Magento Vs WooCOmmerce
It’s never been easier to setup an eCommerce website and start selling online. If you come to us with nothing but an idea, we can craft you a digital shopfront and have you selling in a matter of weeks. However, the web development process is still an intricate process which includes several important decisions. The biggest of these is deciding on which eCommerce platform powers your business. There are hundreds of options out there, ranging from pre-built stock templates to custom developed frameworks. You’ll be glad to hear that we don’t ask you to choose between a hundred. We don’t even ask you to choose between ten. We only ask you to look at two: WooCommerce and Magento. There’s a lot of reasons why we prefer these platforms over others, here are the three big ones.
Cost Effective Development
Both WooCommerce and Magento are free eCommerce platforms. There’s no hidden costs and no on-going subscription fees. That means we can keep your project costs down and spend as much time on development as possible.
Open-source Success
WooCommerce and Magento are open source platforms, granting us access to the nuts and bolts which powers the platform. That means that after we build your website, it’s yours to keep for ever. You own the code and can do anything you want with it.
Secure, Robust and Flexible
There’s a reason that WooCommerce and Magento jointly power 40% of all eCommerce websites on the web. Both options have excellent support, outstanding security and a wide range of powerful eCommerce features.
So that’s why we use WooCommerce and Magento.
However, while they are similar in many respects, each has specific advantages which make them the perfect choice for certain businesses.
In this blog, we’ll explain the strengths of each platform to let you make an informed decision later on. So have a read and get to know Magento and WooCommerce.
Magento is a content management system built specifically for eCommerce. It has a huge array of features and functions which can power anything from small online shops to huge multinationals.
Powerful features like cross-selling, up-selling, comparisons and discounts make Magento an excellent choice for businesses which focus on online sales. Magento also allows you to pull together multiple online stores into one dashboard – an immensely helpful additional if you manage a number of websites.
WooCommerce, on the other hand, is an eCommerce framework built on top of WordPress. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a lesser choice, though. WooCommerce does all the eCommerce fundamentals and it does them exceedingly well.
You can upload and categorise an unlimited number of products. You can integrate attractive rich media into product pages. You can add reviews, filter by category, search by name and feature best-sellers.
WooCommerce also has a range of non-eCommerce features which Magento lacks. As a framework that sits on top of WordPress, it’s much easier to tap into all of WordPress’ features and build an attractive website around your eCommerce store.
Magento is used by various global brands, including Nike, Samsung and Olympus. However, as an eCommerce powerhouse, it definitely does take some getting used to. It’s also quite complicated from a development standpoint. So if you want to bring on a dedicated developer, you’ll pay more than you would for someone equally as competent on WooCommerce.
But if you’re willing to put in a bit of effort and clamber over the steep learning curve, Magento will repay you many times over.
WooCommerce, like its WordPress foundation, puts a huge emphasis on intuitive design, navigation and functionality. It’s easy to set up and, due to its truncated feature list, very easy to use.
If you’ve used WordPress before, WooCommerce will feel immediately familiar due to its similar interface. And if you’re new to WordPress sites, or websites in general, it won’t take more than a couple of hours until your managing your online store with ease.
Future Development
As an eCommerce extension for WordPress, WooCommerce is easily integratable into existing WordPress sites. It’s also supported by a vibrant development community which makes future work and maintenance a breeze. Additionally, since your online store is built on top of WordPress, you can access a wealth of pre-existing plugins and extensions.
WooCommerce will scale efficiently until the number of products you are selling hits the thousands. If you reach that sort of scale, the limitations of WooCommerce functionality tends to result in your website feeling a little clunky. We recommend an upper limit of around 2,500 products for WooCommerce.
Conversely, Magento scales incredibly well, supported by its huge range of features. For exceedingly large eCommerce ventures Magento offers an upper tier product called Magento Enterprise Edition. This second version isn’t particularly cheap, costing around £10,000 per year, but for that you receive a mobile friendly design, a service level agreement for support, improved search functionality, full page caching and enhanced content management.
However, in all honesty, the Enterprise Edition really isn’t worth it for the vast majority of businesses.