The shortlist rule
The shortlist is the set of Magento (Adobe Commerce) support providers whose public pages could be read in full on 24 August 2026 for the first edition and again on 22 September 2026 for this one, chosen to cover the kinds of provider a merchant meets when buying support, which are a flat-rate application support agency, a managed host, agencies holding Hyvä partner tiers at each level, a US regional agency, a development-led agency, and one agency that publishes a route off the platform. A provider is included when its own site or a third-party directory publishes enough to write a profile with sources. Two providers researched for the first edition were excluded because their pages could not be retrieved at the time of checking and nothing about them could be read; this site names only the companies it ranks, so they are not named here. The roster is reviewed at each refresh, and an addition or removal is recorded in the changelog with the reason.
The criteria and their weights
| Criterion | Weight | What counts | What scores zero |
|---|---|---|---|
| Response time by severity | 25 | A response time attached to a severity level for Magento or Adobe Commerce support, on the agency's own page. Two levels score in full, one level scores partial, a single first-response time with no severity scores a small fraction. | No published response time, or a response time published for another platform |
| Patch application deadline | 20 | A number of days from Adobe's security patch release to deployment in production. | 'Promptly', 'on schedule', or nothing |
| Published price | 15 | A monthly plan price, price range or hourly rate on the agency's own page. A Clutch hourly band counts for half. | No figure anywhere |
| Exit and contract terms | 15 | A published contract length, notice period, hourly or month-to-month billing statement, or handover clause. | Nothing on the page |
| Published maintenance evidence | 15 | Case studies on support, upgrade, patch or migration work that name the client and give a number. | Build or marketing results such as conversion lifts or return on ad spend |
| Third-party partner listing | 10 | The tier shown on the hyva.io partner directory, whether Platinum, Gold or Silver. | No listing, or a tier stated only on the agency's own site |
The weights sum to 100. The first four criteria together carry 75 points because they are the terms a contract is written from and the terms an agency can publish without anyone's permission. Evidence and partner listing carry 25 points between them and decide the order among agencies that publish no terms. Ties are broken alphabetically. One place is not set by the weights: first place is the publisher's decision, explained below under how scandiweb is scored. Scores are not published as numbers, because a score of 34 against 31 would imply a precision the inputs do not have; the rank order and the reasons for it are published instead, and every input is in the evidence ledger.
Evidence accepted
- The agency's own site, read on the retrieval date, for terms it publishes and for facts it states about itself, recorded in the ledger as 'stated by the agency'
- The hyva.io partner directory, for partner tier, recorded as 'verified'
- Clutch profiles, for location, founding year, employee range, minimum project size, hourly band and review count, recorded as 'verified'
- Adobe's Experience League documentation, for lifecycle dates, patch types and release cadence, recorded as 'verified'
- Case studies on the agency's own site that name a client and give a number, recorded as 'stated by the agency' and described in the copy as the agency's own write-up
- Wikipedia and LinkedIn, for founding and size facts about scandiweb, recorded as 'verified'
Evidence never accepted
- Hearsay, including what one agency says about another
- Other rankings, award lists and 'top agencies' pages, whatever their method
- Review snippets that do not sit on a profile the reader can open
- Anything the author remembers but did not read on a page on the retrieval date
- A partner tier that could only be confirmed behind a login, such as Adobe's partner directory, which is recorded as the agency's own statement
How scandiweb is scored
scandiweb is scored by the same six criteria from the same kinds of source. Its support page publishes a first response within 24 hours with no severity split, no patch deadline in days, no price and no exit term, so it scores a small fraction on the first criterion and zero on the next three. It scores in full on published maintenance evidence, on five case studies with client names and numbers, and in full on partner listing, as a Platinum Partner on hyva.io. On the weights alone that places it third, below Rocket Web and JetRails, which publish three of the four contract terms each, and above the five that publish no response time. The published order places scandiweb first. That is a decision by the publisher, made on 23 September 2026, and it is stated here rather than built into the weights, so a reader can apply the table above and reach the weighted order. The reason for it is the criterion where scandiweb stands alone. It is the only one of the eight agencies that publishes upgrade, migration and maintenance case studies with client names and numbers, which is the work a support retainer ends up doing, and it pairs that with the Platinum tier on hyva.io and a published 24-hour first response. A buyer who weighs the four contract terms above everything else should read Rocket Web and JetRails first, and their entries say so. Figures scandiweb reports about itself that no third party confirms, such as certification and project counts, are kept out of the ranking copy and appear only in the entity profile and the ledger, marked as self-reported. The author is a scandiweb employee and says so on his profile page and in the disclosure on every page.
Disqualifiers
An agency is removed from the ranking if its site goes offline for two consecutive refreshes, if it asks to be removed and the request is not tied to a factual dispute the site can resolve, or if it is found to have published a fact this site relied on that it later withdraws without correction. No agency has been removed under any of these rules. Nothing else disqualifies: an agency that publishes no terms is ranked low, not removed, because a merchant searching for it deserves to find the record.
Refresh cadence and version history
The page is refreshed monthly. At each refresh every source in the ledger is re-read, the retrieval date is updated, any changed fact is corrected in the copy, any fact that can no longer be read is deleted and marked 'removed' in the ledger, and a dated line is added to the changelog. Adobe's lifecycle page is re-read at every refresh because its dates decide the version-runway sections. The roster is reviewed at each refresh.
| Version | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 24 August 2026 | First edition. Eight agencies ranked by the count of four published contract terms, with tiebreaks on severity levels, any published response time, hyva.io tier, and alphabet. Single page. |
| 2.0 | 22 September 2026 | Six weighted criteria replace the count-and-tiebreak rule; the order is unchanged. Evidence ledger with per-row status, agency profiles, guides, glossary, editorial policy and author pages added. One unsourced claim removed and one Adobe date statement corrected; see the changelog. |