If you are coming up with eCommerce business, one of the most important steps that you can’t ignore is choosing an appropriate platform. There are various options, but Magento and OpenCart are those two popular platforms making you hesitate.
Don’t just select a platform due to cheapest price! To make your experience be excellent, you have to consider feature, easy – to – use, user support and SEO options as well.
That’s a reason why we bring OpenCart and Magento into a clear – comparison throughout 4 categories.
Read on to find out!
1. OpenCart vs Magento – PopularityIf you have experienced in website design or are interested in eCommerce, I believe that you know OpenCart and Magento are two very popular open – source for online business.
But which one is more popular? I will show you through the chart below!
According to the latest figures, people search for “Magento” about four times than “OpenCart”, it means that the number of people who are interested and using Magento outperformed OpenCart a lot.
2. OpenCart vs Magento – FeaturesBoth Magento and OpenCart were designed with a large user base in mind. So while both platforms are great for small shop owners or big enterprises, it is important for you to know which one will be able to provide you a better service when it comes down to real business.
Also, they all provide plenty of modern features to enhance customer’s experience. To know which one is better service when it comes down to your real business, let’s make a deep comparison as the following points:
Inventory managementMagento and OpenCart were design to be professional in inventory management. To say quite bluntly, Magento outperforms OpenCart a bit because it has more extensions and more capabilities, allowing you to be better handling of inventory.
Themes/TemplatesMagento offers its user a wide – range of themes which are very clean, friendly and look very well. Themes/Templates of OpenCart are also competitive. Both have FREE and paid templates, you can find the more amazing interface in the marketplace such as Magento Marketplace or OpenCart Marketplace.
Multilingual capacitiesIf you intend to sell products in more than one country, setting up the multi-language function for your website is essential. Fortunately, both open source support you create this plugin quite simply and easily.
3. What about Pricing?When thinking of open source, the first word that comes to mind is FREE, it is the biggest advantage of Magento and OpenCart. However, when using you have to pay other item expenses such as Domain, Hosting, SSL certificate… Thus, may it require some extension or plugin to run your site smoothly, it’s not FREE.
In addition, Magento has two options, Magento CE and Magento EE, each one has its own pricing.
Magento CE (Community Edition): totally FREE for download and use. You need to pay for domain maintenance and hosting only.
Magento EE (Enterprise Edition): By quote. The price depends on the size of your business. You can contact Magento to require a quote.
The good news is that the main OpenCart software is completely FREE. You can download it from the official website.
Like Magento, if you want to engage with OpenCart, a hosting and Domain plan is required.
- Hosting: usually start at around $5 per month
- Domain: at around $10
In addition, you may pay any money for premium design/template or any additional modules/plugin/extensions…
4. Community supportOne of the most outstanding advantages of the open – source is the huge community support. Also, Magento and OpenCart have well-established developer communities that offer support and advice by demand.
But Magento is much better than OpenCart in this case.
As one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms in the world, with long-term formulation, Magento has a lot of huge communities storing extremely useful information. Here, millions of users, programmers as well as developers can share their best practices, tips & analyst, or ask a variety of questions.
One thing you should know that, as the number of users of a platform grows, the greater the support of the community. We believe in the future, as Opencart grows and changes, and the number of its users will increase to provide more online support.
5. Marketing SEO optionsMagento offers many useful features such as SEO friendly URLs, Meta tag, Google sitemap, Google content APIs to enhance your SEO capabilities. Both platforms integrate seamlessly with Google Analytics so you can track the traffic from Search engines.
But when it comes to SEO, OpenCart is still a long way to go. Although proud of the SEO friendly URL, it seems the modifications to the metadata and actions are taken like the 301 redirect and the rel canonical can be much more complex than what they should do. And although there are different extensions that can help, it does not even come close to the endless possibilities that Magento offers, such as optimized titles, images and URLs…
NewsletterNewsletters are the notices to customer emails, informing the sale promotions you are offering. Fortunately, both Magento and OpenCart provide this feature smoothly.
ConclusionOpenCart is very easy – to – use, has a lot of free and cheap themes and template but there are some limitations on SEO functions. OpenCart is a perfect choice for small and medium store.
What about Magento? It has a very large community support, offers a lot beautiful themes and excellent SEO options. However, if you’re trying to build a website based on Magento without any technical skills, you will be on a steep learning curve on this task.
Magento vs OpenCart – Which E-Commerce platform is right for you? Your selection should be matching your requirements and your company’s size. Whichever your choose- we wish you luck with your new business!
You are using OpenCart but planning to expand your business, maybe Magento is the best place to move. Visit HERE to see how simply for performing the OpenCart to Magento migration.
If you have any question, don’t hesitate to Contact Us as soon as possible!
