Adobe Commerce is licensed on a tiered fee tied to gross merchandise value and average order volume. As your store grows, the platform fee climbs with it, which means the cost is indexed to your own success rather than to the value Adobe delivers.
Adobe sets the GMV band and the projected growth curve at signing, and it sizes both optimistically. If your real trading volume comes in below the projection, you keep paying the higher band. If it grows, you are pushed into the next tier with little room to negotiate.
The platform is also commonly bundled with cloud hosting, support tiers, and add on services where the line item cost is blurred. Unpicking the bundle is the only way to see what Commerce actually costs.
