If you are thinking of stepping into the busy world of ecommerce, you might have been doing your research on what type of a store you want. If you have chosen the independent route of hosting your own store, then you might have heard about two of the most popular ecommerce solutions: Magento and OpenCart.
These two platforms are both open source and offer many features for you to choose from. OpenCart is a good option for small ecommerce business owners, but Magento is more versatile as it is perfect for all types of businesses; big or small. However, knowing the differences in the two will help you decide which is right for you!
What is the difference between Magento and OpenCart?
Magento is a more robust eCommerce platform that is suited for businesses of all sizes. It offers a lot of features and customization options, which can be both good and bad. The learning curve for Magento can be steep, but once you get the hang of it, you can really create a powerful online store.
OpenCart, on the other hand, is a simpler eCommerce platform that is better suited for small businesses or those just getting started with eCommerce. It is easier to use than Magento and doesn’t require as much technical knowledge. However, it doesn’t have as many features or customization options as Magento does.
So, which platform is right for you? It really depends on your needs. If you need a powerful and customizable ecommerce platform, then Magento is perfect for you especially if your store will host a variety of products with different specifications. If you need something simpler for an online store with a handful of products, then OpenCart may be better suited for you.
Why would I choose Magento over OpenCart?
If you’re looking for a reliable, flexible eCommerce platform, you may be wondering if Magento or OpenCart is the right choice for your business. Both platforms offer a variety of features and benefits, but in general, Magento is a more robust and powerful option than OpenCart. Here are some key reasons why Magento may be the better choice for your eCommerce needs:
- Magento offers more flexibility and customization options than OpenCart. With Magento, you can create a truly unique online store that fits your specific business needs. There are a wide range of themes and extensions available for Magento, so you can really tailor your store to your brand.
- Magento is more scalable than OpenCart. As your business grows, you can easily add more products and features to your Magento store without running into performance issues.
- Magento has better security features than OpenCart. This is important if you’re selling products online. With Magento, you can rest assured that your customer’s data is safe and secure.
- Open Source software is generally supported by their community. Both Magento and OpenCart have very passionate communities. However, Magento has a more robust (and to an extent, structured) community as it offers certifications and recognitions to all budding Magento developers.
Why would I choose OpenCart over Magento?
There are a few key reasons why someone might choose to use OpenCart over Magento. OpenCart is an amazing solution for those who might prefer to create a small ecommerce store with low profit goals or small product catalogs. OpenCart has an amazing marketplace that is filled with all sorts of themes, modules, and extensions.
Comparing The Features
When it comes to ecommerce development, Magento and OpenCart are very popular options as both are true ecommerce content management systems (CMS), unlike others who happen to be plugins or third-party turnkey solutions. In this section of the article, we will compare the key features of Magento and OpenCart to understand which one can be the right option for your business.
Setup, Installation, and Maintenance
As you have decided to create your own store, it’s important to know about the setup and installation process of both Magento and OpenCart. However, before we move to more specific details, it is always a great idea to host your online store on managed cloud servers.
Unlike corporate websites, ecommerce stores need to be supported by powerful infrastructure. Managed cloud hosting platforms like Devrims allow you to host and deploy Magento and OpenCart shops on infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services or DigitalOcean cloud servers without investing in a dedicated cloud management team.
You will learn more about hosting in the coming paragraphs.
When it comes to setup and installation, both Magento and OpenCart are pretty easy to deploy. Both CMS solutions will have detailed walkthroughs and you will be set in no time. You will get all the essential cart and payment features from the get-go.
Now, let’s talk about maintenance. There is a wide difference between both the softwares.
Magento Open Source is largely backed by an amazing community of developers along with the support of the parent company, Adobe. This keeps things very well structured when it comes to pushing out software updates. Each year, there will be one (or two) flagship Features releases with updates to core elements of the software. In between these releases, there will be smaller updates to fix security issues and improve performance of the Magento core.
The story is entirely different for OpenCart. As it is a community-driven open source initiative, the focus of launching a major update takes time. It took OpenCart 4.0 almost five years to come out of beta. This is not necessarily a bad thing; however, the update schedule of OpenCart is fairly irregular. Security fixes are always rolled out on priority and feature releases come out on seemingly ad-hoc basis.
SEO and Customization
When it comes to SEO, Magento comes out on the top. The basic SEO controls inside Magento covers all the basic requirements for search engines. You can set up meta titles, meta descriptions, generate sitemaps, add content to robots.txt file, etc. While there are built-in SEO features inside OpenCart, they are not built very intuitively. For some operations, you might have to use an extension.
Talking about extensions, let’s discuss how customizable both Magento and OpenCart are. Both platforms come with their own marketplaces where you can get thousands of themes, plugins, extensions, and modules. However, OpenCart may offer more FREE themes and add-ons than Magento. Having said that, FREE is not always great as you might not get the required support if anything goes wrong. Here it is important to mention that Magento may be a little costlier to customize, its extension library is filled with products from renowned Magento-certified development teams and agencies.
Hosting
When it comes to hosting Magento 2 stores, you will find one-click deployment on every web hosting platform out there. The same cannot be said for OpenCart. However, you can easily run OpenCart on any PHP-hosted server. When it comes to resource usage, Magento demands more computing power than OpenCart. It’s always a good idea to host your Magento stores on cloud servers. While OpenCart is lighter, it also should be deployed on dedicated cloud servers. Devrim is an absolute lifesaver for any ecommerce entrepreneur. With the help of Devrims Managed Cloud Hosting Platform, you can create Magento and OpenCart stores on managed AWS and DigitalOcean cloud servers with lightning fast load times and no devops worries. You can test the platform out with a 6-day free trial!
Conclusion
When it comes to hosting ecommerce stores online, both Magento and OpenCart have their pros and cons. OpenCart is seemingly simpler, cost-effective, and easy-to-learn. However, it has a non-uniform update schedule. Magento, on the other hand, is more structured and looks very business friendly. It’s best you test out both on a platform like Devrims before you make the final call.