Table of contents:<\/strong><\/p>\n What is Magento? Magento is a self-hosted ecommerce platform and CMS, which was developed in 2008 by the American company called Varien, and to date, it is a part of Adobe corporation. Worldwide, Magento is used by various companies to run their websites and benefit from payment and pricing optimization, customer account creation, outstanding design, advertising strategy development and many other built-in features. <\/span><\/p>\n So, what is Magento software, and why is it so popular among the website owners? When it comes to online store customization, this platform is highly flexible and possesses a solid stack of ecommerce capabilities and high security level.<\/span><\/p>\n There are two distinct Magento versions available on the market: Magento Open Source, which is a free ecommerce solution, and Magento Commerce, which is provided for a certain fee. Now we are going to drill into the details, compare them to help you make a decision about which Magento version fits your business better – Magento Open Source or Magento Commerce.<\/span><\/p>\n Released for the first time in 2007, Magento Open Source, which was originally called Magento Community Edition is a scalable ecommerce platform available for download free of charge. This basic ecommerce platform possesses all the necessary features to create a progressively growing, successful online store. Despite the fact that Magento Commerce has a much wider range of functionalities, Magento Open Source features can also be useful for the customers. Magento Open Source includes a well built CMS that you can use to check in what direction you need to diversify your website content. It also allows you to deploy and manage several store views and multi-sites for free.<\/span><\/p>\n If you feel that default functions and in-built extensions are not enough to fulfill the needs and demands of your online store, you can always browse some extensions and templates tailored to meet the user’s needs, and provided for free or for a fair price at the official Magento Marketplace or third-party marketplaces. <\/span><\/p>\n For online stores looking for unlimited functionality and premium support, there is a high-profile Magento version. It used to be called Magento Enterprise, but, after the rebranding in 2017, changed its name to Magento Commerce. A more advanced functionality set makes this fee-based Magento version perfectly suitable for middle-size and large businesses. You can choose from two plans based on the size and revenue of your business. Magento Open Source is a great solution for the growing business that has started its ecommerce journey, while a Magento Commerce is created for the middle and large enterprises needs. <\/span><\/p>\n Yet, as an owner of a large enterprise with a progressively growing annual revenue, you might think about Magento Commerce Cloud. It is a package in which you receive Magento Commerce hosted on Magento’s custom AWS stack, as well as some other functions like the Fastly CDN and several optimization tools. Magento Commerce Cloud also implements business intelligence, so that you can use RJMetrics, which was originally referred to as Magento Analytics. <\/span><\/p>\n Nowadays, successful ecommerce-based business requires from the merchants much more than just traffic data and transaction records. And here comes business intelligence. RJMetrics enables merchants to access and analyze multiple data sources from MySQL and Salesforce to Facebook Ads. All the data is consolidated into a single cloud-based data storage, which can be accessed within your organization. <\/span><\/p>\n Making a decision between two major versions of Magento core product – Magento Open Source or Magento Commerce – can be tricky. Both Magento versions are non-hosted ecommerce platform that can be downloaded and hosted on a server you choose. Magento Open Source is free of charge and this is what allows it to stand out in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n Magento Open Source key features:<\/span><\/p>\n The list looks pretty impressive, doesn’t it? Indeed, these features create a comprehensive ecommerce solution with enough capabilities to successfully grow your business from the very beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n However, consider this: with Magento Commerce, you get access to all the same functionality as Open Source as well as to almost 50 advanced features. Magento Commerce is especially, B2B-friendly, including features that B2B businesses will find extremely useful: <\/span><\/p>\n Also, below is a list of other Magento Commerce 2.3 special features that ecommerce of any size and industry will appreciate:<\/span><\/p>\n Flagship Magento product – Magento Commerce – available for a certain fee provides more in-built features. It can be purchased either as their standard offering – Magento Commerce, or as a special version available at Magento 2 – Magento Commerce Cloud, which is hosted by Magento on their AWS stack.<\/span><\/p>\n In the end, the choice between Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce depends solely on you and your business, its needs and specifics.<\/span><\/p>\n Being home for almost 30 per cent from all ecommerce websites, WooCommerce offers all the features that you would expect from a perfect ecommerce solution. It is a great platform to start your ecommerce business as it is easy to use and users with basic developer skills or experience can maintain the online store with no difficulties. Especially, if you have some primary understanding of WordPress. WooCommerce is also compatible with almost all operational systems, and in case you need to be able to operate your business remotely, there is also a mobile application available both in Apple Store and Play Market. But you should keep in mind, that when growing your webstore and pushing it to the next ecommerce level, it is better to use the expert development team.<\/span><\/p>\n Currently, the market is so flooded with the great number of available ecommerce solutions, and the best way to pick the right one among them is to take a look at the platform ecommerce features and compare them. Hopefully, this guide will help you out in choosing the one and only platform that will meet not only your price and maintenance expectations but also the demands and needs of your store. <\/span><\/p>\n Magento is considered to be a corporate-level ecommerce platform created primarily for medium and large online stores but many growing businesses also trust Magento running their websites. It provides one of the most groundbreaking feature sets in the field, which means that it is a perfect solution for stores with high development aspirations.<\/span><\/p>\n Here are the key Magento 2 features for ecommerce: <\/span><\/p>\n Take your online store to the next level with BelVG Magento webdesign<\/p>Visit the page<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n WooCommerce feature items include almost all of the functionality you might need to successfully launch an online store, and it also has several advanced capabilities available for obtaining via the extension system. The integrated features ensure that adding plugins, customizing the store, and even scaling the store to cater to the growing traffic will not lead to breaking the structure of your online store. <\/span><\/p>\n WooCommerce features list that comes in it is the following:<\/span><\/p>\n Taking into account that most of the people entering the world of ecommerce are not web developers, they are looking for a solution that can be launched quickly for their growing business. Even experienced ecommerce entrepreneurs prefer to stick with user-friendlier platforms that help them focus on growing their business instead of struggling with software.<\/span><\/p>\n Both Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce are powerful platforms. They include tons of integrated working out of the box features. For growing business Magento can be an excellent choice, for large enterprises it is the best choice, while for small local businesses with smaller products catalog WooCommerce is a good decision.<\/span><\/p>\n Without having at least some basic web development knowledge, setup, installing extensions or customizing themes will not always be easy. However, there are plenty of tutorials and detailed official documentation that can help you.<\/span><\/p>\n By and large, Magento is highly strong software, and it comes packed with a ton of features, but it is not the easiest ecommerce platform for the beginner-user to set up and operate.<\/span><\/p>\n The WooCommerce installation is relatively easy compared with the other platforms as most of the hosting providers will automatically install it along with WordPress. But since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you will have to install WordPress first. <\/span><\/p>\n Even if you have to carry out the installation yourself, you can follow the setup guide tips and create some pages, set up payment gateways, pick the currency from the available options, set shipping and taxation rules. However, keep in mind, that the more products and product categories your store will have and the more plugins you will install, the slower your WooCommerce shop will operate; eventually, this may lead to serious performance problems that would require developers’ expertise. <\/span><\/p>\n The ecommerce platform services cost may become a big part of your business costs. So, after discussing Magento and WooCommerce distinct features as well as these two platforms’ ease of use, it is the right time to take a critical look at Magento and WooСommerce costs.<\/span><\/p>\n Currently, Magento offers a free self-hosted version called Magento Open Source (former Magento Community). Magento Commerce (former Magento Enterprise) and Magento Commerce Cloud are premium versions available at Magento 2. Depending on the platform version you choose, the final price may vary significantly. <\/span><\/p>\n Magento Open Source, designed primarily for small and medium-size businesses, can be downloaded and used completely free of charge. However, trying to calculate how much Magento costs if you chose this version, you need to take into account that launching an online store goes beyond downloading and installing the software. Additional costs for coding, configuration, customization and hosting will also take place, especially if there are some custom themes, fee-based Magento extensions or integrations with any external systems involved. <\/span><\/p>\n Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud provide a more advanced functionality set that fits better merchants with big annual revenue. The total cost of using these two versions depends on the company’s gross sales revenue. Magento 2 Commerce version license cost starts from $22,000 and can go up to $125,000 per year. Magento 2 Commerce Cloud license cost starts with $40,000 and can get as high as $190,000 for the companies making over $25,000,000 gross sales revenue per year.<\/span><\/p>\n Take your online store to the next level Magento 2 migration by BelVG<\/p>Visit the page<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n WooCommerce is free for the users to install and maintain since both WordPress and WooCommerce can be freely downloaded from the website. How much WooСommerce costs and how expensive it will be to keep your WooСommerce-based online store running will depend largely on your choice of hosting provider. Even though the system is free, the costs can pile up quickly if you are planning to install and use additional extensions and templates WooCommerce offers or rely on custom development to add more advanced features to your online store. <\/span><\/p>\n Store owners often want to customize their ecommerce stores. They may want to add some sliders, customize the checkout page of their store, remove a category field, or simply change the layout or the colors. Both WooCommerce and Magento offer a comprehensive stack of customization capabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the best ways to improve your website functionality is to download Magento extensions. Magento Marketplace, https:\/\/marketplace.magento.com\/, which is basically a Magento extension store, provides an impressive number of fee-based and free Magento themes and extensions that can beef up your Magento-based store’s functionality or tailor its design to ensure it meets your needs and requirements. <\/span><\/p>\n There are multiple extensions and themes presented at the official Magento marketplace. More than 5000 paid and free Magento extensions are available for download in the marketplace. Third parties are also engaged in Magento extension development, and you can find a lot of useful tools for your online store at their websites. <\/span><\/p>\n In terms of themes, the number of options available in Magento Marketplace is quite limited in comparison with the number of extensions, there are only 14 Magento themes. If these options do not meet your design expectations, it is always a good idea to check out the third-party marketplaces like Store BelVG<\/a> or any others you can find online before making a purchase in order to make sure you pick the best Magento theme for your store. These marketplaces provide a big number of different themes including various responsive Magento themes.<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, if there are no ready-made extensions or themes that meet your requirements, you can always create custom solutions with the help of experienced developers.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/a>What is WooCommerce?
\n<\/a>Key ecommerce features
\n<\/a>Pricing options
\n<\/a>Customization
\n<\/a>Payment gateways
\n<\/a>Shipping providers
\n<\/a>Security<\/a><\/p>\nWhat is Magento ecommerce platform?<\/h2>\n
![\"magento](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/magento-logo-2-150x150.png\" "\\"Magento"){kind=logo}
<\/a>Magento is an open-source platform for ecommerce. What does it mean? That the source code of this ecommerce platform is created in such a way that the users or other developers can make modifications within this code as they wish. In most of the cases, open-source software is developed to be available for download free of charge. If you are still wondering what Magento is writing in, the answer is PHP, a programming language created in 1994.<\/span><\/p>\nMagento Open Source<\/h3>\n
![\"magento](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/magento-open-source.png\" "\\"Magento")
<\/a><\/p>\nMagento Commerce<\/h3>\n
![\"magento](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/magento-commerce.png\" "\\"Magento")
<\/a><\/p>\nMagento Open Source vs Magento Commerce<\/h3>\n
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![\"Vlad](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Vlad-Yunusov-middle.png\" "\\"Magento")
Partner With Us <\/h3>Let's discuss how to grow your business. Get a Free Quote.<\/span><\/div> Talk to Vlad<\/a><\/div>\n
What is WooCommerce?<\/h2>\n
![\"woocommerce](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/woocomerce-logo-3-150x150.png\" "\\"Magento"){kind=logo}
<\/a>WooCommerce is one of the top open-source ecommerce platforms worldwide. The answer to the popular question of what is WooCommerce in WordPress is that this ecommerce platform is basically a WordPress plugin. Released in 2011 by WooThemes theme developer, some years later it was acquired by Automattic – a web development corporation owing WordPress.com. WooCommerce is a free open-source CMS (content management system) written in PHP and MySQL. Since WordPress is one of the leading global CMS systems, as its plugin, WooCommerce has also gained much in prominence over the last few years. <\/span><\/p>\nKey ecommerce features<\/h2>\n
Magento features and benefits<\/h3>\n
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![\"magento](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/magento-webdesign-1.png\" "\\"Magento")
Magento Webdesign<\/h3>
WooCommerce feature list<\/h3>\n
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Ease of use<\/h2>\n
Magento<\/h3>\n
Partner With Us <\/h3>Let's discuss how to grow your business. Get a Free Quote.<\/span><\/div> Talk to Vlad<\/a><\/div>\n
WooCommerce<\/h3>\n
Magento vs WooCommerce pricing options<\/h2>\n
Magento pricing plans<\/h3>\n
![\"migration](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/migration-to-magento-2.png\" "\\"Magento")
Magento 2 Migration<\/h3>
How much does WooСommerce cost?<\/h3>\n
Customization<\/h2>\n
Magento extensions and themes<\/h3>\n
![\"magento](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/magento-marketplace.png\" "\\"Magento")
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![\"magento](\"https:\/\/belvg.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/magento-custom-development.png\" "\\"Magento")