Have you ever thought of what has transformed the shopping experience of the users and bring stores to your doorstep? Thanks to the eCommerce platforms that have changed the landscape for businesses and has transformed the ways transactions occur these days. You do not have to step out of your house to get your favourite product. Just go to a website following a few steps and voila! the product is at your door. Ecommerce has become a fastpaced and rapidly changing market where only agile companies make up to the mark. Businesses need a reliable platform to lean on and thrive in this transitioning marketplace. This is where Magento and other big e-commerce platforms like Shopify, woo commerce and Big commerce comes in.
Magento stands out among all the big e-commerce platforms. It is considered the best platform for online shop development. About one-fourth of all the eCommerce platforms are built on Magento as it is the most flexible platform providing seamless consumer experience accelerating revenue generation. As per the latest statistics, Magento powers about 0.7% of the internet. Most of the merchants prefer Magento over other platforms because of the endless growth opportunities that come with it. Businesses based on Magento have seen growth rate increase 3 times on average. Ecommerce websites of popular retailers such as Nike, Samsung, Coca-Cola, and others are built on Magento.
If you want to know what makes Magento different from other eCommerce platforms especially from its direct competitor Shopify, have a look at the following article.
What is Magento:
Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform written in PHP. It was launched in 2007 and is empowering thousands of retailers and brands with the best eCommerce platforms and flexible cloud solutions to rapidly innovate and grow since then.
Market Value of Magento:
According to Magento statistics, Magento has been the market leader for consecutive six years. Magento belongs to Adobe since mid-2018, and the parent company’s resources are expected to build on the platform’s strengths and make it an even bigger e-commerce phenomenon. Magento holds 4.55% of the whole e-commerce market share. Magento powers 0.7% of the internet. That accounts for 12% of all eCommerce sites. These numbers are likely to grow as the Magento adoption nearly doubled between 2017 and 2018. To be precise, over 250,00 active sites use Magento. Only 11,000 of those run on Magento 2, though. Magento has a 1.2% share of the CMS market. Among the top 10K web stores, Magento has a share of 16%. Magento handles over $155 billion in transactions every year. The number of online shoppers served by Magento merchants has increased by 200% between 2016 and 2020.
Magento Versions:
Magento is available in the following three versions:
- Magento Community Edition (free):
Magento community edition enables developers to build different websites for different clients and exempts them from multiple Magento license fees. - Magento Enterprise Edition (paid):
It is the premium paid version for bigger online stores which require advanced features and customizable options. This version is totally backed by the Magento team. - Magento Go (paid & hosted on Magento’s servers):
It is the software-as-a-service e-commerce platform from Magento. It has four pricing plans depending on the level of support the merchant wants and the number of domains, bandwidth, and storage desired.
What makes Magento the top choice of the eCommerce industry :
You must be wondering what makes Magento gain a competitive advantage over the other leading eCommerce platforms. Magento’s slogan “Designed to grow, built for flexibility,” says it all. The open-source platform makes it easy for the users to integrate any custom feature or module. The variety of plug-ins and extensions is one of the features that differentiate it from other platforms. Magento developers can also help you with the module for your businesses according to your requirements.
Here is a quick overview of Magento’s features:
Pricing :
The precise estimate of Magento implementation cost is not an easy task to accomplish as there are several factors to consider namely :
- Hosting price:
The hosting price of a Magento community edition based website is different for different providers and the type of hosting chosen. The cost of unmanaged hosting ranges from 10$ to 250$ while managed hosting starts at around $190 per month. The managed hosting for websites based on enterprise edition starts from $500 per month for dedicated servers while the Magento Commerce Cloud version is hosted on the cloud, so the hosting costs are already included in the license.
- Themes:
The price of a custom-designed Magento template on the Magento Marketplace ranges from $29 to $499.
- Extensions:
There are over 5,000 extensions available for Magento, and many of them are free. The prices for paid modules start at around $50.
- Development:
Magento proves to be a sophisticated platform that requires solid programming skills and a thorough understanding of its peculiarities. A Magento development company helps makes it possible for the development and fast delivery of a successful eCommerce store. The hourly rate of a Magento Specialist can cost round about 125$. It might sound a bit expensive but such investment pays off in no time.
- Maintenance and support:
The maintenance and support of a website launched include regular updates, installation of security patches, design refreshing, and many other activities. The cost of all this depends on whether you maintain your store on your own or hire a developer.
Magento community version is free while the enterprise version is much expensive. Starting with a license fee that starts at $22,000 annually for the Enterprise Edition and $40,000 annually for the Enterprise Cloud Edition.
So Magento can fit the budget of any retailer, both large and small because of the different pricing options and the above-mentioned factors.
- Design and Themes:
Magento offers thousands of themes and templates that are responsive, user-friendly, and mobile-friendly and can easily adjust to screen sizes and devices. The free version offers 10 free themes in total but if you want to customize your website there is a range of premium-priced themes available. Magento provides its user with freedom of visual editing and graphic enhancement.
- Personalization:
Magento is based on PHP which is its striking feature. The open-source platform comes with the flexibility of altering propriety rights and customization which makes it the popular choice of large and more complex stores. It provides a pool of customization options and advanced personalization features.
- Search Engine Optimization:
Magento offers various integrations and functionalities to increase return on investment, help your website with future marketing and SEO. Magento offers the flexibility of changing the URL structure and hierarchy or implement other technical changes. The presence of multi-store makes it easier to make hreflang logic which it difficult to create on Shopify due to its Saas based nature. Magento helps implement different SEO functionalities without any hindrance.
- Third-Party Integration, Add-ons and Apps:
The vast options of customization and add-ons make Magento lead the market. As Magento is self-hosted, it provides its customer with the freedom of using, adapting, changing, and editing extension and integration as per their liking. This large variety of extensions work smoothly with Magento backend code. Though a developer is needed to install any third-party extension.
- Inventory Management:
The basic inventory management of Magento might be the same as other platforms when it comes to advanced features, Magento takes the lead. The in-build and third party integration services enhance and compliment the features of Magento. It is suitable for large enterprises with no restrictions and has a unique approach to inventory management.
- Merchandizing:
Magento outshines other platforms in catering to the needs of large and complex business structure and manage a complicated product setup. It offers significant customization in building features like bundled products, downloadable products, and grouped products. It is suitable for a complex retailer who expects improved manageability. Magento has 7 different categories to group products or core and standard product types, which are:- Simple Products
- Configurable Products
- Bundled Products
- Downloadable Products
- Virtual Products
- Grouped Products
- Gift Cards.
B2B market:
Magento provides huge support to B2B merchants and the wholesale market. It differentiates between different customer groups, uses targeted-pricing; differentiated pricing and customer-based pricing, and different payment methods. Magento also makes it easier to build and support different payment methods. Magento’s new module comes with great features.
For example, managing quotes and various customer setting easily, creating customer-specific catalogues, and assigning specific budgets and roles to different users and companies.
Magento’s new B2B suite has helped the platform to compete with other online solutions, which includes SAP Hybris, Spryker, Intershop, and many more.
Which in turn provides, but is not limited to, budget, quote, and credit management, customer roles, user data with accounts, and order filters. So Magneto might be an expensive platform to invest in but the scalability and flexibility that comes with it make it stand out among the rest. It provides complete control to build an eCommerce site according to your requirements and suits larger and complex retailers.
