Trail-Gear, a global off-road parts manufacturer, needed to exit Adobe
Commerce at the height of the 2025 shopping season. An expiring contract and impending fee increases forced a decision. They chose Magento Open Source on JetRails. The multi-storefront site was migrated in a matter of days during peak Q4 traffic. The result is a faster stack, lower costs and full platform control.
Trail-Gear designs, manufactures and distributes performance off-road
components for Toyota, Suzuki and Nissan platforms. The company operates four consumer storefronts and a dedicated B2B storefront, all running on Magento. Founded in 2005 by Matthew Messer, Trail-Gear has grown into a global operation with more than twelve thousand SKUs and customers in dozens of countries.
Trail-Gear had been on Magento since its early days. In 2017 the company acquired Low Range Off-Road, which brought developer Andrew Miller of Mosaic Commerce into the fold, and pushed Trail-Gear further into Magento as their core commerce platform.
Over time Trail-Gear moved into Adobe Commerce Cloud to support acquisitions, expand tooling and standardize infrastructure. The experience, however, did not match expectations.
As importantly, there was a cultural misalignment between Trail-Gear and Adobe Commerce. CEO Matthew Messer built Trail-Gear from scratch and values partners who understand entrepreneurial operators.
By late 2025 Trail-Gear had some urgent pressures. Adobe notified Trail-Gear that their Commerce Cloud contract was set to auto-renew, which would mean:
Large upfront cost
New long-term commitment
Trail-Gear wanted out before they were locked in again. The issue: it was peak shopping season. Black Friday traffic had just hit. The business was actively processing orders.
But with lock-in looming, the mission became clear:
Ten days after Black Friday, at the height of the retail holiday season, Trail-Gear migrated to JetRails. The Adobe Commerce contract ended December 9. The site went live on JetRails on December 8.
About JetRails, Miller said: “I was hooked from that first meeting. From a development standpoint, seeing that I would have root control and visibility over the stack was huge.”
Messer cared about values, partnership and predictability. He did not want another enterprise-style vendor relationship. Miller cared about stack control and development velocity. JetRails satisfied both:
12/06/25 on Adobe Commerce: 1278 ms
12/11/25 on JetRails AutoPilot: 515 ms
These gains came strictly from infrastructure and tuning.
Moving off Adobe Commerce eliminated enterprise licensing and revenue-linked fees. Trail-Gear now operates on a predictable monthly hosting bill with transparent usage-based scaling when additional compute is actually needed. AutoPilot displays scaling costs in real time so there are no surprises, and no renewal window stress.
The net result is lower monthly spend, no bandwidth penalties, and infrastructure that performs better under load.
Match solutions to your actual needs
Enterprise suites are valuable when fully utilized. If you are not using those features you are paying for overhead, not results.
Contracts influence operational freedom
Auto renewals, usage-based pricing and revenue tiers make forecasting difficult. Renewal windows should be reviewed early.
Control fuels performance
Magento performance depends on tuning multiple layers. If teams cannot reach those layers they cannot optimize them.
Cultural alignment affects outcomes
Partnerships work better when vendors support entrepreneurial operators. Trail-Gear wanted a collaborative partner, not a transactional vendor.
Predictable models support growth
Stable, monthly hosting with transparent scaling events keeps growth from triggering penalties and makes planning cleaner.
