Since the day of its inception and release, Magento powered 675,963 stores worldwide. To put things in perspective, only a fraction of this figure – 61,724 stores – are now powered by Shopify Plus.
Precisely because of the growing variety of e-commerce platforms, the number of stores using Magento has decreased over time. A once go-to open-source e-commerce platform, it is now one of the top options among a dozen platforms. But no matter what you think of Magento’s current popularity, it's a fact that it has made a name among the best industry players and that there are over 145,886 Magento online stores to this day.
Let’s take a brief look at Magento’s history, today’s versions and features, and find out whether you can benefit from using Magento today.
What is Magento: A Brief History
Varien, Inc., a private company, created Magento in 2007. In 2011, eBay bought Magento for $180 million, leading to its rapid growth and functional expansion. Then, in 2018, Adobe acquired Magento for $1.68 billion, integrating it into their e-commerce portfolio. In 2021, Adobe merged Magento Commerce and Adobe Cloud Commerce, forming Adobe Commerce, an enterprise-level platform.
Small, medium-sized, and enterprise businesses alike rely on both free and paid Magento platforms. Magento is easy to use but has robust capabilities and scalability that can become indispensable as your business grows. It also easily integrates with other software to help you deliver seamless customer experiences and successfully sell online.
Magento 1 vs. Magento 2
The original iteration of the Magento e-commerce platform was known as Magento 1. The final release of this version, Magento 1.9.4, reached its end-of-life phase on June 30, 2020.
Magento 2 is the newest version of the Magento e-commerce platform, released in 2015. It performs significantly better compared to its predecessor, boasting a 52% faster launch speed. What’s more, Magento 2 offers higher flexibility in customizations and increased security measures for payment transactions.
Unlike Magento 1, Magento 2 is inherently responsive and thus much more mobile-friendly. It also streamlines the checkout process: while Magento 1 had a complex 6-step procedure, Magento 2 simplified this to just 2 steps. You can even get a one-step checkout on Magento 2, reducing cart abandonment by ~67%.
Finally, Magento 2 aligns more closely with accessibility regulations (including ADA and WCAG) and addresses numerous integration conflicts that were present in Magento 1.
Read More: Why Staying on Magento 1 is Risky?
Magento Open Source vs. Adobe Commerce
When implementing Magento 2, you have three options: Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce, and Adobe Commerce Cloud.
- Magento Open Source is freely accessible and downloadable, allowing for customization to align with your requirements. This option is particularly fitting for small to mid-sized B2C businesses aiming for growth.
- Adobe Commerce caters to large-scale and B2B enterprises. It sports various features, complete customization capabilities, and seamless integration with multiple platforms, enhancing operational efficiency.
- For organizations requiring a cloud-based solution, Adobe Commerce Cloud is the best available option. Made specifically for large and intricate e-commerce setups, it offers an advanced feature set beyond that of Adobe Commerce.
Regardless of what Magento platform you go for, you’ll enjoy its efficient management of your online store operations and optimized e-commerce functionality.
Read More: Magento Guide to Open Source vs. Commerce vs. Commerce Cloud
Key Magento Features
Magento offers several critical built-in features that are essential for successful e-commerce operations. Let’s give them a quick overview.
SEO
Magento's SEO features offer several advantages for online businesses:
- Meta tags – Magento allows you to easily add meta tags to home, product, and catalog pages, enhancing their visibility on search engines.
- SEO-friendly URLs – With Magento, users can create URLs that are optimized for search engines, improving the website's ranking and increasing the traffic.
- Image optimization – With the help of extensions, any Magento shop can auto-optimize images, boosting your website’s speed.
- Sitemaps – Magento generates HTML and XML sitemaps automatically, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index website content.
- Robots.txt and meta robots – Magento lets you control search engine crawlers' access to specific pages using robots.txt and meta robots, ensuring that only relevant content is indexed and improving the website's overall SEO performance.
Read More: Magento 2 SEO Guide
Security and Compliance
Magento offers various security features like timed scans, CAPTCHA, two-factor authentication, strong password checks, and detailed admin access controls. It helps you ensure compliance with the laws important for e-commerce businesses, such as PCI DSS, ADA, Omnibus Directive, and more. What’s more, Magento sites fully comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which protects the data and privacy of EU residents.
Performance
The Magento shopping platform is known for being fast and responsive, which is important for keeping users engaged. Magento 2 offers multiple out-of-the-box ways to improve speed, both on the front and back ends, by using tools like Varnish, FPC, and Lazy Loading. In our experience, it’s especially easy to achieve <1s load speed for a Magento website by leveraging Hyvä Themes.
Read More: How to Optimize Magento Performance
Customization
While Magento offers many default settings, its customization capabilities allow you to tailor your Magento e-commerce website experience to your niche. Here’s what you can do to adjust Magento to suit your specific business needs:
- Customize themes to build a distinct customer experience. (Those with coding expertise can develop themes and templates from scratch.)
- Modify the customer checkout process and shipping details to mitigate cart abandonment rates.
- Add various payment options, such as PayPal, digital wallets, and buy-now, pay-later, for higher flexibility.
- Install Magento extensions with diverse marketing functionality like promotional labels and banners, discount codes, gift cards, etc.
What is a Magento Extension?
Magento extensions are additional software tools or apps that you can install on your Magento store to boost and expand your website functionality. There's a wide range of extensions available, including ones for:
- Customer service improvement
- Payment processing
- Site performance optimization
- Tightened security
- Marketing and SEO
- Integration with accounting and finance software
- Integration with logistics and fulfillment software
Amasty is an expert in developing Magento extensions and has a catalog of over 250 Magento add-ons that enhance all aspects of your business. Our add-ons are used by businesses of all scales, including Nestle.
Read More: 20+ Must Have Magento Extensions
Costs and Pricing
The Magento platform has a flexible pricing structure depending on business needs. Factors affecting price include the number of licenses, business size, number of products, number of users, support level, level of customization required, and the complexity of your Magento shopping site.
For small businesses, a basic setup can start from $200 per month, while larger companies might need more customization, starting from $2,000 monthly.
Read More: The True Cost of a Magento Website
How to Install Magento
You can install the Magento e-commerce platform in several ways. One method requires cloning the codebase from GitHub and implies having some technical understanding. But a much easier method is using Composer. Here's how you install Magento with it:
- Create a database for Magento to use.
- Install Composer on your server.
- Use Composer to download Magento with this command:
composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition <install-directory-name>
- Replace <install-directory-name> with the name you want for your Magento folder.
- Set up your web server (like Apache or Nginx) to host Magento.
- Finally, go to your Magento folder and run this command: bin/magento setup:install
During the installation, you'll need to provide authentication credentials, which you can get by creating a Magento Marketplace account and going to "My Profile" > "Access Keys."
Read More: How to Install Magento via Composer
Pros and Cons of Magento
Like any e-commerce platform, Magento has its advantages and weak points. Let’s analyze them to help you understand if it’s a good fit for your business.
Pros:
- The open-source nature of Magento allows users to access a basic version for free, providing a cost-effective option for those starting out.
- Magento offers ease of use, particularly for websites with dedicated tech departments.
- The platform boasts a vibrant user community, providing valuable support and guidance to new users.
- Magento’s many extensions and plug-ins significantly enhance the platform's functionality and adaptability (for instance, introduce brand categories or integrate product reviews with your store).
- Themes and templates within Magento are highly customizable, allowing you to create a unique and tailored online presence. The Magento Hyvä theme is a cutting-edge solution that can help you create a fast, sleek, and responsive website.
Cons:
- Beyond user groups, obtaining customer support from Magento typically implies additional expenses, which may not be feasible for small businesses.
- Expenses related to hosting and security can accumulate over time, particularly as the website grows and requires more robust infrastructure.
- Developing a complex website on Magento may involve substantial costs, with estimates often exceeding $25,000.
Wrapping Up: Why Use the Magento E-commerce Platform in 2024?
When all is said and done, Magento is still a solid contender in the e-commerce platform market. Thanks to its free option and multiple affordable extensions, Magento can help you create a high-performing and eye-catching online store, establishing a successful e-commerce business.
Based on our Magento review, here's why you can trust this platform:
- Easy to grow. You can easily expand your store as your business grows.
- Works on phones. Your store looks good and works smoothly on smartphones.
- Strong. Magento has powerful tools to make your store work well.
- Easy to connect. It's simple to connect Magento with other software you use.
- Safe. It keeps customer info safe during transactions.
- Saves time. Magento's easy setup and management tools save you time.
- Helpful community. There's a helpful community of users to support you when you use Magento.
Ready to commit and build your fortune with Magento? Talk to Amasty experts!
