Magento vs. Sana: A reality check for B2B ecommerce teams

Sana is a legitimate platform and can be a good fit for certain businesses. At the same time, many B2B companies that use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are actively moving from Sana to Magento. Rather than repeating marketing claims, this article draws on real-world implementations, migration experiences, and customer feedback.

Let’s separate positioning from reality.

Sana’s core message usually comes down to this:

• Sana is “ERP-native”
• No need for complex middleware or APIs
• Your ERP becomes the single source of truth
• Magento is a standalone B2C platform
• Magento requires third-party connectors
• Sana is built for B2B, Magento is not

On paper, that’s an appealing story, especially for distributors, wholesalers, and manufacturers who already manage their business from within their ERP.

But here’s where reality starts to differ.

Sana often positions Magento as relying on third-party connectors and middleware, while presenting its own solution as natively integrated with the ERP. They position their approach as ERP-native and not reliant on external middleware. In practice, every ecommerce platform that integrates with other systems, including Sana, uses APIs. You simply can’t run an ERP and an ecommerce platform without some form of integration behind the scenes.  

Sana emphasizes that its approach avoids complex middleware and connectors. However, its architecture still relies on APIs and integration layers. They did not somehow magically eliminate them; they just made them part of their product. 

With Magento you get something very similar, but then integrations are open: you’re not locked into a single provider, and you choose your agency, your implementation partner, and how your ecommerce stack evolves over time. 

So, this isn’t really a technical discussion about APIs. It’s a business decision about control, features, flexibility, scalability, and resources. Modern ecommerce always connects multiple systems. Sana didn’t remove integration; they just made it part of their own platform. 

Issues like delayed inventory updates or incorrect pricing aren’t caused by APIs, they’re caused by poor implementations. Any platform can suffer from these problems if the integration isn’t done properly. This is fear-based positioning, not technical reality. 

Fun fact: while Sana positions itself as “ERP-native,” the reality is that it is designed to work with several versions of Microsoft Dynamics and multiple SAP editions. By contrast, NVision’s Commerce 365 for Magento is only designed for and fully built in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. 

So it is fair to argue that a solution built exclusively for BC is more ERP-native than a platform designed to abstract and support many different ERP systems. 

The ERP is often positioned as the single source of truth and that's a principle we fully agree with. The difference lies in how this is implemented.

In properly integrated Magento setups, Business Central remains the operational source of truth. Products, pricing, customers and orders are managed in the ERP, while Magento focuses on the frontend experience. Inventory, pricing and orders are synchronized in real time, there’s no double data entry and no duplicated workflows.

It’s often suggested that Magento requires “two databases.” In reality, every modern ecommerce platform — including Sana — uses its own commerce database alongside the ERP. No serious online store runs directly on ERP tables for performance and scalability reasons. The real question isn’t how many databases exist, it’s where business logic lives and who controls it.

With Sana, ecommerce management lives inside Sana’s platform, while the ERP lives separately. In well-implemented Magento + ERP setups, ecommerce processes can be embedded directly into Business Central workflows. 

Put simply:
Sana keeps ecommerce inside Sana.
An integrated Magento setup brings ecommerce into your ERP.

That’s a meaningful operational difference.

Sana presents a clear vision of “integrated ecommerce,” stating that it offers “the only fully integrated ecommerce solution.”

But true integrated ecommerce is about how people actually work:

• Does ecommerce live inside daily ERP workflows?
• Can users manage products, pricing and orders without switching systems?
• Is data updated in real time?

Integrated ecommerce isn’t a marketing label, it’s operational reality. It means ecommerce becomes part of ERP processes, while the ecommerce platform focuses on what it does best: customer experience, flexibility and extensibility.

That’s the difference between connecting systems and actually integrating ecommerce into your business.

Magento is described by Sana as primarily a B2C platform. That might have been a fair statement many years ago, but it isn’t today.

Magento is widely used by B2B wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers, supporting complex pricing models, customer-specific catalogs, quotes, sub-accounts and approval workflows.

For companies that need enterprise-grade B2B functionality, Adobe Commerce offers these capabilities out of the box. At the same time, many B2B organisations successfully run on Magento Open Source, extending it with customisations, integrations and modules to support their specific business needs — without requiring an enterprise-level platform.

Regardless of whether you use Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source, Magento is a platform — not a closed product. This gives businesses:

• freedom to customise
• full control over frontend experience
• flexibility in how their ecommerce stack evolves
• access to a large ecosystem of extensions and partners

Sana takes a more closed, product-led approach:

• functionality is largely defined by Sana
• frontend flexibility is limited
• innovation pace depends on Sana’s roadmap

For growing B2B organisations, this difference becomes increasingly important over time.

This is where real customer experience matters most. With Sana, companies often find themselves tied closely to a single vendor — including Sana’s roadmap, pricing model, and partner structure. Direct communication with Sana is often limited, and improvements typically depend on external partners whose core business isn’t primarily ecommerce.

Across multiple migration projects, the same themes tend to come up:

• innovation felt slow
• feedback led to little action
• frontend flexibility was limited
• improvements were hard to realise
• communication was cumbersome
• pricing increased significantly
• revenue-share models were introduced

Over time, this caused many businesses to lose confidence in their setup. They began looking for a dedicated ecommerce agency, greater frontend freedom, and an integration model better aligned with their growth plans.

This is ultimately why companies decide to move away from Sana. They felt the platform couldn’t support their ecommerce ambitions, innovation lagged behind expectations, and requested improvements rarely materialised. Sudden pricing changes further damaged trust.

After switching to Magento in combination with Business Central and Commerce 365 for Magento, merchants report:

• greater webshop flexibility
• ecommerce that feels future-proof
• real ERP integration
• operational issues disappearing almost overnight

With Magento-based setups:

• businesses choose their agency
• partners can be changed without replacing the platform
• code and data remain theirs
• there’s no revenue share on turnover

That difference matters.

Sana centres ecommerce around a single vendor. Magento enables businesses to build an ecosystem. These aren’t theoretical arguments, they reflect real migration experiences.

Another important difference between Sana and Magento-based setups lies in the pricing model. Sana Commerce Cloud follows a revenue-based model on top of platform fees. For B2B companies, these costs can increase significantly due to typically high order values. As ecommerce grows, platform costs automatically increase as well. In other words, costs rise simply because more is being sold, not because the platform is actually doing more work.

Adobe Commerce also uses a tiered licensing structure based on company volume (GMV), meaning platform costs increase alongside revenue.

Magento Open Source, on the other hand, does not require any platform licence fees. Companies pay for hosting, development, and integrations, but their ecommerce revenue is not effectively taxed by the platform itself. This allows businesses to maintain control over their margins and reinvest growth back into their own organisation, rather than structurally sharing turnover with their software vendor.

In recent years, several former Sana customers have also been affected by significant price increases without receiving comparable functional improvements in return. Combined with the migration to Sana Commerce Cloud — which for many customers became effectively unavoidable — this resulted in additional costs and uncertainty around long-term budget planning.

In addition, Sana has introduced its own payment solution, Sana Pay. While businesses can in many cases continue to use other payment service providers (PSPs), part of the payment infrastructure is shifted towards Sana itself. Depending on the chosen setup and contractual agreements, this can affect both the cost structure and the level of practical freedom of choice.

When combined with a revenue-based pricing model, this further reinforces the principle that costs increase as the business grows, not only at the platform level, but also within the payment infrastructure.

Sana can work if:

• you’re comfortable with a closed ecosystem
• you accept vendor lock-in
• your ecommerce ambitions are modest

Magento combined with a real ERP integration is the better choice if:

• you want freedom of agency and technology
• you want scalable B2B ecommerce
• frontend experience matters
• you want ecommerce embedded directly into Business Central workflows
• you don’t want revenue sharing
• you want to own your roadmap

In the end, this isn’t about buzzwords like “ERP-native” or how "integrated ecommerce" is framed. It’s about control, flexibility, and long-term growth.

And that’s why more B2B companies are choosing Magento when ecommerce becomes a strategic part of their business.