Magento is most widely used open source eCommerce software and platform written in PHP atop the Zend framework. It’s also an object-oriented PHP Framework that can be used to develop modern, dynamic web applications that tap into Magento’s powerful eCommerce features.The software was originally developed by Varien Inc which is now known as Magento Inc.
Why Choose Magento as eCommerce Development Platform?
What do Ford, Warby Parker, Olympus, Samsung and Nike have in common?
All their websites are built on the Magento platform. These big companies were definitely not looking for the cheapest or simplest solutions for their ecommerce systems. When a platform is favoured by such big names, it is a guarantee for a secure commercial system, which is capable of selling your products effectively online.
“Everyone uses it”
Yes, we know that this argument may lead to false conclusions. It well may be that something is agreed on by the majority while it is not necessarily the best option. But now we are talking about ecommerce and business results.
It is a fact that at the moment Magento has a market share of 32% among the 30 most popular ecommerce platforms, so there is hardly any significant competitor in that respect.
More reasons why this platform is the ideal choice.
- Magento is secure:
Safety is not an option, it is a must in an environment where hackers try to crack databases every minute.
Luckily, Magento is always tested by a vast number of developers. The whole system is constantly watched by experts (e.g. ethical hackers) searching for defects and eliminating vulnerability by uploading patches. - Professional technological support and huge knowledge base:
The flexibility and openness of the system is basically the result of this philosophy. A couple of years ago Magento was acquired by eBay. Just recently it got independent of eBay, but it has extremely strong and loyal developer community, which had evolved well before its acquisition by eBay,is still passionately working on its development. - The Leatherman of ecommerce:
The system has a remarkably rich administrative area, which gives you the possibility to modify everything according to your needs – such as product features and categories or content targeted at different customer groups. - Impressive, responsive design:
There are many solutions on the market that have “forgotten” to adapt to the most recent market needs.
Since 2014, more and more people use the internet on their tablets and smartphones, and an increasing proportion of purchases are done on mobile devices. An online store can compete in such an environment successfully if it has a responsive layout, which means that it offers an interface to its shoppers, which is easy to handle on all platforms from tablets and smartphones to PCs and netbooks. - Supports SEO:
It probably has the most advanced SEO toolkit among ecommerce platforms.
Why not to use magento?
- High hiring charges
Magento developers are rare and difficult to find. You really need to put an effort to unearth good team of Magento developers and designers. Particularly, it is difficult to find a good set of skills for web design field professionals i.e. designers, server side programmers and client side programmers. Plus, it has got a mixture of many tools and technologies that makes it complicated for a person to understand its working.
Magento certified developer program has certainly helped in narrowing down skills search when it comes to hiring Magento developers however this would normally cost high. - Time consuming customized development.
It is a complex system and not one that is easy to work with. Built on Zend framework and using MVC approach, customizing is not that easy as with other shopping carts.
Any of your requests to do customization will take a good developer more time to bring changes. - Slowness
Magento is relatively slow than other ecommerce solutions.
One possible reason can be that Magento is not effectively written on Zend framework which makes it slow while running. On PHP, it does not work on standard 8mb but requires at least 20mb to work properly. An effective, well dedicated server might be one of the solutions.
While Magento does offer some advantages and fulfill promises, for e.g. friendly SEO links and great third party integration, but on the other hand, it lacks fundamental things like complicacy which can turn life into a nightmare. Comparing from other ecommerce shopping cart solutions though, Magento is one of the best shopping cart solutions, but with new matured versions and firm productivity in the long run, it can be near perfect platform in future.
Magento Is Open Source. Open Source = Free!
True, Magento has 3 versions in total:
Magento Community Edition (free), Magento Enterprise Edition (paid)
Magento Go (paid & hosted on Magento’s servers)
Magento 2
Reference links:
Official website:
https://magento.com
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magento
Downloads:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/download
Resources and extensions marketplace:
https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/
Community and forum:
http://magento.stackexchange.com/
https://community.magento.com/