Magento, a Powerful Ecommerce Solution for FREE

Apr 02

MikeWeb Industry eCommerce, Magento, Open Source 1 Comment

Whilst there have been many different ecommerce solutions available for free for some years now, they have all tended to lack that professional touch that can only be achieved by spending thousands getting a web developer to do it for you.  But with the launch of Magento comes a powerful ecommerce platform packed with features and the kind of flexibility that was sorely lacking in previous ecommerce solutions.

Developed under open source license it offers users the opportunity to build ecommerce websites that look professional and offers complete control over content, features and the customer experience of their store.  To date it has been downloaded over 1.5 million times and has more than 50,000 merchants currently using it to power their business.  Even top names such as 3M, Lenovo and Samsung have Magento intergrated into their sites.

Underlining their status as the fastest growing ecommerce solution available, Magento has recently received a capital injection of $22.5 million which the company says will help them to develop as the largest ecommerce solution in the world, providing additional features such as mobile commerce offering and a number of other products and services due to be released this year.

The Magento Community Edition is free to download and is recommended for developers and users with some knowledge and the technical ability to spend time and resources developing sites to their needs.  There is no support offered by Magento for this edition and instead an extensive community of users has grown via the forum, for help and advice on issues and problems.  Those looking for a supported version can opt for Magento Enterprise, which does have many more functions and features compared to the Community Edition, but comes with a price tag of $11,125 per year.

I first came across Magento several months ago and was instantly seduced by its look and flexibility, as well as the free price tag!  Downloading is not a one click installation however, and some users may have to upgrade their hosting package to be able to install it.  However, once you have it up and running it is easy to navigate around the admin panel, change themes and install new modules to aid in the functionality of a site.

These add-on modules, of which there are now over 2000 available, are one of the key attractions to Magento by developers and merchants alike.  Sites can essentially be tailor made by adding or removing modules as required.  But whilst Magento may seem to be the ideal solution for all who dream of a professional looking ecommerce site, it is not without its technical problems, which is why users with little or no knowledge of developing such sites could struggle.

As developers of many ecommerce websites we have used various different ecommerce solutions and shopping carts, but Magento has out performed all of them, proving itself worthy of being one of the best ecommerce solutions available today and our first choice when it comes to ecommerce websites for our clients.