If you’re just starting out with your own ecommerce website, you may have stumbled across Magento. Magento is one of the industry’s most popular store building platforms, with over 260,000 merchants, an expansive suite of features, and complete customizability.
But as open-source software, its true potential is unlocked by users boasting coding know-how. If that sounds like it might pose a challenge, don’t despair.
There are plenty of alternatives to Magento that could be the right fit for you. So, we've looked at the best Magento alternatives on the market, to save you having to wade through all the options.
Let's jump in!
What are the Top 9 Magento Alternatives?
- Shopify
- Wix Ecommerce
- Shopify Plus
- Square Online
- Ecwid
- BigCommerce
- BigCommerce Enterprise
- WooCommerce
- Volusion
- PrestaShop
- OpenCart
1. Shopify
Shopify is perhaps the best-known eCommerce solution on the market, and as such, it naturally made it onto our list of top Magento alternatives. Shopify powers over 1,000,000 businesses worldwide, and is jam-packed full of features for running and managing online stores.
This platform makes designing an ecommerce website from scratch and managing sales and product inventories a breeze! With over 70 customizable themes, Shopify ensures that branding your digital storefront is easy. It comes with a full blogging platform and access to your site's HTML and CSS – so if you know how to code, you can tweak your store as much as you like!
Shopify‘s also well-renown for being incredibly scalable, so any size of business can benefit from this solution. Also, if you still don't have your own web domain yet, you can purchase one through Shopify.
Not to mention, Shopify has an active network of merchants and developers, so there are tons of resources to help newcomers get started.
Shopify features everything from a full blogging platform to CSS and HTML editing, mobile optimized themes, SSL certification, abandoned cart recovery, and 100 payment gateways. There’s support for multiple languages, automatic tax calculation, email marketing, customer groups, drop shipping, Facebook selling, and SEO optimization. Plus, analytics and reports make selling easy.
Features ✨
- A full blogging platform
- You can edit the source HTML and CSS
- Themes are mobile-optimized for eCommerce
- There are over 70 themes to choose from
- You get a free SSL certificate
- An abandoned checkout recovery tools
- 100 payment gateways
- You can offer free shipping
- Shopify supports multiple languages
- You can set flexible shipping rates
- Automatic tax calculation
- Customer groups, profiles, and accounts
- Email templates for email marketing
- Dropshipping integrations
- Facebook selling
- Gift card and discounting tools
- Adwords credit
- SEO optimization tools
- Inventory management
- You can list and sell unlimited wares, including digital products and multiple product variations
- Shopify's a fully hosted platform
- An analytics dashboard where you can create and export product reports
- 24/7 support by email, live chat, and phone
Pricing 💰
Shopify offers three different pricing tiers. While there's no free plan, it has one of the most generous trial periods amidst all the Magento alternatives listed here- 90 days. Plus, no credit card's required. So if you’re unsure, this trial's definitely worth checking out!
- Basic Shopify: $29 a month – this provides all the basics you need for starting a new business
- Shopify: $79 a month – here you get all the tools you need to grow your business. It unlocks features like professional reports and being able to create and accept gift cards.
- Advanced Shopify: $299 a month – this grants you access to advanced features for scaling your business. For instance, third-party calculated shipping rates and an advanced report builder
Shopify Payments take a transaction fee with online and in-person credit cards, but these charges reduce with Shopify's higher-priced plans. However, they start at 2.9% + 30 cents for every sale you make. There's also an additional charge for all other payment providers (other than Shopify Payments) at 2%.
Pros 👍
- 24/7 support
- A generous trial period
- Access to thousands of apps to expand your site's features
- Built-in SEO and analytics
- It's easy to use
- Shopify's easily scalable as your business grows
- An expansive set of features
Cons 👎
- No free plan
- You're charged transaction fees on top of your subscription costs
- Some of the add-ons and plugins come with a price tag
- Some of Shopify's themes are more straightforward than others to customize
Who is it Best For? ✅
Shopify is definitely one of the more popular solutions for online selling today. Ideal for scaling companies in search of various advanced tools, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish with Shopify. With the built-in tools, upgrading your site is easy, but you can also add integrations and plugins from third party companies too.
2. Wix eCommerce
Not all Magento alternatives are standalone solutions – Wix is a fully hosted website builder that also offers a fabulous package for eCommerce stores. If you're after an intuitive and easy-to-use e-commerce store builder, Wix could be the perfect fit.
Wix is one of the more popular tools for ecommerce on the market today. Designed to make building the ultimate website as straightforward as possible, Wix has a ton of templates and guidance to choose from. You can even get professional support in building the perfect website with the Wix ADI, which guides you using artificial intelligence.
With more than 500 high-quality templates to choose from, there’s no doubt that you’ll find a theme that’s perfect for you. Users can access a host of drop shipping integrations, as well as secure payment solutions, shipping rules, and multichannel selling opportunities. For easier store management, there’s also tax and shipping estimates.
Features ✨
- There are over 500 professional online store templates to choose from
- All Wix themes boast customizable design you can tweak using their drag and drop editor
- Access to dropshipping integrations
- Secure payment solutions
- Wix supports multichannel selling
- You can set shipping rules
- Wix provides shipping and tax estimates
Pricing 💰
Wix’s eCommerce features are unlocked in their Unlimited plan, onwards:
- Unlimited: $14 a month, 10 GB storage
- eCommerce: $17 a month, 20 GB storage
- VIP: $25 per month, 20GB storage
Pros 👍
- If you’re using a Wix site, it's easy to integrate a digital store and start selling online
- Its interface is incredibly intuitive
- Wix's plans are very affordable
- There are many template and customization options
Cons 👎
- Limited scalability – Wix doesn’t offer the necessary features for growing your store into a massive online enterprise.
- The content management features are somewhat limited – for example, Wix's blog is relatively basic.
- Wix's suite of features is smaller compared to other Magento alternatives like Shopify and BigCommerce.
Who is it Best For? ✅
If you’re new to selling online and you want something that’s simple and offers plenty of guidance, the Wix store builder is the perfect choice. You’ll have no problem getting your website up and running quickly with this solution, and you’re sure to build a highly attractive store.
3. Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is an ecommerce platform explicitly designed for high-volume enterprise brands. This advanced version of the SaaS, provides unlimited bandwidth, can support up to 8,000 orders a minute, management of up to 10 stores, features for wholesale channel and automatic task management, and advanced security. You'll get a dedicated success manager!
However, to make full use out of Shopify Plus, knowledge of Shopify's language, Liquid, is beneficial.
Monthly licensing costs start at $2,000 for merchants whose sales don’t exceed $800,000 a month.
Chances are if you're looking for an easy-to-use and beginner-friendly Magento alternative, Shopify Plus won’t be relevant for you for a while.
Best for: Shopify Plus is the go-to choice for enterprises keen to enhance their position online. Unlike other website building tools, this service is specifically built for companies with a huge number of online sales to manage. However, you might struggle to leverage this tool if you don’t have a lot of budget to work with, as it can be quite expensive.
Further reading:
- Shopify Plus Review – An In-Depth Guide to the Best Enterprise Ecommerce Platform
- Shopify vs Shopify Plus – What is the Difference?
- Shopify Reviews – Is Shopify the Best Ecommerce Platform? Shopify Pros and Cons
- Shopify Pricing Plans – Which Shopify Plan is Best for You?
- Shopify Lite Review – How It Works and When You Should Be Using It
- Shopify Plus Review – An In-Depth Guide to the Best Enterprise Ecommerce Platform
- Shopify Alternatives – Best Solutions Reviewed
- Shopify Payments Review – The Most Elementary Alternative To 3rd Party Gateways
4. Square Online
If you’re already comfortable with selling offline, but you think it’s time to upgrade to an online sales strategy, then Square Online is a great place to start. Best suited to people who want to build a fantastic digital presence for their brick-and-mortar store, Square Online connects with your existing offline store inventory management.
With tons of extra tools to explore, including bookings for restaurants and a range of other solutions for specific verticals, Square is a great choice for those who are keen to get online. There’s no fee for building your initial store, and you can add-in extra functionality whenever you need it. Square also comes with access to a backend where you can easily manage a range of products and team members.
There are various plugin options for taking your online store to the next level. However, you might encounter a couple of headaches if you’re not comfortable with Square already. The back-end can be trickier for beginners than some alternatives, and it’s important to remember that you will have a transaction fee to consider.
Pricing 💰
The Square online sales solution makes the most sense if you already use Square for processing and managing offline payments. You can immediately sync your inventory for both environments and keep track of everything in the same place. The Square online store is also free to use if you already have a Square account. However, you will need to pay the 2.5% per transaction fee, which can add up quite quickly. Adding extra functionality to your store will further increase the expense you can pay.
Pros 👍
- Convenient for Square existing users
- Free to use for beginners until you need an upgrade
- Easy for anyone to use if they’re familiar with Square
- AI functionality included
- Combines inventories online and offline
- Lots of business control tools
Cons 👎
- Only suitable for existing Square customers
- Not many customization options
Who is it Best For? ✅
Square Online makes a lot of sense if you’re already using Square to manage payments offline. You can sync your online and offline inventory and keep track of your business in multiple environments. This is also a wonderful solution if you’re looking for a convenient way to add specialist features to your solution, like booking for restaurants.
5. Ecwid
Ecwid is a popular and well-known tool for eCommerce sales. This straightforward solution makes it quick and simple to get online. Rather than having to build a new website from scratch, Ecwid offers an easier alternative, by plugging into your existing CMS. If you already have your own website and you just want to upgrade to something that you can sell products through, this is the service for you.
Flexible and convenient, Ecwid is widely regarded as one of the top choices for simplicity. There’s access to basic ecommerce functionality for free, and the discounted prices offer excellent value as your business begins to grow. There’s also access to a range of integrations and plugins that work alongside Ecwid very well, particularly on certain sites, like WordPress.
Higher-price products on Ecwid come with things like mobile point of sale functionality, social media selling, advertising on Google, Facebook, and even Snapchat. You can also link in your email marketing strategy into the mix with Mailchimp
Pricing 💰
Pricing for Ecwid begins with a free package. You don’t need to pay anything to access the basic functionality. However, there are premium packages. Venture starts at around $15 per month, but you can reduce this to £12.50 if you pay annually. The more features and functionality you need, the more you can expect to pay. The Business product is £35 per month and there’s an “Unlimited” product for £99 per month.
Pros 👍
- Easily plugs into your existing website
- Convenient backend with lots of customization
- Multi-channel selling options to improve profit
- Available in a range of languages
- No limit on product options
- Mobile app support, and app development available
Cons 👎
- Best for smaller businesses
- Limited free plan
Who is it Best For? ✅
If you want an easy way to start selling products through your existing online store, then it makes sense to start with Ecwid. This powerful product is great for saving you money on your sales strategy, and you can use it to sell in multiple languages, and across various platforms.
6. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another extraordinarily scalable online store builder – and like Shopify, it's pretty well known. BigCommerce has more built-in sales tools than any of its competitors and combines these features with advanced SEO and multichannel integrations. This solution is best for users looking to boost large and growing businesses into the next league.
The company focuses on enabling growth. Founded in 2009, they've since facilitated over $25 billion merchant sales, over 120 countries.
Just like Shopify, this Magento alternative provides a selection of eCommerce templates. Again, this makes customizing the look of your store easy. Plus, the company offers easy re-platforming from other eCommerce sites, by providing bulk import and export features. Their in-house catalog transfer team has helped over 20,000 stores migrate their content over to BigCommerce from other platforms.
BigCommerce gives you access to responsive and customizable ecommerce templates, ultra-fast web hosting, streamlined checkout experiences, and even Google shopping integrations. Print or save shipping labels, access detailed reports, and sell across multiple channels with absolutely no unnecessary complexity or confusion.
Features ✨
- Access to customizable and responsive eCommerce templates
- Secure and fast web hosting
- You get a shared SSL certificate included with your subscription
- Access to Google Shopping and email marketing integrations
- A streamlined online checkout, including PayPal's One Touch
- Abandoned cart recovery tools
- Coupons and discounting tools
- Customers can leave product reviews
- You can offer free shipping
- You can print and save shipping labels
- Access to detailed reports and eCommerce analytics
- Multichannel selling, including social media and in-person
Pricing 💰
BigCommerce boasts three different pricing tiers. In addition to that, there's also an enterprise option for larger organizations. However, you'll have to contact BigCommerce directly to receive a customized quote.
The platform also offers a 15-day free trial, and all plans include unlimited products, file storage, bandwidth, and staff accounts. You're not charged any transaction fees, and you can receive customer support via their live web chat, 24/7.
BigCommerce pricing plans are as follows:
- Standard: Billed annually, $29.95 a month
- Plus: Billed annually, $79.95 a month – this is best for growing your business as it unlocks more marketing tools
- Pro: Billed annually, $299.95 a month – BigCommerce's most extensive plan is best suited for scaling your business
Pros 👍
- BigCommerce is a very scalable eCommerce platform
- Access to an expansive set of built-in features
- Multichannel selling
- Fast and secure hosting
- SEO and marketing tools
- There's a free trial available
- No transaction fees
- 24/7 support
Cons 👎
- BigCommerce's advanced features (sometimes) compromises its ease of use
- The free trial is shorter than some of its competitors
- There's no free plan available
- There are limits on annual sales, so when you hit the threshold, you're forced to upgrade your subscription (for the standard package, this is $50,000)
Who is it Best For? ✅
BigCommerce is a great choice if you’re looking for a highly scalable platform which comes with all the features you need for multi-channel selling already built in. There are no transaction fees to worry about, so you can focus on keeping costs low. There’s also a wide selection of SEO and marketing tools for growth.
7. BigCommerce Enterprise
This BigCommerce Enterprise package is geared towards larger businesses and corporations, and as we've already said, it's custom priced. This is intended for users that require very high bandwidth and have more complex selling requirements.
The plan comes with advanced product filtering, price lists, unlimited API calls, BigCommerce consulting and account management, and priority support. The cost of the package reflects the complexity of the business’ needs, but despite that, BigCommerce claims to be cheaper than Shopify Plus.
Who is it Best For? ✅
BigCommerce Enterprise offers all the sought-after functionality of the BigCommerce standard solution, but with the added benefit of infinite scalability. If you have a much larger business and accept a lot of payments on a regular basis, then BigCommerce Enterprise is a clear choice. You can even get bonus guidance to help you make the most of your solution.
Further reading:
- BigCommerce Enterprise Review – Everything You Need to Know
- BigCommerce Reviews – 20 BigCommerce Pros and Cons
- BigCommerce Pricing – How Much Are You Going to Pay With BigCommerce?
- BigCommerce vs Shopify – The ultimate comparison
8. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce tool for WordPress users. Interestingly, WooCommerce powers over 30% of online stores on the web!
Due to the fact it's open-source, WooCommerce is one of the more similar alternatives to Magento’s free plan.
WooCommerce provides a comprehensive set of tools that enable you to build an online store. You can sell anything, and there are no limits on products, variations, orders, or anything else.
WooCommerce also doesn’t charge transaction fees, and as is typical with open-source solutions, it's free to download and use. However, you should still expect to pay for hosting and your own domain name, as well as any pro themes or add-ons you want to use.
WooCommerce transforms your WordPress website into a sales solution for physical and digital products. Because you’re still on the WordPress CMS, it’s easy to access a range of extensions and customization features. You’ll also get a wide range of themes, product filtering tools, unlimited images, products, and galleries, and built-in payment processing. Customers can also create accounts, and you can manage your inventory on the backend.
Features ✨
- Access to WordPress's expansive content marketing features
- You can sell physical and digital products as well as subscriptions
- Access to more than 400 extensions
- You can embed products and checkouts on any page
- Unrestricted customization
- There's a wide choice of themes
- Product sorting and filtering tools
- Unlimited images, galleries, and products
- Built-in payment processing
- There are lots of shipping options, and you can set flexible shipping rates, including free shipping
- Customer can opt to create an account or check out as a guest
- Inventory management tools
- Email templates
- You can add shop managers
- SEO optimization tools
- Analytics and reporting
Pricing 💰
As we've just said, WooCommerce is a free, open-source ecommerce platform. But, you may wish to pay for WooCommerce extensions that range from $0 to $299.
Pros 👍
- Its open-source nature facilitates full customizability
- It's free to use
- It's built on WordPress's trusted platform
- Access to extensive blogging and content management features
- There are no transaction fees
- The functionality of your store can be extended with add-ons
- It's a scalable solution
- There are many free plugins available
Cons 👎
- There's limited customer support
- For newbies, WooCommerce presents a steep learning curve
- It's only available for WordPress users
- Some technical knowledge is required to make the most out of it
Further reading:
- WooCommerce Review – The King of Ecommerce Plugins on WordPress
- WooCommerce vs Shopify – Which One Is the Absolute Best?
Who is it Best For? ✅
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the WooCommerce environment is an excellent choice if you’re looking to sell products through an existing WordPress site. If you already love the functionality and flexibility of WordPress, you’ll love everything that WooCommerce has to offer. The service is totally free to use, and you can use a range of payment processing options.
9. Volusion
Volusion was founded earlier than some of the before-mentioned Magento alternatives. Created as a shopping cart software for online selling back in the late 1990s, Volusion now fuels over 180,000 merchants with its all-in-one solution.
Just like Magento’s alternatives Shopify and BigCommerce, Volusion includes website building, hosting and marketing, SEO, and selling tools.
Volusion is a highly respectable tool for online selling. You get a range of responsive and customizable themes that are sure to impress any audience, as well as product category pages and website structuring solutions. There’s a search functionality for your site, content editing that’s easy to use without code, and a CSS editor if you have developer knowledge.
Aside from a custom domain, barcode generator, customer accounts, and a tax rate calculator, Volusion also provides things like customer order management, secure site checkouts with SSL certification, and SEO tools. Your customers can leave reviews to boost your social proof, and you can sell through Amazon and eBay as well as accessing reports for your campaigns.
Features ✨
- Responsive, customizable themes
- Product category pages
- A site search functionality
- A custom domain
- A content editor (no back-end coding knowledge required)
- Access to a CSS editor
- Customer order management
- A secure site and online checkout, complete with SSL certificate
- A barcode generator
- Inventory and stock management tools
- Customer accounts
- A tax rate calculator
- Customers can leave reviews
- SEO tools
- Social and multichannel selling with eBay and Amazon
- Reports, analytics, and ROI tracking
- Giftcards, deal of the day, newsletter, and discount tools
Pricing 💰
Volusion offers three different pricing plans that can be purchased cheaper on an annual basis, as well as a Prime plan at custom pricing. There's also a 14-day free trial.
Like BigCommerce, Volusion's plans limit how many products you can sell and how much you can make in a year before you need to upgrade.
Each package comes with unlimited bandwidth and no transaction fees.
- Personal: $26.10 per month, one staff account, you can list a max of 100 products on your site, and generate up to $50k in annual revenue
- Professional: $71.10 per month, five staff accounts, you can list a max 5,000 products on your site, and generate up to $100k in annual revenue
- Business: $269.10 per month, 15 staff accounts, you can list unlimited products and generate up to $500k in annual revenue
Pros 👍
- 24/7 support via phone, email, chat, and support tickets.
- There's a free trial available
- There are no transaction fees
- It's easy to use; newbies receive helpful prompts when they first start using the platform
- Access to dedicated account managers to help you set up your store
- Volusion is a fast and secure solution
Cons 👎
- The pricing plans limit the number of products you can list on your site, which makes Volusion's base plan more restrictive in comparison to other Magento alternatives
- Phone support is only available to customers on the Professional program, upwards
- There are minimal content management options
- Compared to its competitors, Volusion doesn't offer a great variety of templates
Who is it Best For? ✅
Volusion is a great option if you’re looking for a website builder that offers beautiful templates with excellent user experience. There are tons of ways to upgrade your customer care, including allowing them to make their own accounts.
Further reading:
- Volusion vs Shopify – Ecommerce Platform Comparison
- The Ultimate Volusion Review
10. PrestaShop
Launched in 2007, PrestaShop is another international shopping cart solution and hence another Magento alternative worth considering. The company supports over 300,000 stores worldwide and calls itself Europe’s leading eCommerce software.
PrestaShop is an open-source program based on the Symfony Framework, offering more than 600 features and over 5,000 website modules and themes.
PrestaShop comes with thousands of templates for you to choose from, making it much easier to find something that works for your brand. You can expand the functionality of your store as much as you like with a variety of modules and features to explore, plus everything is highly customizable. For multi-language sellers, you can create your store in over 75 languages.
The PrestaShop backend environment simplifies managing products, customer relationships, orders and even website analytics in the same place. Blogging and social sharing tools also support business owners in building their presence online.
Features ✨
- Thousands of ready-made templates
- It's easy to expand the functionality of your online store with Prestashop's array of features and modules
- It's a highly customizable solutions
- Prestashop's available in 75 languages
- You can manage products, orders, customer relationships, and your website's analytics all from one centralized place.
- Robust social sharing and blogging features
Pricing 💰
PrestaShop is free to download. But, like all open-source options, you'll have to pay for web hosting, a domain name, and (potentially) expensive add-ons. Not to mention, if you have limited technical knowledge, you might have to hire an expert or agency, to make the most out of this platform. If you fall into this category, PrestaShop might end up being a more expensive option than some of the other fully hosted Magento Alternatives on this list.
However, PrestaShop does also offer a hosted version of itself for 24.90 euros per month, which might suit you better if you're after a SaaS solution.
Pros 👍
- It's free to download
- It's highly customizable
- There are numerous integrations available
- Access to a strong user community
- Comprehensive support materials available
Cons 👎
- Expensive customer support
- Developer skills are required
- Limited integrations with the hosted version
Who is it Best For? ✅
Cheap and scalable, PrestaShop is a good choice if you’re looking for a store solution that can grow with you. It’s easy to run a shop in multiple languages, and you can customize in a range of different ways, even with third-party integrations.
Further reading:
- PrestaShop Review – Is It The Best Open Source Ecommerce Platform?
11. OpenCart
Another open-source Magento alternative is OpenCart. This is a highly customizable solution with no monthly fees and a robust administrator dashboard. Plus, this platform permits you to manage multiple stores. Not to mention, OpenCart provides a wide choice of modules and themes you can use to make your dream online store a reality.
OpenCart delivers access to more than 13000 themes so you can find the one that works for you. There are plenty of great payment gateways and shipping options to choose from, and there’s a lot of customer support to access too. A simple admin dashboard offers features like inventory and user management, and you can build multiple stores at once.
OpenCart comes with support for unlimited products and categories, website backups, and customer reviews. You can reward points and coupons to various clients, and manage discount options on the backend.
Features ✨
- Access to over 13,000 modules and themes
- There are lots of payment gateways and shipping methods to choose from
- Community and OpenCart'sdedicated customer support are both available
- An easy-to-use administrator dashboard
- User management tools
- Multi-store support
- Tools for creating and managing discounts, coupons, reward points, and special offers
- Website back-ups and restoration
- Unlimited products and categories
- Customer can leave reviews
Pricing 💰
OpenCart is free to download and use, but some website modules and themes are sold at a price.
Pros 👍
- There are plenty of integrations
- It's free to download
- Due to OpenCart's open-source nature, it's highly customizable
- Access to an active community with over 110,000 registered members
Cons 👎
- You're responsible for your own web hosting, development, and maintenance
- There's a limited choice of built-in marketing features
- It's not the fastest solution on the market
Who is it Best For? ✅
OpenCart is a powerful tool for beginners who want to design a highly customizable store. You can easily manage a range of features on the backend, and the community is great for accessing guidance and support if you need help.
About Magento
Founded back in 2007, Magento soon caught the eye of some of eCommerce's most prominent players and was purchased by eBay/X.comemrce in 2011. Adobe finally bought it in 2018.
Magento is available in two forms:
- Magento Open Source: This was formerly named the Magento Community Edition, and is free to download and install.
- Magento Commerce: Formerly known as the Magento Enterprise Edition. Initially, this was intended for enterprise-level businesses with developers on hand and came with a high price tag.
Nowadays, Magento encourages smaller businesses to sign up for its SaaS platform. However, plenty of small businesses utilize the open-source version (especially business owners with the programming smarts to make the most out of it).
Pricing 💰
Magento‘s open-source option, although free to download and use, isn't free to implement. You'll need to budget for web hosting, domain names, add-ons, and SSL certificates – that's as well as any payment processing fees. You'll need to research all this yourself, while many Magento alternatives factor these costs into their packages to provide a more streamlined service.
Best for Mid-Sized to Large Businesses
It takes quite a bit of time, money, and energy to install and manage your site – especially with all the heavy lifting required on the development side. As such, Magento is (usually) better suited to mid-sized and larger businesses with web developers on their team to handle these tasks.
In short, if you're just starting out, this solution probably isn't the best choice for you.
Technical Requirements
Depending on the version of Magento you’re using, you'll need to meet several hardware and software requirements. So, check for these in the installation guide for the Magento version you're using.
Here are just some of the requirements involved:
- Operating System: Linux Distributions
- Memory: You'll need (at least) the specified amount of RAM on your machine
- Web Server: Apache or Nginx
- Database: MySQL
- Scripting Language: PHP
- Composer: You need a package manager for PHP, for developing Magento extensions and contributing to the existing code
- SSL Certificate: To enable secure HTTPs protocols, you'll need to purchase a valid, non-self-signed certificate
You also have to use an up-to-date web browser – Chrome, Edge, or Safari are all viable options. It’s also worth noting, Magento will cease all software support and security patches as of June 2020. Again, this may be just another reason to look at Magento alternatives.
Features ✨
Magento has an impressive list of features – even with the open-source version, including:
- An integrated checkout, payment, and shipping
- Mobile optimized shopping
- Global selling
- Catalog management tools
- An extensive app marketplace
- Instant purchase options for your customers
- Site search
More features are available with the Magento Commerce subscription, including:
- B2B functionality
- Advanced marketing tools
- Visual merchandising
- Customer loyalty tools
- Content staging and previews
- Business intelligence dashboards
- Technical support
- Cloud availability
- Performance monitoring tools
The Takeaway on Magento
Assuming you're not employing a web developer, Magento might present a challenge to you in terms of unlocking its full customizability and potential. Plus, the open-source version is limited in features, so there's a good chance you want to compare Magento against other SaaS models regardless.
So, now we know what we're comparing to, let’s dive into our more beginner-friendly Magento alternatives…
Have You Found a Magento Alternative That Works for You?
We hope this list of Magento alternatives is a handy resource for kickstarting your own research. To summarize, Magento has plenty of potential if you're a web developer, or if you have a programmer on your team. On that premise, Magneto's an affordable and extremely customizable option.
However, if you’re looking for something more beginner-friendly, without compromising on customization and eCommerce features, Shopify or BigCommerce are probably your best bets. Or, if you're after a slightly cheaper option, Wix Store is also a good starting point for your eCommerce journey.
Have you ever used any of these Magento alternatives? If so, let us know how you got on in the comments box below!
great article very valuable.
Thanks!