Magento Review 2020 – Overview, Features & Tools

Magento Review Overview | ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Magento is a prevailing ecommerce platform that offers big enterprises an all-in-one ecommerce solution with a broad support network that automates the update of an ecommerce website. However, the Magento services come at a very hefty cost that is not suitable for small businesses.

It comes in two different forms,

Magento Open Source (an open-source ecommerce platform)

It is a free software package. You can download it on a different hosting service and create a full-fledge functional ecommerce store.

Magento Commerce (An Enterprise Edition)

It is a cloud-hosted ecommerce platform that does not require a separate hosting service, it offers excessive features to support large-scale ecommerce store and comes at a very high price.

In this  Magento Review, we have taken in-depth research of this quintessential ecommerce platform including its pros and cons, features, ease of use, extensions & plugins and most importantly, is it worth it for you.

Let’s find out!

Pros and Cons of Magento

Pros 

User-Friendly – The admin area of Magento is very user-friendly that can be accessed and customized without any coding knowledge and technical expertise. It is very easy to find a developer for advanced customization.

Scalability – The primary feature of Magento and the most significant advantage is its scalability. It allows 10 to 100,000 products to add in your system. This platform is built as scalability its primary purpose.

Customization – The customization options are perpetual in Magento. It offers more than 1500 free product extensions & open-source plan.

Features to Built an Ecommerce Empire – Magento has everything to run a vast product line ecommerce store, and it is the main reason that major brands such as Nike & Ford are using Magento as their ecommerce platform.

Cons 

Maintenance & Cost: Magento is very expensive to run; its tech support is hard to maintain, and that subsequently increases its cost. The backend support is very complicated that needs a professional Magento developer to handle, and if you want Magento takes care of all the support system, it almost charges $15000 yearly while for premium enterprise it charges a whopping $50,000 per year excluding the hosting cost.

Takes Time to Understand: The learning curve is almost perpetual that takes a lot of time to get familiar with its features, modification, and application.

Magento is a content management system specifically made to handle ecommerce stores.

Magento complexity requires much powerful hosting. You will need a dedicated server to ensure excellent store performance.

Features & Tools

Magento offers a number of valuable features & tools that make the ecommerce experience meaningful. Some of the major features are as follows

Customer Segmentation and Personalization

You can boost the conversion rates by creating a personalized shopping experience for your customers via dynamic promotion, price and content display based on customer’s demographics, order history and more.

Top-Notch Admin Experience

The admin dashboard allows you to monitor the sales, product data, search terms and data navigation in one place. It helps to save a lot of time and efficiently perform regular tasks.

Dynamic Sales Optimization

It also allows automating the functions of up-sell and cross-sell based on the data of the product as well as the customer’s data. A condition-based tool helps to increase sales and AOV( Average order value).

Page Builder

A powerful drag-and-drop page builder tool allows you to easily edit the site content and frequently launch and test the content of the page. You can create a great shopping experience for your customer by making an easy to use the website without the help of any developer support.

These are some of the worth mentioning features and tools of Magento. While there are also some honorable mentions

Multi-Store Capability 

Multi-language option 

Complex configurable products 

Layered navigation 

Check out complete details of Magento Features here.

Easy of Use

For the backend customization, you need to have Magento developer, nonetheless, managing the products is very comprehensive in

Adding a product in Magento is very simple

Catalog > manage product > you can edit an existing product or add a new product by clicking ‘add the product’ button

You need to select an attribute and choose a product type. Its time consuming yet comprehensive product setup. But as compare its rivals like Shopify and WooCommerce, it is a bit lengthy process.

Magento is primarily an ecommerce platform. That provides topnotch security without any additional plugins.

Extensions and Plugins

Magento allows the installation of extensions and plugins; however, it is not so straightforward. You may need a developer to set up the process.

The plugin installation depends on the extension type, and there are two kinds of extension on Magento.

Community Extension – These are built by Magento community and free to install. You can find these extensions on Magento Connect then click install now box. You will get an extension key.

Then go to Admin panel > navigate the system > Magento connect > Magento connect manager > log in again > enter your extension key > click proceed.

You will receive a message once the installation is done.

Commercial Extension – These are installed in a different manner. Although you can find these extensions in Magento connect, but after clicking the get extension button you will be redirected to the merchant site to purchase these extensions. Afterward, you will receive a zip file containing instructions.

Scalability

Magento is by far the most scalable ecommerce platform. It can handle thousands of products and orders with ease.

For more scalability, Magento Enterprise is there to run a more powerful ecommerce store without any trouble. This feature makes Magento one of the most preferred ecommerce platform for middle and big size companies.

Themes

Getting the themes is similar to get extensions – you need to get it from Magento Connect. Magento itself does not offer a custom theme for that it allows several third parties to offer themes on Magento connect.

Strictly speaking, Magento – the company itself – doesn’t offer any custom designs for your store. To get something quality and good-looking what you have to do is go to a third party.

This means you can browse the catalog under Magento Connect or you can go straight to ThemeForest and get a premium theme.

Magento has great numbers of theme that are ready to use on the go.

To install a Magento theme, you need to go on Magento Connect.

Go to Magento Connect > Themes > Click the theme you want > Click Install now > copy the extension key.

Now you need to go at Admin panel > system > Magento connect > Magento connect manager > enter the key and click install.

The themes are customizable, beautiful, and responsive.

Magento Pricing

The Magento Open Source (community version) is free to use. You can install it in your current hosting and website and use start on the spot.

However, it Magento commerce is pretty expensive. Magento does not mention its pricing openly on its website. You need to fill a contact with the quotation and provide the information about the business.

There are two pricing packages of Magento Commerce

Magento Starter – Starts from $2000/month

Magento Pro – Starts from $3000/month

The price of the ecommerce store finalizes on the basis of store average order value and revenue.

Magento offers a 30-day free trial before final account payment.

Related Articles:

Shopify Review
BigCommerce Review
Squarespace Review

Conclusion

Medium and large size business with a high product line and has a significant amount of financial resources then Magento is an excellent choice for your business.

If you are a newbie, have limited and want an easy functional store, then there are much better ecommerce platforms for you.