What is Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service and how does it differ from Cloud infrastructure?

Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service (ACCS) is the SaaS edition of Adobe Commerce, launched in 2025. The main difference from Cloud infrastructure is who owns the application. On ACCS, Adobe runs and upgrades it for every merchant on a shared codebase. On Cloud infrastructure, which Adobe’s docs now call Adobe Commerce on Cloud, Adobe provides the servers and your team owns the Magento code. That split decides which extensions you can run and who plans upgrades.

What does Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service include?

ACCS ships with the core commerce features on day one, including B2C and B2B selling. Company management and quoting come pre-installed, so B2B is not a separate setup project.

ACCS also drops some Admin tools you know from Magento. Adobe’s SaaS vs PaaS feature comparison lists the swaps. Storefront Builder replaces Page Builder and the CMS. Catalog Service stands in for content staging and Visual Merchandiser. A/B testing is built into ACCS, while on Cloud infrastructure it is an add-on for certain tiers.

How is ACCS different from Adobe Commerce on Cloud infrastructure?

Can you run Magento extensions and themes on ACCS?

Not if they rely on PHP. For an existing Magento store, this is the biggest difference between the two editions. ACCS does not run PHP inside the application at all, because every tenant shares one codebase that Adobe updates on its own schedule. Extensions built as App Builder apps from Adobe Commerce Marketplace do run on ACCS.

Say your store has a custom observer on sales_order_place_after that pushes each new order to an ERP. On Cloud infrastructure, that module keeps working through upgrades as long as you retest it. On ACCS, the same job moves into an App Builder action that subscribes to a Commerce order event and calls the ERP from outside the platform.

Magento themes do not carry over to ACCS either. Luma and Hyvä both render through PHP inside the application, so neither runs on ACCS. Plan for a storefront rebuild, typically on Adobe’s edge-delivered Commerce Storefront.

Other ACCS limits to check before scoping a move:

• Search tweaks need a third-party search product.
• Email stays on standard templates.
• Data model changes stop at custom attributes on core and B2B entities.
• Long-term custom data may need storage you host yourself for now.

Should you choose ACCS or Cloud infrastructure?

Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service fits a new build, or a replatform where standard features and API integrations cover most requirements. You stop owning the patch calendar, and scaling becomes Adobe’s problem.

Stay on Adobe Commerce on Cloud if your store depends on PHP extensions or core customizations that don’t have a replacement yet. HIPAA is another reason to stay: as of September 2026, ACCS doesn’t offer it. So is search logic you’ve customized inside Magento, or data that lives in your own database tables. Cloud infrastructure also lets you choose when upgrades land, which helps if you freeze releases before peak season.

How do you migrate from Cloud infrastructure to ACCS?

Adobe provides a Commerce Data Migration Service for moving from Cloud infrastructure to ACCS. According to Adobe’s migration documentation, it handles first-party core commerce data only. Data from third-party extensions needs custom extraction tooling, and you can only design that path after mapping each extension’s schema.

For an existing Magento store, the deciding step is an extension audit. List every installed module and ask one question of each: can this live outside Commerce as an App Builder app or an Adobe service? If the honest answer is no for most of them, Cloud infrastructure is the safer place to stay for now. Our Magento development team can run that audit with you before you commit either way.