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Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source

Overview

What is Magento Open Source?

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…

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Popular Features

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  • Product management (28)
    9.5
    95%
  • Checkout user experience (28)
    9.0
    90%
  • Product catalog & listings (28)
    8.5
    85%
  • Mobile storefront (28)
    4.1
    41%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Magento Open Source?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

Online Storefront

Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.

7.7
Avg 7.7

Online Shopping Cart

Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.

8
Avg 7.6

Online Payment System

Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.

6.5
Avg 8.3

eCommerce Marketing

Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites

4.2
Avg 7.5

eCommerce Business Management

Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations

9.1
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Magento Open Source?

Magento is an open-source ecommerce content management solution originally developed by Varien Inc and presently supported by Adobe. The Magento Open Source version (formerly known as Community Edition) is for developers and tech-savvy merchants that is available as a free download, and is supported with free upgrades from the Magento Community. Because it is free and open-source, users will enjoy the ability to alter the code. This version still presents a fully capable eCommerce presence with multiple, mobile-accessible sites, SEO optimization, targeted promotions, the ability to alter themes and and change the layout, taxes and shipping management, and more.

Magento Open Source Video

What is Magento?

Magento Open Source Integrations

Magento Open Source Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Product management and Product variations and Multi-site management highest, with a score of 9.5.

The most common users of Magento Open Source are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(127)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-20 of 20)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our company, as system integrators, we often encounters customer with a Magento eCommerce. The best part of this software solution is that, since it's completely modular and we usually do not develop the entire website, we can still however work on our projects (usually integrations with third party systems or data import/export) by working on specific modules we can then deliver to our customers.
  • Modularity
  • Great Community
  • Updates
  • Very step learning curve
  • If not using it headless, the frontend uses old technologies
  • The first setup can be problematic
Magento is perfect for large scale eCommerces with various degree of complexity, like multicountry invocing/taxes, different currencies, a big catalogue with a lot of configurable products. Due to it's high customization capabilitis, it's also perfect if you have any specific need which is not covered by more "simple" eCommerce solutions.
Russell Preston | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Magento provides an excellent framework for managing customers, products, categories, cart, orders and has a plethora of extensions to allow you to do almost anything you could think of - but without being beholden to a platform such as Shopify.
  • Free framework in widely used language (PHP) based on common database (MySQL)
  • Has lots of developer support
  • Has frequent security patches.
  • Not the most performant when you want to scale up
  • Does not have single page app support out of the box
  • Does not have native mobile app support (yet)
Perfect for a small to mid size company but be very careful not to customize over the core files (although you WILL need to)... just remember that upgrading and staying current IS going to be a pain so try to keep on top of it.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Magento to build an e-commerce platform for our clients. It's used by the developers to develop and deploy the e-commerce system. It addresses the problem of security and scalability while setting up a live e-commerce store. Magento is one of the best platforms to build e-commerce solutions as it provides us a lot of freedom in designing the store and also enables us with a lot of integrations.
  • It is very good when it comes to search engine optimization as it makes a good use of keywords and tags to improve the SEO score. It increases the chances of ranking up of the eCommerce store in the search engine rankings.
  • It makes the store in a very optimized way and despite being a very advanced system it is still very lightweight when it comes to website speed. The pages have a comparatively low loading time and a good speed.
  • It provides a lot more advance reporting features which are very helpful for businesses to do their planning.
  • It requires coding experience, so a non-tech guy cannot use it without special training.
  • It requires a considerably large server for the smooth functioning.
  • It requires a good amount of effort to do the initial setup which makes it a low priority option when it comes to stores that require fast development in a short time.
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.
Shahed Nasser | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Magento Open Source to develop e-commerce online stores for our clients in different areas and sectors. As Magento has many features out of the box, it makes creating an online store that has the basic, common features easy. We also use Magento for e-commerce stores that require some custom development, as Magento's architecture makes it easier.
  • Many out-of-the-box features
  • Easily find plugins, especially with famous third-party services
  • Built on well structured architecture
  • It can be hard for developers to learn and use
  • As there are many features in it, it can become "bloated" sometimes if not managed well.
  • Non-technical savvy users might need some training to understand how it works, especially the admin side.
Magento is best suited for big projects, meaning e-commerce sites that can handle a lot of traffic, that need a lot of features, that need custom features without breaking the system, and that need durable systems.

Magento is least suited for small projects, meaning e-commerce sites that are very simple and don't require that many features. Online stores that just have the basic buy and checkout features. It's also not suitable if you're not ready to hire expert developers to handle any issues or changes to the system that you need.
Ramon Khan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Magento open source was being used for the management of our e-commerce site. When you have thousands of products and need a platform that can handle changes quickly as well as perform quickly, then Magento is one of the best choices. I used Magento to run a store that had thousands of SKUs and we were very happy with the way that we were able to make mass changes and the speed of the platform. It is also a great platform solution for custom changes as it's open-source and there are plenty of developers that work on it. It is great at solving the issue of managing tons of products efficiently and being able to implement custom solutions for your store if needed.
  • Speed
  • Scalability
  • Open source
  • No monthly cost
  • You don't have to share any revenue for the sales that you make.
  • Being simpler to change as developers can get costly.
  • Having more built in SEO options.
  • Does require specialized hosting to make it really fast.
  • Installing updates could be easier.
  • Setting up a staging site should be built into the backend although it's easy to set up from a hosting panel.
If you have a lot of products then Magento is the way to go, but it would probably be too complicated if you wanted just a few products in a store. Overall, Magento is one of the few platforms that can handle many products and mass changes while still maintaining speed. The other pro of using Magento over other platforms is that there is no monthly cost or commissions that they charge for making sales, which I think is a huge improvement over other popular platforms, and is worth a look. Another popular platform that charges monthly fees and a percentage of sales can get expensive very quickly. Plus Magento is open source so you can make pretty much any customization that you can think of.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Vitasalus, Inc. uses Magento 1.9.0.1 for the frontend sites of vitasalus.net and nu-gen.net. I've also done extensive work on a migration of the sites to Magento 2,3.2, not live yet, pending further adjustments, corrections and extensions necessary to the new platform. I've handled the html--formatting to responsive design.<br>The best thing about Open Source is that it's free. Also that it is very inclusive and powerful. But it does come with a cost: a very high degree of study, and, in my case, trial and error. I've often sometimes thought that this is the reason Magento experts can charge such exorbitant fees--the complexity can be beyond the reach of the overwhelming majority of companies' webmasters. (Even wonder if that's done on purpose, to create an upper tier of programmers...) <br>
  • Significant flexibility
  • Information online for troubleshooting
  • Cost-effective (free)
  • Complexity can be prohibitive
  • Can require accessing skill sets outside of company
  • Magento 1 - retired - no flash support for uploading, editing pics
Best suited for a company which does not require parameters that require editing beyond Magento's default settings. No digging into its bowels necessary.
Companies that require extensive editing of parameters should expect an outlay of employee time, and perhaps outside programmers. Though the platform is free, it may require significant outlay of money to make it work appropriately.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Magento is our backbone. Our front-end website pulls product and catalog data from this tool. Our customer service team relies on this as a pseudo-CRM as all our customer data live on this platform. Our tool is also designed to work with our 3PL's backend service for seamless warehouse, inventory, and order management.
  • It's a decent system for a start-up company.
  • A lot of extensions can work with it: billing, order management, customer communication, and payment processors to name a few.
  • Highly customizable and reusable.
  • For a normal user, there is a learning curve.
  • Code clean up can sometimes be a headache.
  • It's sometimes sluggish.
It is a solid system for front-end and back-end e-commerce website management. It can handle cataloging, inventory, and product management really well. It has a robust engine for uploading product/hero images, SKUs, categories, and subscriptions. It also works well with free extensions so you can build a working e-commerce site in no time.
Jay Moore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Magento Open Source powers our ecommerce site, shop.betaclub.org. It is the sole ecommerce platform at our organization. It allows us to sell merchandise items related to the National Beta Club. We can offer custom items through the platform. We can also do promotions, such as free shipping. The platform is very flexible and we have found lots of community support
  • Solid e-commerce platform
  • Fully customizable
  • Large add-ons marketplace
  • Tons of integration options
  • Customizable only for the very experienced
  • Will most likely need to hire experienced developers to install addons and maintain
You can certainly get a quality ecommerce platform up and running quickly. Custom theme development and addons may cost you extra. Some addons/themes can be easy to install others will require more expertise.
Chris Putnam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We help manage, update, maintain and customize websites built with Magento Open Source (Community Edition) - among many other CMSs and frameworks - for our clients. Magento enables building highly customizable e-commerce websites, with a solid core set of features and a large variety of extensions available to extend it further, and a framework that allows further extension by an expert programmer.
  • Flexibility of code - almost any part of the system can be customized
  • Extensions - high availability of free and paid pre-built extensions
  • Documentation - for the latest iteration (2.x)
  • Multi-language/Internationalization
  • Multi-store websites
  • Updates - historically patches and updates, due to the frequent high customization, can be difficult
  • User Experience of Management - managing the store is not as intuitive as some other systems
  • Frontend Development and templating - while very flexible and modular, they are much more complex than many other systems
If you need to sell your products in multiple languages and/or via multiple websites (e.g. targeting different demographics), then Magento may be a good fit. If a high amount of customization is needed, Magento could be a good fit. You will need an experienced programmer in this case, and expect to have ongoing costs in hosting, maintenance and updates.
David Bryan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our agency Opace use Magento day-in-day-out for e-commerce clients, we also specialize in other open source platforms, including WordPress, WooCommerce and Joomla. However for e-commerce, especially larger stores with large inventories and/or an international presence, Magento is always our platform of choice and we find that customers are usually very happy with the solution. The one limitation, where a combination like WordPress and WooCommerce outperforms Magento, is ease-of-use and flexibility. Magento isn't the most straight forward of platforms to use or maintain, not without some level of technical knowledge. That said, Magento is very powerful and migrations to Magento 2 are becoming more straight forward. For more information on a study we've conducted and a comparison to other e-commerce platforms available, you can view our infographic here.

  • Multiple storefronts - the ability to power multiple Magento stores from a single install/database.
  • Extensibility - the ability to grow your e-commerce store using the vast selection of available extensions.
  • 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.
Definitely well suited to larger e-commerce stores, in particular where multiple store-fronts are needed. Not so well suited to smaller online shops.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Magento Open Source is my top selection for large/complex e-commerce websites. There is really no better open-source e-commerce solution that can scale for large shops or accommodate specialty customizations. I use Magento for my clients that need a platform that can scale with thousands of products or complex product configurations.
  • Scalability is excellent, Magento Open Source can handle hundreds, thousands, ten thousands of products.
  • Inventory management is excellent.
  • Excellent set of core features and extensions to expand and extend it are exhaustive.
  • The community behind Magento is top-notch.
  • Magento can be difficult to learn for a non-technical person, and requires an experienced developer to set it up properly.
  • To really get the most of out Magento, you must run it on on a dedicated server with extensive server customizations.
  • Not really geared for small shops - I don't recommend it for little e-commerce websites.
I highly recommend Magento Open Source for large e-commerce websites, or e-commerce websites that require extensive customizations. It is always my first choice for clients that need a complex e-commerce system that can scale well. I do not recommend it for smaller e-commerce websites or simple basic shops and would encourage using a simpler system.
Lynn Thames | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a software company that builds e-commerce sites for companies. We mostly use Magento because it is very flexible and powerful and we are able to integrate it with any other 3rd party system as needed. Our sites are built for both B2B and B2C (direct sales) companies.
  • Magento is fully extendable so that you can accomplish any special needs for a client without having to build a custom site.
  • Magento is powerful and fast on the proper web server. It can handle a huge number of products and customers successfully.
  • Magento has a very flexible catalog structure so that you can sell most any type of product or product combination.
  • Magento is easy to integrate with other systems.
  • Magento is great for non-technical people to be able to update content, as it's also a full CMS system.
  • Magento is well known for its bugs in early releases of each version. Luckily, there is a great community always providing temporary fixes and patches.
  • Magento should allow you to add user-defined fields for customers. It allows you do do this for products, but for customers, you must be able to program in order to create user-defined fields.
  • Magento should have built-in support for dimensional shipping methods. I think in general the shipping integrations are weak. Most people need to purchase add-ons to get really accurate shipping rates.
It is well suited to a company that is willing to invest in proper development, web server capacity, and ongoing maintenance. It's not a good solution for a DIY'er unless they are very technical. But if you need any type of custom integration and are willing to invest in your solution, it will definitely give you a good ROI.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Magento Open Source to manage our ecommerce website. We have been using it for years and have had great success. Our website development team uses Magento Open Source. This includes our e-ops team, UX team and back-end developers. It allows us to manage all the products, shipping rates, taxes, multiple stores across multiple countries, SEO, categories, redirects, etc. It really takes care of most needs we have for our site.
  • Magento Open Source allows us to manage thousands of products in an easy to view and edit manner. We can make bulk changes to hundreds of products when necessary in just a few minutes.
  • Magento Open Source is incredibly flexible from a developers perspective. We have been able to develop many custom solutions that Magento Open Source didn't offer out of the box without any difficulty.
  • Magento Open Source allows us to pull reports very quickly. The product grid screen (Manage Products) allows you to customize the data columns you see which allows you to pull a report of just the data you want. We use this multiple times per day to see data on our catalog.
  • Magento Open Source makes it very easy to set URL redirects when we change product pages or category structure. This is incredibly useful in our daily use of Magento.
  • Like I mentioned previously, Magento Open Source allows us to develop custom solutions for areas where it did not offer a feature out of the box. While the ease of development is good, had these features been available out of the box, it would have been even better.
  • We occasionally find that some third party vendors do not work well with Magento Open Source. We have had to come up with work-arounds or abandon certain vendors all together because of our use of Magento Open Source.
  • This isn't really a drawback of Magento Open Source itself, but finding developers that are familiar with Magento can be difficult.
  • When you are first getting familiar with Magento Open Source, navigating the menus can be very intimidating. There are seemingly hundreds of pages and tabs in Magento and until you are familiar with it, you can very easily get lost.
Magneto is very well suited for larger e-commerce businesses. Our catalog of thousands of products across multiple stores and storeviews is very easy to manage with Magento Open Source. I can imagine that for a smaller start up company, Magento Open Source would be overkill. If you are looking for a platform with a lot of built in extensions and customizations, Magento Open Source is probably not best for you. Expect to do some custom development if you are going to go with Magento Open Source.
Max J. Jennings | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a digital marketing company specializing in web design and SEO. Our company has been building Magento websites for years for our clients. For both large and small scale clients, Magento has been implemented to serve as an e-commerce platform has overall has been very successful. Since we primarily deal with small to medium-sized businesses who have no in-office IT department, we often find ourselves supporting the websites as well.

Magento has allowed us to build sophisticated and feature-rich stores for clients who are looking to sell their product online. It is easy to set up, easy to maintain and reasonably easy to navigate.
  • Magento makes it easy to build out sophisticated pricing options as our clients usually have a complicated pricing structure.
  • For the most part, setting up Magento is easy and straightforward. It's a lot easier than the old days of custom coding.
  • The newly designed UI is so much easier to use. With the old design, we found it difficult to navigate and so did our clients. The newly designed UI is a huge improvement.
  • I am not a big fan of the extensions directory and all of the paid upgrades. There are some basic features that I feel should be included but you have to pay for. By comparison, WooCommerce is better in that regard.
My organization has been using Magento for many years now, and it is by far one of the best e-commerce platforms that we have used. That's not to say that it doesn't have its drawbacks, but it is the best use for any large-scale or enterprise e-commerce solutions. For the most part, I would say that we recommend Magento to our clients when they are looking to build a website that anticipates more than 3000 orders a month. Anything less than that we are going to recommend a platform like WooCommerce or Shopify.

Right off the bat one of the immediate drawbacks is that the extension library seems limited when compared to other platforms like WooCommerce. On top of that most, the extensions that you do one include some form of charge. Whereas other platforms seem to offer free solutions Magento always seems to come with some level of payment.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Magento Community Edition as our solution for e-commerce retailing.
  • Compared to other solutions, Magento has far more control over exact nuances of e-commerce such as discounting, customer segmentation, and multi-site control.
  • Magento as a whole is reliable and can be made very fast thanks to built-in fullpage caching on Magento 2.
  • Magento is scalable and can handle huge traffic, or it can be built for a small site.
  • Small bugs and issues affecting performance could be handled more quickly, but the rate of bug fixes and improvements is much better now than it used to be!
  • The built-in image lightbox uses an extension that is no longer supported. This could be improved.
  • Extensions from "certified developers" are often buggy or extremely unreliable. A better certification process for third-party extensions could save a lot of time and stress for users.
Magento is well-suited for any full-fledged retail store. I would recommend a simpler solution for anyone seeking an e-commerce presence for just a few products (Shopify, etc).
Matt Railey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have implemented Magento CE as the e-commerce management solution for clients.
  • Comes with APIs built-in
  • Lots of extensibility and customizability
  • Can handle a very large product catalog
  • Magento is complicated to use and has a high learning curve from a management user point of view.
  • We found it difficult to upgrade when newer releases came out.
  • The front-end templating system seems needlessly obtuse and is difficult to develop. Smaller front-end elements are individual files and layouts are controlled through XML files.
It is definitely not a product for a small team looking for minimal hands-on development time. However, if you do have time/budget for a team of developers to develop and maintain a Magento storefront, then it gives you a lot of flexibility and customizability in terms of customer user experience.
Nick Jastrebski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Magento is the primary CMS used for e-commerce across the market for good reason. It's open source and built specifically for e-commerce, and the best part of this CMS is it's FREE! It's not as popular a CMS as WordPress, but WordPress isn't built specifically for e-commerce and is well know for it's security issues. It's a great place to start, and can scale with your business as you grow. The benefits of being able to start out for free and grow your online business are difficult to beat.
  • As stated before, it's open source and it's free.
  • Magento CE is scalable as you continue to grow your online business.
  • It is high performance, and highly scalable.
  • A key benefit to being open source is that there's a large community and plenty of developer support.
  • If you have a large number of products, performance will degrade continually. 10-20 products is no problem but 20,000 or more and there's a noticeable slowdown.
  • Your site will not load quickly with community edition.
  • It's difficult to roll back changes if you make a modification by mistake. Backup/restore options are not great with CE.
If you're looking to get your e-commerce site off the ground Magento CE is a great place to start. It's highly flexible and supports all different kinds of devices for end users. It's multi-tenant so with one backend, several different sites can be setup within it. Lastly, it's very easy to integrate Magento with 3rd party tools.
Chris Coppenbarger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We implement and provide support for Magento Community Edition for most of our clients. Most of our clients are needing a platform that offers products to buy and Magento meets those needs very well. It has a base setup from which you can build off of with modules and custom theming to provide the experience the clients need to present to their customers.
  • Out of the box product display allows for you to quickly get your products shown to the consumers
  • Customizable product options allow for a wide variety of selection of products
  • Customizable payment and shipping options allow for many different use-case scenarios for the consumer.
  • It is still using a lot of xml for it's configuration which can make things complicated.
  • Updating has gotten better, but very specific requirements make it difficult at times.
  • Very specific requirements for installing also make it difficult.
Magento Community Edition is very well suited for B2C/B2B sales of consumer and business products. It allows for the out of the box configuration of a wide variety of products. It is not well-suited for a simple website or a simple content management system. It is a content management system, but mostly for products to sell.
Brian Keary | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a web developer, I use Magento CE for some of my clients. We build them a website using the CMS system. It is a very efficient system as it helps our clients quickly and cheaply get their product/service out there.
  • It is a great solution for mid to large sized E-Commerce companies who want to quickly get their product to market
  • It's cost effective as there are a number of extensions available extending the capabilities of the system.
  • The websites created using Magento CE are responsive and ready to set up. Just upload a few products and modify some colors and you're good to go.
  • One feature of Magento CE that I feel needs improvement is with the structure of the system. Many of the important SEO factors like minifying the CSS files don't work without causing some issues on the site. It does take someone skilled to get a site working properly. It's not built for the novice in mind.
Magento is very efficient CMS system, that is cost effective and viable for almost any type of E-Commerce business.
Bret Williams | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Magento CE for our www.MageRevolution.com website. We also have done many installations for clients. Magento CE allows us to build robust, flexible, enterprise level e-commerce solutions are a much more affordable level than many comparable systems. We have clients with as many as 90,000 sku's and, if installed and tuned properly, Magento is capable of providing a rich shopping experience. In addition, there are so many resources available that a Magento store owner won't feel isolated or restricted by their developer or platform.
  • Flexibility to add or enhance functionality as needed.
  • Great assortment of inexpensive add-ons and designs, although care should be taken to insure compatibility and use.
  • Low cost of entry relative to other robust systems.
  • Despite its popularity, successful implementation requires not only an in-depth experience with Magento, but true knowledge of how e-commerce works. It is a complex platform with poor, Magento-provided documentation.
  • Many — you could almost say "most" — of the add-ons created for Magento are not of great quality. There are plenty that are, but you have to be very careful.
  • Designers may feel overwhelmed by the complex template structure.
Magento is really for those who have outgrown simpler systems like Shopify or Big Commerce, or who need more complex integrations with ERP, distribution and other systems. If a business is in the $1,000,000 - $100,000,000 sales range, Magento is probably a great choice. Costs of basic implementations run around $10,000 to start.
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