Choosing where Adobe Commerce runs is as strategic as choosing the platform itself. Adobe Commerce Cloud (the managed PaaS) and on-premise hosting on your own infrastructure both run the same codebase, but the operational experience - and the bill - differ substantially. Here is the comparison we give merchants making this call.
What Cloud Includes
Adobe Commerce Cloud is a Platform.sh-derived PaaS with the licence bundled in:
- Fastly CDN and WAF included and preconfigured, with image optimisation
- New Relic APM for performance monitoring
- Managed environments: production, staging and integration branches that deploy from git
- Ece-tools deployment pipeline: build hooks, static content deployment, cron and consumers managed declaratively
- Adobe support with infrastructure SLAs
For a team without deep Magento infrastructure experience, this removes an entire discipline. Deployments become git pushes; scaling becomes a support ticket.
What On-Premise Gives You
Self-hosting on AWS, Azure or your own hardware gives you control the cloud deliberately withholds:
- Root access: custom PHP extensions, exotic integrations, background daemons, anything the platform needs
- Cost control: a well-architected AWS stack for a mid-size store often runs at a fraction of the incremental cloud licence cost
- Data residency and compliance: full say over where data lives and who touches it
- Freedom of tooling: your own CDN, your own monitoring, your own deployment pipeline
The trade is that you own every outage. Someone must patch the OS, size the database, tune PHP-FPM, keep Redis and OpenSearch healthy, and be reachable at 3am.
The Real Cost Comparison
Cloud’s sticker price is higher, but count honestly on both sides. On-premise means infrastructure bills plus the people (or agency retainer) who keep it running. Cloud means the premium licence plus far less operational staff time. For merchants with an existing DevOps capability, on-premise usually wins on cost. For lean teams, cloud frequently wins on total cost once you price the 3am calls.
Decision Checklist
Choose cloud when: you want Adobe accountable for uptime, your team is small, Fastly and New Relic appeal, and you can live within the PaaS constraints (no root, fixed tooling).
Choose on-premise when: you need custom infrastructure (unusual integrations, strict residency), you have or will hire operational capability, or the cloud premium is hard to justify at your GMV.
Both paths run excellent stores - we operate client fleets on each. The wrong choice is usually made by ignoring who will actually run the thing after launch. Decide that first, and the rest of the comparison falls into place.