopware, PrestaShop and OpenCart

You will see these three in comparison lists. Briefly:

• Shopware is a well-engineered German platform with a strong following in German-speaking markets. Its free Community Edition now comes with a fair usage policy that moves larger merchants on to paid plans, so check the current terms. UK agency coverage is thin.
• PrestaShop is popular in France, Spain and Italy. It changed hands in early 2026, when its previous owner sold it to the Polish group cyber_Folks. Again, few UK specialists.
• OpenCart is light and inexpensive to run, and suits very small shops. We would not build a growing retailer on it.

None is a bad product. The practical issue in the UK is people: if only a handful of agencies can work on your platform, you have very little choice when you need to change supplier.

What does "free" really cost?

These are the lines to put in the budget. We have left out figures we cannot stand behind, because they vary so widely with the size of the store; our guide to what an e-commerce platform really costs works through them.

1. The build. Usually larger than the equivalent hosted build, because more is made from scratch.
2. Hosting. Servers sized for your peak day, plus a content delivery network, backups, monitoring and a staging environment. Magento in particular needs properly specified hosting; it will not run well on a cheap shared server.
3. Security patching. Adobe releases security patches for Magento several times a year, and WordPress plugins update constantly. Each patch needs applying, testing and deploying, promptly. Automated attacks start soon after a vulnerability is published.
4. Version upgrades. Every version reaches end of support. Moving to the next one means testing every extension and customisation you have. This is a recurring project, not a one-off.
5. Extensions. Most are paid, many are annual, and each is another thing to keep compatible.
6. Compliance. Because you run the servers, more of the card-industry security standard (PCI DSS) falls to you than it would on a hosted platform, even when a payment provider handles the card form.
7. People. Either an in-house developer or a retained agency, with someone reachable when the site is down on a Sunday.

When is open source the wrong choice?

• You sell a standard catalogue to consumers. You would be paying for flexibility you will never use.
• You are choosing it because it is free. It is the more expensive option to run. Choose it for control or do not choose it.
• Nobody owns maintenance. An unpatched store is a liability. If there is no budget line for patching, there should be no open-source store.
• You want your marketing team to move without developers. It is possible, but hosted platforms are better at it.
• You are already on an old, unsupported version and short of budget. The honest options are to fund the upgrade properly or to move. We compare the two routes in Shopify vs Magento.

It is the right choice when the awkward requirement is the business: thousands of trade customers on contract prices (see our B2B platforms guide), products configured from rules, several brands and countries run from one back office, or an ERP that must stay in charge of stock and pricing.

How we'd approach it

First we would ask what, specifically, a hosted platform cannot do for you. If the answer is a short list of real requirements, we cost them both ways: as custom work on a hosted platform, and as a Magento build, over three years, including hosting, patching and one major upgrade.

If you are already on Magento, we start with an audit: version and patch level, the extensions installed and whether each is still maintained, hosting, and how much custom code stands between you and the next upgrade. That tells you whether to invest or to move. Our Magento team supports both editions, and where the B2B or multi-brand case is strong we will scope Adobe Commerce alongside Open Source so you can see what the licence actually buys.

Questions we get asked

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