Magento is an open source PHP-based e-commerce platform. It comprises of various robust features and provides extraordinary flexibility to online business owners. Magento not only manages the functionality but manage the appearance and over-all look of the e- Commerce store too.
Magento e-commerce platform is laced up with the perfect administrative interface to robust search engine optimization, effective marketing, catalogue management and inventory management tools. These elements, in turn, empower merchants to create sites as per their business needs.
The other advantages of having Magento as an e-commerce platform is, it offer customers the ultimate e-commerce solution by providing an efficient combination of scalable design and a wide support network. By Return on investment it generates, Magento can be treated as most reliable e-commerce platform among all the other e-commerce platform available.
One can integrate Magento into their online shopping store with ease. Its dynamic interface is capable enough in selling, compelling and providing an enjoyable experience for visitors.
Why Magento Is The Perfect And Most Preferred E-Commerce Platform?
- It provides various easy-to-use features
- It updates your website automatically. This facility is not available with other platforms.
- Its functionalities are very simple, quick, and versatile that helps visitors to browse, buy and enjoy services conveniently
- Across domains, it supports multiple websites/ online stores to promote their services and products, across domains
- It helps you to create scalable websites and also helps in scaling up your existing websites
- The e-commerce platform of Magento, features a powerful Search Engine Optimization, marketing- inventory and catalogue management tools.
Top 6 eCommerce Platforms Compared With Magento
How Magento Is Better Than WooCommerce?
To understand why Magento is better than WooCommerce, let’s first discuss about the similarities and dissimilarities between the two.
Similarities between Magento and WooCommerce
1. Similarities on the basis of Basic eCommerce
Magento and WooCommerce: both the platforms provide basic eCommerce functionality. Both provides you with product listings, basic order management, a shopping cart, inventory features, etc.
It we talk about features, then Magento have a little more feature. For example, the “rich out of the box” feature of Magento helps in increasing sales conversion. This feature supports cross-sells and up-sells. Magento also provides filtering functionality and more robust product organization without plugins than what is available in WooCommerce.
2. Similarities on the basis of Open Source
Both the platforms are open source. The meaning with open source is both the platforms are free, and their source code is available for customization. Although, be alert with the “free” price tag. It means that there are no licensing costs.
Now the question is how both the platforms make money. So, they make money by selling add-ons. Magento also sells a hosted enterprise version. Via Magento Connect, adding Magento extensions is inevitable if you are planning to run even a beginner eCommerce store. WooCommerce is a part of WordPress and sooner or later work on that, where you will get more free add-ons.
Magento and WooCommerce, both the platforms requires a theme for setting up your online store. This too needs additional cost. If you want to cut the cost, then you can opt for cost-effective route and purchase a pre-built theme. But, if you are concerned about your store’s look and feel and want it to be best than you’ll have to pay developers to build a custom theme and eventually this will also increase the cost significantly.
3. Similarities on the basis of Popularity
On popularity, Magento and WooCommerce, both are most popular eCommerce platforms of the market. Therefore, it should be relatively easy to find someone to help you with technical issues.
Technically speaking, WooCommerce host around 910k sites. On the other hand, Magento host around 243k sites. This may looks like a huge parity at first glance, but much of the WooCommerce popularity is because of the adoption of world’s most popular content management system WordPress. It also covers many smaller eCommerce sites.
But when you look on the numbers of the top 1 million sites on internet, Magento hosts about 10k, while WooCommerce’s host around 14k. These numbers are quite a bit closer.
Bottom line: going with Magento means joining a huge community of developers, users, features, functionality, and advantages.
Differences of Magento vs. WooCommerce
Just by looking at the similarities you can’t decide which platform is best. Let’s also have a look on some of the major dissimilarities between Magento and WooCommerce:
1. Difference On The Basic Of Dedication and Plugin
Magento is a dedicated, standalone eCommerce platform. On the other hand, WooCommerce is the Plugin of WordPress. It is just an add-on to the content management system of WordPress.
The major points of difference between the two are:
Magento: Regarding e-commerce functionality, it tends to be more robust.
WooCommerce: WordPress is more than just e-commerce, so it tends to allow more capability breadth as a website.
Magento: The extensions of Magento tend to be more focused on e-commerce.
WooCommerce: It works nicely with the wide range of WordPress Plugins.
2. Difference On The Basic Of Hosting
Hosting related needs of each platform is different from each other and these effect costing. One can host both the platforms at their own, but certainly one wants to choose the best-hosted service platform. If you want to flourish your e-commerce business than rather spending time on issues related to infrastructure, server and maintenance, assign someone else to handle this.
Magento: Frankly speaking, it requires a little more maintenance and server power to operate. Do proper homework related to Magento hosting because Bloated Magento stores on bad infrastructure can run very poorly. A poor, slow or broken webstore experience is not going to help you gain more customers.
WooCommerce: As WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. It is an add-on of WordPress. You can use any standard WordPress hosting service.
3. Difference On The Basic Of Content Management
Although you are setting your e-commerce store, the fact is that an e-commerce site firstly and fore mostly is a website. The meaning of this is that you too have to manage the non-product content like informational pages, homepages, landing pages, etc. This is called content management, and in addition to this, each platform provides different capabilities.
Magento: It is an e-commerce platform. So, content management doesn’t strongly suits to its attribute or functionality. Without adding extensions, setting up basic pages, and navigation, etc.is a little bit tougher in Magento when compared to other platforms. But, if you do not have much non-product content, then Magento probably works well with your need.
WooCommerce: It is a Plugin of WordPress, so is works as an add-on to a very effective content management system. It suited well with the content management functions of your online webstore. This is advantageous for someone who is taking blogging seriously.
4. Difference On The Basic Of Ease of Use
Obviously, ease of use is very important from user perspective. It is said that Magento is hard to use but more robust when compared to WooCommerce.
By looking at this, we must say that ease of use has its value, but sacrificing on desired functionality on the cost of ease must not be considered. The platform you have selected must help you in meeting your goal. Otherwise, it is of no use.
Magento: While we compare Magento with WooCommerce, it requires more specific hardware configurations, monitoring, and pickier configuration parameters. Someone who does not possesses expert knowledge about Magento or else does not have access to an expert; then probable chances are there that you are at risk.
WooCommerce: It is simple and easy to configure and maintain. But less robust.
Now What Next…?
We can say that, if open source eCommerce is your goal, then Magento and WooCommerce, both are the top contenders. But again, knowing fundamental similarities and dissimilarities of both the platforms is very important, so as you can choose best for yourself as per your requirement.
How Magento Is Better Than Prestashop?
Magento and PrestaShop both are Open Source eCommerce platforms. Both offers a wide range of features. Both are quality frameworks. But both of its have their positives and negatives too. Which one suits best to your requirement? For this, we are providing you with in-depth key points related to both the platforms.
Below is a brief comparison between the two:
A Quick Look of Magento and PrestaShop
Magento and Prestashop, both are open-source programs. Both are customizable but in different ways. Magento, on one hand, known as the leader in eCommerce shopping cart solutions. It provides customization, tools and huge variety of features. It also provides better SEO benefits with targeted promotion and merchandising, than any other shopping cart available in the market. Magento also allow for multiple payment and shipping option.
PrestaShop provides you with tons of features. Managing website is easy with it. It also provides SEO benefits. It provides users with the analytics, the reporting and much more. Prestashop is used by more than 125,000 online stores.
What Magento Offers You?
First and foremost, Magento provides
Magento provides plenty of features with all kinds of flexibility. With the help of this e-commerce solution, you can change the content, look, and function. One can use Magento for search engine optimization purpose as well as catalog-management tool too.
As it was founded in 2001, so it have wholesome of experience. Partnership with eBay makes the system more powerful and adds more developers to the community.
Magento provides to its users all kinds of features, modules, and extensions. It is preferred best from technical support perspective too. It is suitable for professional online stores.
What PrestaShop Offers You?
PrestaShop too have plenty of features and is another open-source eCommerce solution. The basic setup of prestashop can be used free of charge. But yes, you are needed to purchase the themes, templates and modules for taking most of the advantage out of it. It was launched in 2007 and suitable mainly for small to medium business for making their online presence effective.
PrestaShop is although available in 40 languages but fully supports fully only in English and French. They also does not provide an official support team, but still you can get plenty of developers as well as users in the PrestaShop forum. To use the program, you are not needed to meet many requirements (except MySQL 5, PHP 5.2, and a Linux, UNIX or Windows operation system.)
Comparison Between Magento And Prestashop
What to choose between Magento and PrestaShop? This is a very difficult question. They both are great e-commerce solutions. Whether you are starting your online business for the very first time or migrating from another e-commerce solution, Magento, and Prestashop, both of these programs provide an excellent solution to meet your expectations and requirements. .
PrestaShop targets the small to medium sized business while Magento meet the requirement of medium to large business. If your lacks technical knowledge and then too is planning to do everything on your own, then PrestaShop is a good choice. However, if your technological and wed-design knowledge is sound, then Magento fits perfect in your frame. Shopping cast is easily customizable in PrestaShop, but same thing is not possible on Magento platform.
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Magento
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PrestaShop
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Number Game
Launch: Magento was created in 2001 while, PrestaShop was launched in August 2007.
Versions: Magento has 15 versions while PrestaShop has seven versions.
Plugins And Extensions: Magento provides 1,500 plugins and extensions while PrestaShop provides more than 25,000 plugins and extensions.
Clients: Both have almost same amount of online stores. Magento have clients like Nike AU & UK while Prestashop have clients like The Fab Shoes.
Social Following: Magento is ahead as compared to PrestaShop in the Twitter world with three times as many followers. On the other hand, PrestaShop more than triples the number of Facebook likes of Magento.
Maintenance Cost: The monthly maintenance cost of PrestaShop is about half that of Magento, but irrespective of this reason, Magento is searched more on Google than PrestaShop.
Customization: PrestaShop is easy to install and customize in between the two. But, Magento overall offers more SEO benefits and features.
Who To Choose Magento?
We had given you wholesome information related to Magento and Prestashop both. From the above discussion, we can say that both the system meets the requirement of different types of online stores.
Although. Still Magento is perfect for those who are looking for full control over the customization of their online store. Larger businesses or those who have plans to grow quickly will find the features of Magento a better fit than PrestaShop.
Start From Here
Whatever platform you choose, starting with the right hosting is very important. If your choice is Magento, then it fits right with any hosting. But still you need to get the best business. And if PrestaShop is your choice, then you need hosting that fits correct as per your requirements. The best hosting for Magento and PrestaShop is found at GoWebBaby.
How Magento Is Better Than Shopify?
Shopify vs. Magento. Both fulfills the same need but in different ways. Both are unique, and it depends on your need that which platform is most suitable for you.
Comparison: Magento and Shopify
According to Google Searches, in current scenario, Magento is the more popular platform. Although, Shopify is a new platform and has been increasing in popularity recently. The below chart will show you the searches for Magento (blue) and searches for shopify (red).
This chart show that Magento is approx twice as popular as Shopify. However, if Shopify popularity will increase at such a rate, then it will not take much longet to catch up.
Magento vs. Shopify: The Parameters
Shopify and Magento, both have its strengths and weaknesses. That’s why we are making a comparison between the two on six different parameters. They are price, support, transaction fee, storage, ease of entry, and features.
Magento Pricing
Magento Community is free. But this is not fully true. You have to pay for hosting your Magento webstore. Let’s look at the Shopify’s pricing.
Shopify Monthly Subscription Pricing
According to Shopify’s pricing page, the currently available plans are:
Which plan suits you most? The answer to this question lies in how big is your company. The main things to keep in mind are:
Now, let’s take a closer look at Magento’s pricing.
Magento Hosting Pricing
Magento hosting can be very expensive. But yes it is worth paying for or bearing the very expensive pricing because it will be fruitful for you at later stage.
Below is the price points for the 5 top hosting companies.
In the above the cheapest two (siteGround and LiquidWeb) are not PCI compliant. These plans, in above mentioned pricing offers “shared servers, i.e. you have to share serve space with other companies.
Also, these plans are prices for “shared servers”. This means you are sharing server space with other companies. This will slow down your webstore (depends on how much space you are sharing with how many different companies).
When we evaluate the prices, we find that Magento is not very expensive even with hosting. But at this point the condition apply is you are doing the web development on your own.
Magento is a little more complex. Whereas, a non-technical person can put his website on Shopify platform.
Magento is probably a cheaper option when:
- You are doing the web development yourself
- plan on using a template and not changing it
Magento vs. Shopify Support
Magento does not have support, whereas, Shopify has support.
Well, this is half-truth. The dedicated communities of developers provide support to the Magento. Although, there is no official support. If you have guts to share your problem, and can follow developer’s suggestion, then this is good for you.
On the other hand, Shopify has 24/7 support. So if you think you are not a tech savvy person then having a seven days and 24 hours support is huge relief for you.
Magento vs. Shopify Transaction Fees
Magento has no transaction fees, except the gateway provider’s fees. This applies to shopify as well.
Below is the breakdown of Shopify’s transaction fees by plan:
When you’re selling a few items in a month, 1% of a sale might not affect you. But if you are selling more than these fees can hinder your business.
Shopify vs. Magento Storage
It is hard to compare Magento and Shopify by Storage. In Magento, you have to upgrade your hosting. While in Shopify, to increase your storage, you have to upgrade your plan.
Magento Storage and Pricing
Magento users, have to pay hosting provider for storage. The storage is not just for your images, but for all webstore’s files, too.
Shopify Storage and Pricing
With each step up in the Shopify plan, you get more features, less transaction fees, and more data.
The probability of having more images is high in a store with many items. More images requires more storage. This will push you into a higher price plan.
Truly speaking, none of this platform are better for storage hosting. What matters is price and space. This is you, who will decide ultimately that how much space is needed. If you are a small store owner with few items, then probably you are fine with 1 GB of data. And if you are a store owner with 1000 of items (with five images per item), then in this case probably you need unlimited data.
Magento vs. Shopify Ease of Entry
Shopify is easy to set-up and use even for a non-technical online store owner. In Shopify, you can easily edit your webstore and use their library of templates. HTML or CSS knowledge is not needed to update your templates.
For using Magento, you either need to be technically sound or needed to hire a developer.
Magento vs. Shopify Features
Magento and Shopify are both pulling and pushing each other when we talk about features. Both are comparable when it comes to the core functionality of an online store. The only difference is, Magento Community gives you out of the box full functionality. Shopify also gives you full functionality, but only when you’re on the unlimited version.
The main difference in features lies on the type of software of both the platforms.
Magento is an open-source platform, which means that the source code is available for free. This further can be redistributed and modified.
Shopify have a few less applications but regulates their applications.
Which is better: Magento or Shopify?
The best platform for you the one which suits your needs and abilities. If you are comfortable with the technical side, then use Magento. It is flexible, open-source, and have growing community of developers.
If you are non- technical, go with Shopify. It will allow you to focus on sell and take care of everything for you.
How Magento Is Better Than Bigcommerce?
If we compare between the two major platforms in the world i.e. Magento and BigCommerce, then we find that with brans like Nike, Ford, Samsung, Lenovo, etc. Magento is the biggest platform used for online stores. If we compare, BigCommerce doesn’t have many big brands, but it is popular amongst smaller business owners, as they usually search for cost effective e-commerce solution.
To have a better understanding about Magento and Bigcommerce, let’s check them simultaneously on the basic of their pricing, design, frontend and backend features, marketing, statistics, hosting and security, and extensibility.
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Magento is Free Magento e-commerce platform is an open source solution. So, you are not needed to pay to use it. Just download the software, install it on your hosting account and start building the site. No transaction fees is required (except any fees you may incur with the payment processor you go with.) Get access to the free community forum, app store and templates with your free Magento account. You are also capable of selling as many products as you want. Although, hosting is not included in this. You have to find your hosting and have to buy your domain name. You can also upgrade to the Enterprise Edition if you need more. |
Bigcommerce Is Not Free
Plan 1: In Bigcommerce on the monthly fee of 29.95 USD/month +1.5% transaction fee, you can post unlimited amount of products on your site. Storage and bandwidth is also unlimited. For this plan, the checkout is not hosted on your domain, but you get features for coupon codes, discounting rules, reporting and social media buttons. You can accept payments through PayPal or credit card. Plan 2: On the monthly fee of 79.95 USD/month, you can post an unlimited amount of products on your site, and that too without any transaction fees. All the features of plan 1 are also included in this plan. The benefit of this plan is you can access to carrier shipping in real time, get eBay support, comparison site feeds, and solid payment providers. With Plan 2, your checkout is placed and hosted on your domain. Also, the Omni-sales tools and abandoned cart savers promote sales. Customer segmentation and pricing rules are added the advantage of this plan. Plan 3: Plan 3 consist of Custom Pricing for Enterprise Plan. You have to speak with the Bigcommerce team for the pricing related things. Transaction fees are again zero in this plan. Sitewide HTTPS and unlimited items help in SEO. Priority support is included along with product filtering and a dedicated account manager, All the features of the plan 1 and plans 2 are included in this plan. You will get a Google trusted stores integration and uptime SLA as more value-added services.
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