Magento Open Source vs. Miva

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Magento Open Source
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Magento Open Source is an ecommerce content management solution originally developed by Varien Inc and presently supported by Adobe. The Open Source product is for developers and merchants that is available as a free download, and supported with free upgrades from the Magento Community.N/A
Miva
Score 5.6 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Miva Merchant is a point-and-click, online store development and management system that allows merchants to build their online store through a web browser, and lets developers provide aftermarket enhancements for the online store.N/A
Pricing
Magento Open SourceMiva
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Magento Open SourceMiva
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMiva employs a revenue-based pricing model. The Miva platform is best suited to growing mid-size and enterprise merchants that have complex business needs and are making (or planning to make) $1 million or more in annual online revenue.
More Pricing Information
Features
Magento Open SourceMiva
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
7.7
28 Ratings
0% above category average
Miva
8.3
2 Ratings
8% above category average
Product catalog & listings8.528 Ratings8.62 Ratings
Product management9.528 Ratings8.62 Ratings
Bulk product upload8.026 Ratings9.12 Ratings
Branding6.526 Ratings8.62 Ratings
Mobile storefront4.128 Ratings9.12 Ratings
Product variations9.526 Ratings8.62 Ratings
Website integration8.024 Ratings7.82 Ratings
Visual customization6.527 Ratings8.62 Ratings
CMS8.526 Ratings5.52 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
8.0
28 Ratings
6% above category average
Miva
7.5
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Abandoned cart recovery7.023 Ratings7.32 Ratings
Checkout user experience8.928 Ratings7.82 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
6.6
26 Ratings
23% below category average
Miva
7.7
2 Ratings
8% below category average
eCommerce security6.626 Ratings7.72 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
4.3
28 Ratings
54% below category average
Miva
7.3
2 Ratings
2% below category average
Promotions & discounts5.628 Ratings8.12 Ratings
Personalized recommendations2.222 Ratings6.82 Ratings
SEO5.025 Ratings6.82 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
9.1
28 Ratings
16% above category average
Miva
8.0
6 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-site management9.525 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Order processing9.527 Ratings7.86 Ratings
Inventory management9.525 Ratings7.22 Ratings
Shipping8.524 Ratings7.72 Ratings
Custom functionality8.526 Ratings8.12 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Magento Open SourceMiva
Small Businesses
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Magento Open SourceMiva
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(29 ratings)
5.1
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(16 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
6.7
(5 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Magento Open SourceMiva
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
It's well suited for large eCommerce stores as it requires much effort to set up and the development cost for setting it up is high. It's less appropriate to use Magento where you are looking for quick development and launch of the store. Also, it is required to have a developer or sometimes the entire tech team to manage an e-commerce store, so you may need to hire a few PHP developers.
Read full review
Miva
I feel that in the manufacturing and B2B space, Miva excels. They have the right talent on their team to ensure the technology works and scales with your business. From my experiences, Miva works with you to ensure that there is a fit. They are looking to build a partnership, and they have the ability to really understand your needs and uses. If you have a complex use case, or website need - Miva is the fit. There has not been anything that we have thrown at the platform that it cannot handle in some function. Their API library is constantly expanding, and we have even been able to improve tools that we wrote when we first started with Miva in the new API to get more function and speed. If you are simply looking to dropship goods, offer a very small product catalog, or not customize a template for different types of users, Miva may not be a great fit. Miva can do those things, but it really shines when you are working with large datasets of both customers, orders, products, and images.
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Pros
Adobe
  • Magento is perfect if our web design client likes a specific pre-made template and wants a fast solution.
  • Magento allows us to customize its open-source code to create additional features and functionality.
  • Magento saves small businesses time and money if they only need a simple solution.
Read full review
Miva
  • The ability to quickly change the look and feel of any given page in the store. The storefront, category, product description, and all checkout pages are easily customize-able using simple HTML language.
  • With minimal effort, more sophisticated changes and behaviors of the store can be modified using MivaScript, the language Miva Merchant is built upon.
  • New features are very easy to add using a huge selection of 3rd party feature modules that typically sell for less that $100. Miva has so many features already built in, but if there is a major common feature not already in the code, it's almost a sure bet that there is a affordable and easy to install module that will meet your e-commerce business requirements.
  • Miva corporation provides a high level of free support 7 days a week and 24 hours a day.
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Cons
Adobe
  • Not the simplest of solutions to use or maintain from an end-user perspective
  • Other platforms are better with regards to SEO in our experience
  • Fairly sluggish and slow compared to other platforms without the correct server specification and performance optimization work.
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Miva
  • The Miva admin area hasn't been the most user-friendly in the past. However, the admin in the the upcoming new Miva Merchant 9 Release has been completely revamped, is VERY user-friendly, and is formatted for desktop as well as mobile devices.
  • Some fairly standard ecommerce functionality like Gift Certificates, Coupons, Sale Prices, etc have previously required third-party modules or template customization. However, many of these features are being built into Miva Merchant upcoming releases.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
It's the dominant force in the SMB open source market. With the continued support of eBay/PayPal, Magento will continue to evolve and should be a market leader for some time.
Read full review
Miva
For most clients, the MIVA Merchant platform, in combination with 3rd party plugins from ADS, Emporium Plus, eMediaSales and Sebenza, has all of the bells and whistles they need. While MIVA is lacking in a mobile friendly option and the ability to easily sell soft goods like mp3's or eBooks, these additions are coming to MIVA soon. The lack of connectivity to popular POS systems is also a negative for us. We will certainly continue to offer MIVA Merchant to clients.
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Usability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Miva
I won't say usability is all bad with Miva; basic product configuration isn't complicated and assigning products to categories works well. However, when you go beyond the most elementary tasks, things almost always become needlessly cumbersome and the information stored by the platform is inherently poorly organized. They've really hyped that Miva 9 released last year features a re-worked admin interface, but from our perspective they've simply given it a fresh coat of paint, made the layout passably mobile friendly, but yet still have not in a substantive way addressed the glaring deficiencies at the core of the platform itself. Adding custom admin area bookmarks is a band aid, not a proper fix.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Miva
I work with multiple Miva sites daily, and uptime is fantastic. Outages are rare from my experience, and any issues have generally been short and handled quickly.
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Support Rating
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Miva
I would give 10, but there were a couple of times when I was misinformed and I had to do some unnecessary work. When you have to work on every product individually and then you discover you could have done it in bulk it kind of makes you roll your eyes back. I also have an issue still with some shipping settings that no one seems to understand. But the support team is super friendly, they are trying
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Miva
Creating the Miva store originally took a reasonable amount of time, 2-3 months, but we were unable to migrate our orders and customer accounts from the old platform. Additional refinements were required over the following 6 months to refine the functionality and features so that they worked properly for our store and fulfillment process.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
In looking at a different platform to migrate to from Magento 1, we looked primarily at Big Commerce, Shopify and Shopify Plus. Our host was very negative about Magento 2, but we determined after a couple years it was due to the fact it had even more complexity (and very different) than Magento 1. Shopify Plus was attractive, but the cost factor for two sites led us back to Magento 2.
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Miva
Versatility and customer service. There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of a task and having to do tech support via a computer-generated chat box. Miva Merchant gives you a live tech support engineer 24/7.
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Scalability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Miva
Miva has proven to be a great solution for smaller mom-and-pop stores through large enterprise-class businesses with tens of thousands of products. Performance is just as strong on enterprise-class stores as on considerably smaller stores, and an increasing number of marketing/sales tools are continually being added to the core Miva functionality to keep up with current marketplace demands.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Delays in development leads to missed timelines and opportunity loss.
  • High cost of development and maintenance may currently outweigh the growth.
  • Better handling of customer and order information makes for better customer service.
  • Excellent API has been a boon for integration with our ERP
Read full review
Miva
  • Running a business in general (and this applies to e-commerce of course) involves not enough time to do too many things. Any place one can automate/streamline/ simplify some of these myriad things, you gain more time to focus on high value activities. We have found that the more we have been able to leverage Miva's capabilities (often with our own tools), the more time we can spend on marketing, sales and product development.
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ScreenShots