Magento 2 & Hyvä, done right by one developer.

Both. Everything in the build runs on stock Magento 2.4.7+ Open Source — there’s no Adobe Commerce-specific API used. The observer hooks into catalog_product_save_after, which is identical on both editions. The MessageQueue layer uses Magento’s built-in MessageQueue module (also Open Source). The only Adobe Commerce-only consideration is the Image Editor extension Adobe ships, which you’d disable to avoid duplicate processing. Bottom line: Open Source merchants get the full benefit without paying for Adobe Commerce just for image handling.

Yes — in the segments where it’s strongest. Magento (Open Source + Adobe Commerce) will dominate enterprise B2B, multi-store, regulated industries, and EU-compliance-heavy commerce through 2030 and beyond. Where it bleeds is the SMB / DTC segment under $5M GMV, which Shopify already won and now cements with Sidekick + Hydrogen. Magento survives, but its addressable market shrinks: from “everyone” to “serious B2B + custom-heavy enterprise.” That’s still a multi-billion-dollar segment globally. The platform isn’t going anywhere; the merchants who choose it just look more specific.

The honest minimum is 12 weeks of daily sales data per SKU — that’s enough for Prophet to lock onto a weekly pattern and produce a usable 4–6 week forecast. With 26 weeks you start getting yearly seasonality. With 52+ weeks (one full annual cycle including your peak season) Prophet really shines and you can forecast 90 days out with sub-15% MAPE on most retail SKUs. Below 12 weeks, do NOT use Prophet — fall back to a 28-day moving average plus a manual safety-stock multiplier. The model will overfit garbage if you feed it too little.

MCP is an open protocol Anthropic shipped in November 2024 that lets large language models talk to external tools and data sources through a standard interface. Think of it as USB-C for AI — one socket, many devices. For Magento, MCP means Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor can query your catalogue, check stock, summarise yesterday’s orders, or draft a discount code without you writing five different REST integrations. The protocol crossed tribal lines fast: OpenAI and Google both adopted it in early 2025, and Adobe made it the default agent protocol for Commerce at Summit 2026. That puts MCP in the same “assume it’s there” bucket as JSON-RPC or OAuth — you build for it once and every major AI client gets your Magento data for free.

No — they are different products from the same company. Hyvä Theme is a free, open-source (OSL3) Tailwind + Alpine storefront frontend for Magento, released to free in November 2025. Hyvä Commerce is a paid commercial suite of admin, media, and CMS modules that sits on top of Magento Open Source. You can run Theme without Commerce, but most stores that buy Commerce also use Theme.

Honest cut, chocolate-specific:

Shopify Plus wins if you’re under 50 SKUs, no corporate B2B, gifting calendar is light, and you’re comfortable paying $400–$1,200/mo in apps to bolt on cold-chain (ShipperHQ, Shippo), gift options (Gift Reggie, Wrapin), and a thin B2B layer (Wholesale Hub). Cheap to ship, expensive to scale. Sugarfina ran Shopify Plus for years before moving to a custom stack at $20M+ revenue.

Magento wins if cold-chain rules need to be conditional on ZIP + weather + shipping method (not just a flat ice-pack toggle), gifting seasons need capacity-gated SKUs (not just “sold out”), corporate B2B needs Net-30 + bulk drop-ship + customer hierarchies, and origin + allergen attributes need to be filterable at category. Vosges Haut-Chocolat runs Magento. Tony’s Chocolonely (Netherlands) runs Magento for both DTC and corporate-gifting channels.

Custom / headless (Mast Brothers, Dandelion direction) is for brands above $25M GMV with in-house engineering. Don’t pick this lightly — it’s a $200k+/yr stack.

My rule: under 50 SKUs + DTC-only + light gifting → Shopify. Above 100 SKUs OR corporate B2B share >15% OR cold-chain rules complex → Magento. Above $25M with engineering team → consider headless.

Three reference points for any equestrian retailer:

• Dover Saddlery runs a custom enterprise stack tuned for full-line tack + apparel + show gear. Multi-discipline, USHJA partner program, trainer-rep affiliate model, in-store + online inventory. The retailer to benchmark above $50M GMV.
• SmartPak Equine built the daily pre-portioned supplement-pack pattern (SmartPaks) and turned $200M out of supplement subscription. Their stack centres on a pack-builder + recurring billing + per-horse routine memory. The benchmark for anyone selling horse feed + supplements.
• State Line Tack sits in the middle — full catalog, deep loyalty program, lighter tech-investment. Reasonable benchmark for $5M–$25M tack retailers.

Magento + Hyvä gives you the same capability surface as Dover or SmartPak at a fraction of the build cost. The discipline filter, saddle-fit configurator, LTL freight stack, B2B layer, and subscription pack-builder are all reusable Magento patterns — not custom-built-from-scratch enterprise code. Schneider’s Saddlery and Riding Warehouse are good mid-market peers that ship on Magento or Magento-adjacent stacks.