In this technological era, a surfeit of Magento B2B eCommerce solution providers has confounded merchants, who plan to build or refurbish their websites on this platform, with various queries about product quality and cost-efficiency.
In the previous post, we’ve placed 3 Magento extension suppliers on the scale; thus, today Magento Commerce B2B features would be brought up to compare with BSS Wholesale Package.
If you’re confused about whether Magento Open Source with extensions or Magento Commerce is the best for you, then don’t skip this article. It recommends a suitable edition for your business and elucidates the pros and cons of BSS Magento 2 B2B extensions and Magento 2 Enterprise B2B features.
DON’T HESITATE to check Magento 2 B2B features for a deeper understanding of B2B functionality.
Perception of Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce
Table of Contents
In the process of defining which platform suits their selling purposes, online store owners must have heard of two Magento editions. Each edition has its benefits & drawbacks and fits dissimilar company types. You should evaluate your business goals and budgets scrupulously to recognize which to be used.
Magento Open Source (Community)
With the contribution from various parts, the first Magento Open Source (Community) was born in June of 2008. As its name implies, Magento Community is an open-source ecommerce platform without any payment due. In other words, anyone can get a program code for free, and it’s open for editing to third-party developers.
Thanks to Magento’s scalability and customization ability, merchants can conveniently adjust the software to meet their specific business requirements.
Who should use this?
Because it’s free of charge, Magento Open Source works best with small-to-medium businesses. However, medium-large companies can still utilize this thanks to its versatility and reasonable prices.
Obviously, to ensure Magento B2B eCommerce web stores on Open Source function satisfactorily, you need to install additional Magento 2 B2B extensions and intervene in some minor customization work. And even when you have to carry out all those things, they don’t cost you a fortune.
In fact, a forest of giant brands from different industries initiated their eCommerce stores on Magento Open Source. DC Thomson Shop, Soak & Sleep, and Kitchen Cabinets are typical success stories of using Magento Community.
Magento Commerce (Enterprise)
Following the expansion of the Open Source edition, the first Magento Enterprise (EE) was launched in April 2009 to serve complicated company structures with premium features.
To build your project on this paid edition, you must create an account in Magento and purchase a license. After that, you’ll need to enter the code, and then you can start working on the platform.
Who should use this?
Being an advanced version of the Open Source, Magento Commerce is an ideal solution to large business size because it offers more customizable options and higher extensibility. Moreover, merchants can develop their website closely to corporate customers’ demands thanks to Magento B2B eCommerce features included in this premium edition.
Yet, nothing is 100% perfect. Magento Commerce consumes a large amount of money with its high-quality features – a minimum of $22,000 per year, not to mention additional fees. Besides, each industry has a unique business nature, so some suppliers don’t plan to employ all of Magento Commerce’s B2B capabilities.
Thus, we don’t highly recommend store owners with a tight budget to build sites on Magento EE. Merchants have tons of financial categories when running their B2B eCommerce business, so cost efficiency is always set at the highest priority. Unless you prepared an abundant budget, you shouldn’t consider using this version.
A Synopsis of Magento 2 B2B Solution Flow
Frankly, both Magento B2B eCommerce extensions by BSS and B2B features by Magento witness a similar company-serving workflow. We outline the mainstream of Magento 2 B2B world, so you can visualize how various modules can complement each other to optimize your site performance and smooth customer buying journeys.
Magento B2B eCommerce’s primary object is Company – the corporate customer – who entails the close association of all B2B features. To be more specific, the admin user will grant each company a shared account to give multiple buyers access permissions. By assigning suitable roles to sub-users, your customers can build their business structures in the appropriate hierarchy. Therefore, it facilitates the admin to manage user activity within an account such as quoting, purchasing, keeping records of company credits, and many more.
The Flow of Magento B2B eCommerce Solution
First, when approaching your site, visitors would be asked to login for verification to show appropriate information. In case the non-logged-in don’t have an account, it’s a must to register on Magento 2 B2B registration form and wait for the admin approval.
After that, depending on their request, they will receive a company account to manage their business purposes.
In the admin users’ turn, they assign a dedicated sales representative to support the company purchase jobs.
Regarding pricing levels, with Magento B2B, the seller can configure custom prices per product for different companies/ customer groups.
As a nature of B2B transactions, the buyer and the seller often go through negotiations to agree upon a satisfying price point. In other words, not immediately placing orders like their B2C counterparts, B2B buyers tend to deal with the seller on prices and discounts because of their bulk order volumes. The purchaser can create and submit quotes to the seller; then the seller will recheck those quotes before converting them into an order.
Using Magento B2B eCommerce solutions, the seller can also grant customers with credit when needed.
Whether you pick Magento 2 B2B solutions by BSS or Magento.com, they both cover full B2B functionality to serve business needs beyond your expectation.
Read more:
Compare BSS Magento 2 B2B Package versus Magento B2B Commerce Features
Below, we group some criteria to compare two solutions neatly. There would be … major comparison factors: the number of B2B features in each solution, pricing, brand equity, support, added services, compatibility, and the ability to address all steps of B2B customer purchasing.
Let’s glide down to see differences clearly and choose the best-fit package for yourself!
Criterion 1 – B2B Functionality
Delivering an above-bar experience to your corporate customers has always been a challenge of B2B sellers. A fundamental Magento B2B eCommerce website should have a feature-rich infrastructure that is able to accompany customers from the first entrance to the aftersales phase.
BSS Magento 2 B2B Package
In general, the B2B Package by BSS Commerce is a comprehensive mixture of 20+ Magento 2 B2B extensions that encompass all critical steps of a company buying journey. Certified developers have made modules completely compatible with each other to foster your site performance and perfect the UX.
We divide BSS Magento 2 B2B solution into 6 big steps based on their different serving purposes.
Want to have a panorama of this solution? JUMP INTO Magento 2 B2B extension RIGHT AWAY!
Access Restriction
At the first approach, two features – Force Login and Category Permissions – allow the admin user to grant access to certain catalogs/ pages for each customer group. By setting this, you can hide valuable content you don’t want to share with specific groups and segment customers more effectively.
Corporate Data Management
Right after your Magento B2B site asks guests to login, if they don’t have an account, they will have to register through a B2B form on your site. Once their registration is approved, they can access the wholesale category.
BSS Magento B2B eCommerce solution embraces B2B Registration & Customer Attributes features to design an informative sign-up form, which makes it attractive in the eyes of companies and gains more useful client information.
Not only that, to streamline the B2B management process, Magento 2 Company Account extension enables corporate buyers to share an account for multi-users from their corporation. Moreover, you can attach companies/ customers to specific sales reps to manage the database smartly and raise the success rate of the negotiation procedure.
CONSUME details on Customer Data Management in B2B eCommerce to apply more useful techniques!
B2B Pricing Diversification
Your business line contains a wide range of items, and not all of them offer the same prices for different customer groups. Thus, Custom Pricing (aka Price Per Customer) feature helps you diversify prices of the same product to different customers/ customer groups.
Besides, with products available for dealing, you can use Magento 2 Hide Price in BSS Package to remove prices of specific items from the storefront. Wholesalers usually receive preferential pricing compared to retailers, so you – as a B2B store owner – often have to hide original prices to protect your competitive edge.
When the product price is hidden, B2B clients will go through a negotiation process to close the final deal. With Magento 2 Request for Quote, the admin can manage quote requests better while customers can send cart quotes more quickly. Therefore, the efficiency of online communication is enhanced and motivates wholesalers to take desired actions.
Purchasing Process Optimization
Bulk order placement in B2B has always posed a threat to the sales volume of any wholesale business. However, this package can address this fear by the following Magento 2 B2B feature list.
If just some simple descriptions aren’t enough to show all your product details, the Product Attachments module integrated into BSS B2B solution will help upload additional files onto your page to keep your customers well-informed about your goods.
Also, the solution does care about the display of configurable products because a majority of B2B businesses include configurable items in their product line. The Configurable Grid Table View will show necessary child products’ details neatly on the product page so customers can have a clearer view and make the right decisions.
Then, after being attracted by your product presentation, the buyer may jump into the order placement. They expect to place orders as fast as possible to save time. To speed up the B2B ordering, Quick Order and Add multiple Products to Cart enable searching and adding almost all product types right in a form/ CMS page instead of loading product page by product page.
To strengthen the convenience on-site, Magento 2 B2B eCommerce solution by BSS makes it faster and easier for companies to save their favorite products into multiple custom wishlists and conduct repeated orders in the blink of an eye.
Checkout Clarification
Our step to close a purchasing journey ends up with advanced shipping & payment tools. They allow admin users to assign shipping/payment methods to specific customer groups and various regions, which promotes better order management and fastens the customer checkout process.
Company Retention
Maintaining long-term relationships with companies is a key to surviving in the fast-moving Magento B2B eCommerce environment. The Store Credit function helps quicken the refund process and gain customer loyalty. Sellers can refund by store credits right into the Customer Account, while buyers can spend the credit on their later purchases.
Magento Commerce’s B2B Features
If you purchase Magento Commerce, B2B functionality has been included in it. When building a wholesale website in your Magento installation, you can opt to activate some, or all, of available B2B features.
1. Company Account
This feature allows multi-users from a company to use a shared account. Once company accounts are approved, corporate customers can log in, set up company structures, assign users, manage roles & permissions, and update company profiles.
Moreover, at the company level, you can assign sales representatives to specific companies, which ensures smooth negotiation processes and partner satisfaction.
2. Shared Catalog
In Magento Commerce, the second B2B feature focuses on honing price strategies and product catalog visibility. Specifically, the admin user can create multiple catalogues and maintain shared catalogues with custom pricing for different wholesale companies.
3. Quick Order
On the storefront, customers place bulk orders at once by entering SKU/ product name, filling out multiple SKUs/ product names in the quick order form, or uploading CSV files. All actions taking place on a single form help speed up the purchase process, facilitate rapid reorders for common purchases, and boost sales.
VISIT Magento 2 B2B quick order to understand the importance of this feature!
4. B2B Quote
Dealing is a common activity in B2B transactions. Magento includes B2B quote capability in their Commerce edition as a helpful tool streamlining negotiation.
It lets corporate customers negotiate their desired product prices by submitting a quote request. Meanwhile, the store admin has a quote management panel that provides quote details, history logs, communication data.
5. Requisition List
To serve future purchases, Magento Commerce enables companies to maintain multiple shopping lists that contain favorite products from different providers, teams, campaigns, and more. B2B buyers can add products to a requisition list from product pages, from the shopping cart, and from existing orders.
This feature is helpful for companies who want to organize items based on product type, department, frequency of reordering, or other criteria.
6. Purchase Order
“A purchase order (PO) allows commercial customers to pay for authorized purchases by referencing the PO number”.
Before placing an order, B2B buyers authorize and issue the purchase order in advance. During checkout, they choose Purchase Order as the method of payment. Upon the invoice receipt, buyers process the payment in their accounts payable system and pay for the purchase.
Before accepting payment by purchase order, the seller always establishes the credit worthiness of the commercial customer.
Criterion 2 – Pricing
Proudly, BSS Commerce’s Magento B2B eCommerce solution offers high-quality extensions at a competitive price point. There are 3 pricing plans for you to choose from, ranging from $599 to $1179. The development team dedicated their time to doing research and integrating built-in B2B features into the complete package.
On the other hand, to build a wholesale site on Magento Commerce, merchants have to prepare a wide budget to afford exorbitant development prices. For instance, the pricing fluctuates from $22000 to $125000, depending on the Average Gross Sale Revenue per year, plus additional fees.
REFER to Magento B2B pricing NOW to describe your building plan transparently.
So, in terms of this second criterion, BSS Commerce solution outplays Magento.
Criterion 3 – Brand Equity
Officially established in 2007, Magento – the owner of Magento Commerce – has always been the industry-leading eCommerce brand followed by other trustworthy solution providers. Their popularity has spread globally, and they act as a core object that other extension providers must rely on to release products matching market trends.
Meanwhile, BSS Commerce was founded in 2012 by an innovative group of certified developers. The company still operates mainly on the Magento platform; yet, we exploit other aspects and fulfill shortages of Magento. Not only do we stay at offering extensions for both Magento CE and EE, but we also bring a comprehensive ecosystem for Magento B2B eCommerce businesses with blue-ribbon services.
To be fair, as a founder and working 5-year longer than BSS, Magento outperforms brand awareness and wins customer trust more easily than all of its competitors in the market, not just BSS.
Final Thoughts
Overall, both BSS Magento 2 B2B Package and Magento Commerce B2B are all-in-one solutions that serve fundamental business demands. Nevertheless, each solution has its own strengths and weaknesses.
If you have a tight budget, or intend to run a unified B2B and B2C website, BSS Magento 2 B2B solution would be an ideal choice. On the contrary, Magento Commerce supports large businesses that don’t suffer financial problems perfectly.
BSS Commerce is one of the leading Multi-platform eCommerce solutions and web development services providers in the world. With experienced and certified Magento developers, we commit to bring high-quality products and services to optimize your business effectively. CONTACT NOW to let us know your problems. We are willing to support you every time.
