Skip to content

Compare MageLift to ACC / Upsun

Updated: 2026-08-03

Bottom line: Adobe Commerce Cloud / Upsun-style products rent you a Magento platform. MageLift is free open-source software that runs Magento in your AWS or GCP account with familiar YAML — you keep the invoice and the IAM.

Side-by-side for people evaluating Magento PaaS against running Magento in their own cloud. Cost numbers here are illustrative — plug in your own quotes.

Audience

  • Agencies with roughly 3-20 Magento shops that have (or want) AWS/GCP accounts
  • SME Magento owners who can follow YAML/CLI docs without a dedicated DevOps hire

What you buy vs what you rent

Adobe Commerce Cloud / Upsun-style PaaS MageLift
Where Magento runs Vendor-managed platform Your AWS or GCP account
Config shape PaaS YAML / UI ACC/Upsun-shaped magelift.yaml + CLI
Lock-in Platform + often region/tooling Cloud APIs + open-source CLI (Apache-2.0)
Cost model Platform fee + usage Cloud bill (and your time). magelift cost estimates AWS shapes
Software fee Platform subscription $0 for MageLift (pricing)
Ops Ticket / platform runbooks Day-2 verbs on certified targets; you own IAM and spend

Pros and cons

MageLift

  • Pros: Keep cloud account and invoice; ACC/Upsun-shaped YAML; Apache-2.0; honest certified vs experimental matrix; destroyable previews.
  • Cons: You own IAM, networking mistakes, and cloud spend; not a full ece-tools clone; first public release tag still pending.

ACC / Upsun-style PaaS

  • Pros: Vendor-operated platform, tickets, less raw cloud surface for small teams.
  • Cons: Platform fee and lock-in; Magento runs on rented infrastructure you do not fully control.

What is production-supported

Target Status
AWS ECS Fargate Certified
GCP GKE Autopilot Certified
AWS EKS / OVH / Scaleway Experimental

Details: capability matrix. Experimental targets are not production-supported.

Cost assumptions

Use magelift cost --env preview for AWS catalog shapes. Typical preview docs assume:

  • A region that fits your account's free-tier story where relevant
  • searchMode: disabled or other free-tier-safe search
  • Database queues on preview (queueMode: db); prefer ecs-rabbitmq when you need a broker without Amazon MQ pricing
  • Destroy when the spike is done

MageLift does not claim a fixed monthly savings figure. Compare against your PaaS quote with the same traffic and catalog assumptions.

Migration

Config import (magelift init --from-acc / --from-upsun), dump seed, media, and DNS cutover: migrating-from-paas and weekend-migrate. Existing AWS VPC/RDS: brownfield-attach.

FAQ

Is MageLift cheaper than Adobe Commerce Cloud?

It can be, but MageLift does not publish a fixed savings number. You replace the platform fee with your AWS/GCP bill plus operator time. Run magelift cost and compare to your PaaS quote on the same assumptions.

Will my Magento team recognize the config?

Yes by design. magelift.yaml follows ACC/Upsun habits; power users open the capability matrix for explicit catalog fields.

Can I leave PaaS in a weekend?

Packaging and checklist: weekend-migrate. Full dump/DNS cutover depth: migrating-from-paas.

Trust

  • Apache-2.0 and NOTICE
  • First release ships archives with checksums / SBOM (GoReleaser); images use Cosign on GHCR
  • Hosted CI runs on the public repo (release-readiness); path-filtered green on main is required before v1.0.0-rc.1

Next

Getting started → examples/sample-shop/ in the repo → FAQ → CONTRIBUTING.