5 Magento Alternatives You May Consider For Your Business

Written by Manthan Bhavsar | Published 2019/12/14
Tech Story Tags: magento-alternatives | ecommerce-development | best-ecommerce-platform | ecommerce-mentors | latest-tech-stories | software-development | online-shopping | magento

TLDR Magento is widely known as one of the most popular open-source platforms in the world. Magento’s greatest weakness is its speed. The total cost of ownership can be steep when you take into account the hosting, security, maintenance, designing and development costs. BigCommerce is a SaaS platform that provides business owners with an eCommerce solution through monthly fees. Shopify is an open source platform that is well-known for developing small to medium-sized businesses using WordPress.via the TL;DR App

Magento is widely known as one of the most popular open-source platforms. According to a data provided by Magento, there are more than 250,000 merchants worldwideusing this platform.
There’s no denying that Magneto is one of the most widely used eCommerce platform in the world right now, but it is also true that it is
not fit for every business.
There are some reasons that make Magento unfit for some businesses, such as the total cost of ownership can b steep when you take into account the hosting, security, maintenance, designing and development costs.
Although the platform allows customization, but it can be complicated to update quickly in order to stay competitive.
In this blog, we will look at some of the alternatives of Magento you might want to consider. But before learning about the alternatives, we must learn why you are looking for an alternative to Magento.
So, here are some reasons why there is a need for a Magento alternative. Let us begin.
Magento is costly
Magento is usually an ideal option for businesses with big budgets. The cost of your Magento license will depend on the products you choose.
Magento open source is free to download from Magento’s website, but it won’t cover all the costs as you still will have to pay for the design and development fees to get your site running along with costs to cover hosting, development and design fees.
Many businesses do not have such a big budget to spend on Magento every year. For such businesses, Magento is not the right option.
Magento is slow
Magento’s greatest weakness is its speed.  The extensions and plugins that you can use with the Magento system can also lead your systems to fall behind other solutions in terms of loading speed.
It is said that a site that takes more than 3 to 4 seconds to load faces
increasing bounce rates. Because of this, it can also be a time-consuming task for developers to optimize the site for speed.
Magento is difficult to maintain
Magento has many factors you need to stay on the top and if you don’t, your site might crash, slow down or simply not work properly. Because of these factors, you can also face a number of bugs and glitches in the software.
Although the Magento community is creating patches to solve this issue however, it will consume a lot of your developer’s time to stay on top by installing these patches.
Also, don’t forget that overlooking the security patches could be an unnecessary risk for your site.
Magneto takes too much development time
One of Magento’s biggest selling point is its customization options. To make complex changes, you need to have a great team of Magento developers to work to make complex changes and understand the complex infrastructure.
You will need trained and expert developers to update, patch, and find plugins. This is time consuming and hence, Magento becomes a time-consuming platform for many.
Now that we have discussed the limitations of Magento, we will dig into some of the alternatives of Magento, which are worth using in place of Magento having all the required features. Let us begin!
1. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a SaaS platform that provides business owners with an eCommerce solution through monthly fees. These platforms allow you to create an online store, add products and make a profit out of it.
Its pros-
  • Launch your new site quickly
  • Easy to use
  • Robust, out of the box features
  • Strong SEO benefits
  • 24/7 customer support
Its cons-
  • BigCommerce doesn’t have any native multi-store
    functionality.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It is idealfor small to large-sized businesses using WordPress.
Its pros-
  • It is free, although you will have to pay for domain hosting,
    theme, plugins, etc.
  • Stores can leverage the WordPress blog natively
  • A large number of plugins available
  • Part of the WordPress community
Its cons-
  • Heavy dependence on developer/designer
  • Limited support

3. Shopify

Shopify is also a SaaS platform that is well known for developing small
and medium-sized eCommerce websites. If you want to create a profitanble online store, Shopify is just the right platform.
Its pros-
  • Easy to use
  • Mobile-friendly designs
  • Decent uptime record and PCI compliance
Its cons-
  • You will need to pay for add-ons
  • Shopify charges transaction fees for using its payment
    gateway

4. Volusion

Another Magento alternative is a hosted shopping cart service named
Volusion. Volusion is a complete eCommerce website builder that offers web design, marketing, and other business tools.
Its pros-
  • Great speed and security
  • Intuitive dashboard
  • Customer support and onboarding
Its cons-
  • Tough to compare all the pricing consideration for a new
    online store
  • Volusion’s design features are limiting

5. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce commerce cloud, which was known as Demandware before its 2016 acquisition by SalesForce, is a SaaS eCommerce platform.
Its pros-
  • Strong native merchandising features
  • Good omnichannel features
  • The advantages of SaaS solution

Its cons-
  • Confusing user interface
  • Customer support can be slow sometimes
We discussed the five most suitable alternatives for Magento above. All these platforms have their pros and cons, just like any other platform. What matters the most is how well do the platform suit your business and its requirements. You can choose one among these platforms for your eCommerce website development.

Final words

There are many choices out there for eCommerce platforms, but we have picked the ones we think are the best for your business. If you are currently using Magento and not satisfied with it, remember Magento is not the only option. You can migrate to any other platform without much difficulty.
We Hope This Blog was Helpful Enough For You. Follow us for detail on Linkedin .

Written by Manthan Bhavsar | Manthan Bhavsar is an Expert in web, Mobile App Development and Online Business Marketing.
Published by HackerNoon on 2019/12/14