10-second breakdown:
The community edition of Magento is perfect for small to mid-sized businesses. It is a free open source platform that anyone can use, however there are enough features for anyone with a decent-sized need to take a deep look. Some knowledge of coding is require though.
The good:
Magento Community Edition is open-source and entirely free to use. While you will have to custom-design your store (which can be costly), free isn’t a bad place to get started. This software is best for brick and mortar chains who don’t want to fully develop their own software.
Even though it is free, don’t expect it to be bare bones. The number of features rival the most expensive plans of other ecommerce platforms. You will have to integrate them into your custom design, but they are all included with the software.
The community forum is super helpful. Other store owners present their questions to be answered by other owners who have the experience to help.
The bad:
The software isn’t the fastest and suffers from slow page load speeds (an increasingly large no-no in the world of SEO).
Development can be expensive for the enterprise level. Magento will help you setup your store, but costs are in the thousands. It actually starts around $18k/year.
How it works:
If you have an enterprise level business and want to pay the hefty annual fee to have Magento help you, here’s the link to the page. However, this review will focus on the Community Edition to help small to mid-sized online shop creators.
Typically, with a ecommerce platform you’d be looking at the plans and pricing. You don’t have to do that here, because the software is free and open source. That doesn’t mean that you won’t have expenses. You’ll have to pick up the tab for several things that may be included with other solutions. Here’s a brief breakdown:
Domain name and hosting: Since, this is a software and not an all-in-one solution you’ll have to put the files somewhere. These things have become common among other ecommerce platforms like Shopify and 3D Cart.
SSL and Payment Processor: Your site needs to take credit cards to make money and you’ll need some security to make it safe for customers. Integrating these things will be entirely up to you with Magento. We’ve put together a list of the top credit card processors we like. Check it out.
Development Help: It’s a virtual certainty that you’ll need a developer to do at least minor work on your shop. There are templates, but without coding knowledge it’s just not going to look the way you want.
You should really understand that Magento is not an “easy-to-use” solution. It doesn’t allow you to fully “own” your shop but the customization is just as good as creating your store from scratch without having to, well, create it from scratch. There are so many possibilities with this software it ends up drawing people like moth to flame (here are some of the awesome sites that have been created).
The templates available aren’t a drag and drop style, nor do they come with a visual editing tool. It’s pretty much straight code that you have to tweak and add to until your site has your products. Even uploading your products is a process that is best done by a pro. There is a dashboard that pops up when you log in that displays basic information about your shop. Essentially, it’s just a few stats and orders that have come in. Customization of the dashboard is virtually non-existent unless you want to develop a new one for your needs.
A huge benefit to this customizable option are the integrations. There are literally dozens of different tools that can “easily” be used with your Magento CE software. Some of them include tools for shipping, cart abandonment, search ability, analysis tools and so many more it’s kinda crazy.
Another positive is the scalability. Since it is just a framework, you can make that frame as big as you need. Self-hosting keeps you from being limited in terms of resources. So, if your store is high-traffic, there aren’t going to be overage fees like many other platforms. And since you are the technical ruler of your domain, there isn’t an issue with number of transactions or any other issue that you’d have working on someone else’s playground (so to speak).
As you can probably guess, there isn’t a great support system in place for users. At this point, most of the shop owners who want an easy solution have moved on and this may not bother you. If you feel like you need some assistance, there are a few resources including a pretty active forum and a phone number that you can call during business hours.
Honestly, there is only a specific group of people who will want to build a site using Magento Community Edition. Those who are looking to build something that is truly their own and not have their store be held up by a third party. If an option that hosts your site and products goes under, you’ll be scrambling to transfer everything. If you own the software, domain, and server there is no outside circumstance that can affect your progress. If that sounds like your mindset, it’s worth a deep thought. If not, there are lots of easier options to look into.
For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.
http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/magento-enterprise/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150393819372
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