Adobe Commerce Cloud lock-in, how hard is it to migrate off?

Adobe Commerce Cloud lock-in is medium. Harder than vanilla AWS, easier than Shopify Plus. The data is yours and the code is open-source Magento, but the deployment toolchain, Fastly config, and Magento Cloud-specific extensions tie you to the Adobe-managed Kubernetes platform.

What you can take with you (no lock-in):

• The Magento code, database, media, and customer data.
• The Adobe Commerce licence (if you’re on B2B / Enterprise), portable to any host.
• Most marketplace extensions.

What you have to redo on a new host:

• CI/CD pipeline. Magento Cloud uses a proprietary deployment workflow (`.magento.app.yaml`, `magento-cloud` CLI). On AWS / managed-Magento you’ll set up GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Capistrano.
• Fastly VCL. If you’ve customised the bundled Fastly cache config, you’ll port it to your new CDN (Cloudflare / Akamai / a self-managed Fastly).
• New Relic. Magento Cloud bundles it; on a new host you’ll set it up separately (or switch to Datadog / Grafana).
• Cron + queue topology. Magento Cloud’s job scheduler is different from cron / supervisord.
• Email transport. Bundled in Magento Cloud; separate (SendGrid / SES) on a new host.

Typical migration cost off Magento Cloud: $15k, $40k for the engineering work, plus 4-8 weeks of calendar time. The savings appear from month 2 if you’re going to a cheaper managed-Magento host (Nexcess / MageMojo) and from month 6 if you’re going to raw AWS.

The lock-in cost isn’t crazy, it’s ~3-6 months of the Adobe Cloud bill. The lock-in friction is higher because you’ll need a developer who knows both the Adobe Cloud deployment model and your target platform.