Magento, without a doubt, is one of the world's most popular eCommerce platforms, powering more than 12% of the world's eCommerce websites. It is used by the world's biggest brands and its popularity keeps growing year after year.
Magento's flexibility and robust architecture is well-known among eCommerce professionals.
It's ideal for the tech-savvy developer who wants creativity and control over the store's back-end.
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It also requires businesses to navigate difficult setup, add costly extensions and select Magento-compliant hosting providers, which can prove tiresome for small eCommerce businesses looking for a plug-and-play solution.
While Magento does check off many boxes as a great all-round solution, it's not the best option
for everyone.
There's nothing wrong with that, as a solution that's perfect for one type of business won't necessarily work as well for another.
If you're considering Magento, keep reading for our in-depth comparison of some great alternatives and great eCommerce platforms for your business.
In this post, we'll compare OroCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, PrestaShop and 3dcart.
It will hopefully help you narrow down a solution that is easy to use, well-equipped, scalable, and not too hard on the wallet.
OroCommerce
Just like Magento, OroCommerce is an open-source solution and comes with a number of tools for analytics, monitoring, and content management.
Its self- or cloud-hosted nature gives you a lot more customization capabilities over how your store looks and works.
Where OroCommerce gains an edge over Magento is flexibility.
It is able to accommodate virtually any eCommerce scenario, ranging from B2C, D2C and B2B.
It also comes with many features required for medium and large-sized online stores - or small stores that want scalability for the future.
All this without the need to resort to complex integrations and plugins.
OroCommerce's usability features
Magento, although built on a robust and modular architecture, shows its weakness in user-friendliness when compared to its competitors. OroCommerce offers business customers the same flexibility store owners have to design the experience their customers desire.
Moreover, OroCommerce's system supports a larger number of store setups, including self-service, marketplaces, and specific buyer-seller interactions.
OroCommerce's inventory management
OroCommerce offers best-in-class inventory management features that allow merchants to import, categorize, filter products, as well as control visibility of products and pricing.
It comes with a large inventory management system that supports product catalogs, configurable products and pricing rules.
OroCommerce's integration features
Magento is famous for its comprehensive collection of integrations, extensions and plugins that work smoothly with the backend system.
Similarly, OroCommerce offers merchants an array of solution and technology partners, a marketplace with integrations, and a community of developers that can extend existing functionalities beyond what is initially offered.
OroCommerce's speed & performance
Like Magento, OroCommerce gives you control over servers, deployment, and hosting options.
Its open-source architecture allows you to optimize your store for speed and compatibility in ways that a proprietary vendor wouldn't.
This is the ideal strategy for large stores with multiple self-service portals and integrations.
Shopify
Magento's dominance in the eCommerce market was dethroned by Shopify in 2018, and since then, few companies were able to overtake Shopify's foothold over the market.
It's not hard to see why: Shopify is a great solution for retailers who sell B2C and don't want to worry about the technical aspects of their stores.
Another reason why people choose Shopify is due to its user-friendly interface and a solution that offers all the necessary features that online stores require.
It's great for those who don't have multiple portals or marketplaces to set up (there's OroCommerce for that), and want to launch their store with minimal effort.
On the downsite, it's a SaaS system, which means you have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use it.
Shopify's user friendliness
Magento promises to offer lots of control over the look, feel, content and functionality of their online stores.
Shopify is well-known for its clean user interface and ease of use, both for merchants and end-users.
If you're a novice to eCommerce, you'll appreciate the intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces and the ability to launch your eCommerce stores within mintues.
Shopify's product management
While Magento and Shopify both have basic inventory management systems, Magento offers a lot more customization and the ability to expand on the existing system.
Shopify's system is best suited for smaller businesses that prefer straightforward interfaces at the expense of a large feature set.
Nonetheless, there are some marketing and inventory features such as promotions, discounts, and more.
Shopify's customization features
For those looking to minimize their setup, hosting and configuration hassles, Shopify is a great alternative.
The main issue here is that you can't access and modify the source code to more closely reflect your business needs.
It's also not for you if you plan on changing your setup or move into new markets, such as B2C + B2B, B2B2C, or hybrid marketplaces.
Shopify's speed & performance
Being a proprietary solution, Shopify takes care of all your hosting questions. This means you don't have to worry about customizing page load speeds or tweaking the performance of every eCommerce page.
While this is great for smaller businesses, it can cause problems down the road if they grow too quickly or choose to invest into performance optimization.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is popular among small businesses, but not to the same degree that Shopify is.
It's aimed at businesses with a limited budget, which means that their features quickly run out of
steam, especially when stacked against OroCommerce's ability to fit any eCommerce merchant
environment.
BigCommerce users appreciate its simple interfaces, features, and the limited worries about infrastructure-related hassles.
Another thing that BigCommerce has going for it is much lower cost and lower complexity compared to Magento.
BigCommerce's usability features
BigCommerce is great for businesses just getting started in eCommerce. It comes with many UX features such as drag-and-drop that allow you to launch your store with minimum time.
It offers a simple control panel, support portal and additional themes that can help businesses quickly decide on a style and feel of their store.
BigCommerce's inventory management
Inventory management functions fall short of OroCommerce, Magento and Shopify.
BigCommrece offers limited product options such as size, color and styles - as well as stock
level tracking and notifications.
On a positive note, BigCommerce integrates with some inventory management apps.
BigCommerce's customizations
BigCommerce is built strictly for small B2C businesses that do not need features deemed
necessary for larger businesses.
Like Shopify, it has a flexible API for headless eCommerce which is a big plus for some.
On the other hand, BigCommerce doesn't have a multi-store or multi-instance functionality. It also offers less apps and integrations than Shopify.
BigCommerce's speed & performance
Since BigCommerce is a SaaS hosted platform, it is stable and secure, boasting great uptime
and PCI compliance.
At the same time, there is no way to optimize for speed and loading times, meaning that as businesses grow, they don't have any way to optimize page performance.
PrestaShop
Like Magento, PrestaShop is another open-source option. It relies heavily on customizations
and includes a formidable list of plugins and integrations.
It's more user friendly for customization and for smaller businesses, as well for launching ready-made websites quickly. It also comes with an active community.
When it comes to features, scalability, and robustness of plugins, Magento wins here.
PrestaShop cannot create multiple store configurations from one single panel.
It also can't support marketplaces, B2B, or B2B2C scenarios the way OroCommerce can.
PrestaShop's user friendliness
Even though it's an open-source solution, PrestaShop is easy to get started with and has a
sleeker dashboard than Magento.
Adding products and customizing them takes less time, and this is something that smaller businesses or eCommerce teams will appreciate.
PrestaShop's product management
Adding and customizing simple product lines is easy.
However, more advanced inventory management features can be activated almost exclusively via add-ons, of which there are many.
This is great for small businesses that may grow in the future, but makes the solution more complex and less robust than its competitors.
PrestaShop's integration features
PrestaShop is great at customizing your store with advanced functionality. It offers more than
3,000 modules and 4,000 themes.
This gives you a large library of styles and functions you can use out of the box.
Having said that, it's also relatively easy for new users to pick it up, as opposed to Magento.
PrestaShop's speed & performance
Since PrestaShop and Magento are both self-hosted platforms, the performance you'll see out
of each platform will depend on the hardware used to host it.
Performance will depend on the number of products and product data, but large businesses and enterprises will appreciate growing with OroCommerce or Magento for the peace of mind.
3dcart
3dcart is a formidable opponent to Shopify and BigCommerce - its redeeming qualities are cost
and a long feature list for the price.
Nevertheless, it has all the necessary B2C features that small businesses need to run their eCommerce stores.
Some of 3dcart's highlights are an impressive collection of 160 payment gateways and more
free/paid themes than Shopify and BigCommerce.
Both, however, pale in comparison to OroCommerce and Magento based on long-term customization and convenience.
3dcart's usability features
Those looking for an intuitive and easy to learn interface will appreciate 3dcart's extensive
theme library and easy-to-use website builder.
Product information is available at a glance, with product variants, bulk import and export functionality, among other features.
3dcart's product management
Similar to PrestaShop, 3dcart features out of stock notifications, back order and waiting list
functionality for inventory management.
While for most small eCommerce businesses that may be enough, larger eCommerce operations will appreciate separate product lines, multi-website and discount management functions from OroCommerce or Magento.
3dcart's integration features
3dcart's integration options mostly consist of different plugins for product pages and landing
pages, and themes for the look and feel of your store.
With more than 45 free (100+ total) themes and a marketplace of designers and developers, it's great for beginners or established eCommerce businesses.
3dcart's speed & performance
Being a hosted solution, 3dcart takes care of hosting, security and uptime.
3dcart also offers free support, which is likely its biggest selling point.
Basic SEO and marking tools such as landing pages also come standard, similar to its competitors.
Cost of Ownership: Magento, OroCommerce, Shopify,
BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and 3dcart
If you're using Magento, the cost of your solution will greatly depend on which hosting provider you go with.
Not to mention the plugins, extensions, and integrations you set up, all of which have a large impact on the overall cost of ownership.
And - let's face it - many customers leave Magento simply because it's gotten too expensive.
OroCommerce also gives you many options. Its extensions marketplace and development
options that can change the look and feel of the store.
OroCommerce, however, comes with many B2B ecommerce features out of the box and comes bundled with a CRM, making it a very affordable proposition with a more predictable cost.
If you sell B2C and don't see that changing, you may want to consider Shopify, 3dcart and
BigCommerce.
There's no need to deal with development, maintenance and hosting costs, but the downside is less customization and greater dependence on your vendor.
Lastly, a good compromise between Magento and Shopify can be PrestaShop with its attractive
pricing, user-friendly interface and open-source nature.
In all cases, prices will vary based on the features and the integrations you choose.
Which eCommerce platform is right for you?
There are many eCommerce platforms out there and many business factors to consider when
picking the best solution for your business.
Magento, without a doubt, is perfect for enterprise or large-scale B2C operations.
It's a reliable platform used by thousands of established businesses with large product libraries, heavy traffic and lots of customization.
At the same time, Magento is not the easiest program to get started with. Proponents of Shopify, BigCommerce and 3dcart appreciate their easy-to-use interfaces.
They are SaaS solutions, meaning businesses don't have to concern themselves with customer service, hosting, setup and implementation costs.
OroCommerce is unique, but not completely out of place in this comparison.
Since it offers many B2B, B2B2C and D2C eCommerce features natively, it's an ideal starting point for any reseller or marketplace structure you operate in or wish to expand into.
Lastly, OroCommerce integrates with PIM, ERP systems, and can be utilized as middleware with other eCommerce platforms.
In order to select the right platform, consider your requirements today and where you want to be
in the future.
In essence, your decision will boil down to your growth plans ahead, resources, budget, the industry you're in, and who you're selling to.
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