What is the difference between Adobe Commerce and Adobe Commerce on Cloud infrastructure?
Adobe Commerce and Adobe Commerce on Cloud Infrastructure are the same product at the application level. Both run the same Magento core codebase, the same extension ecosystem, and the same customization capabilities. The difference is who owns and manages the infrastructure underneath that application. On-premises, your team sources, configures, and patches the servers, database, cache, and search index yourselves. On Cloud Infrastructure, Adobe provisions and manages that environment for you on AWS or Azure, with several services already wired in.
Quick answer
Adobe Commerce on-premises means you or your hosting partner manage every layer of infrastructure: servers, MySQL/MariaDB, Redis, message queue, search engine, and CDN. Adobe Commerce on Cloud Infrastructure means Adobe pre-provisions and manages that same stack on AWS or Azure, adds built-in Integration, Staging, and Production environments, and ships a Git-based deployment pipeline through the Cloud CLI. Your development team still owns Magento upgrades, custom code, and extension updates under both models. Cloud Infrastructure changes who manages the servers, not who maintains the application.
Side-by-side comparison
| Aspect | Adobe Commerce (on-premises) | Adobe Commerce on Cloud Infrastructure |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | You select and manage your own servers or hosting provider | Adobe provisions a pre-configured AWS or Azure environment |
| Environments | You build your own dev, staging, and production setup | Integration, Staging, and Production environments come built in |
| Deployment | You choose your own deployment tooling and workflow | Git-based deployment through the Cloud CLI / ece-tools pipeline |
| Included services | You source and configure Redis, RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ, search, and CDN separately | Redis, RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ, MariaDB/MySQL, search, Fastly CDN, and New Relic are pre-integrated |
| Infrastructure patching | You or your hosting partner handle server and OS-level patching | Adobe handles patching at the infrastructure layer |
| Application-level upgrades | Your dev team manages Magento core upgrades and custom code | Your dev team still manages Magento core upgrades and custom code |
| Licensing | Adobe Commerce license, self-hosted | Adobe Commerce license, infrastructure subscription bundled in |
| Best if | You already have infrastructure investment, in-house ops staff, or a specific compliance or data residency requirement | You want to offload infrastructure management and faster environment provisioning, and standard AWS/Azure regions work for you |
What Cloud Infrastructure actually takes off your plate
Cloud Infrastructure removes the work of provisioning and maintaining servers, setting up Redis and a message queue, wiring in a search engine, and building out separate environments for testing before code hits production. Adobe pre-integrates Fastly for CDN and WAF, and New Relic for performance monitoring, so those don’t need to be sourced or configured separately. Deployment moves through a Git-based pipeline into Integration, Staging, and Production environments that already exist on day one.
What it does not remove is application ownership. Your development team, whether in-house or an agency partner, still plans and executes Magento version upgrades, still writes and maintains custom code and extensions, and still tests releases before deploying them through the pipeline. Cloud Infrastructure changes who keeps the servers patched and available. It does not change who keeps the store’s codebase current.
Don’t confuse this with Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service (ACCS)
Adobe also sells Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, a separate SaaS product where Adobe owns and updates the application itself, not just the infrastructure. That is a different decision from choosing between on-premises and Cloud Infrastructure, since ACCS replaces the backend architecture rather than just changing who hosts it. See how ACCS compares to Cloud Infrastructure and on-premises if that’s the actual decision in front of you.
Which one to choose
If your team already runs solid hosting operations, has infrastructure locked in, or has a compliance or data residency requirement that rules out Adobe’s standard regions, on-premises still makes sense. For most merchants without that specific constraint, Cloud Infrastructure is the more practical default. It removes a real chunk of ongoing operational work without changing how much control your developers have over the Magento codebase itself.
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