Pros and cons of Magento compared to proprietary solutions?
What are the pros and cons of Magento compared to middle and high end e-commerce proprietary solutions?
Scope:
- International project
- Multi lingual website
- Multi currency
- Very high traffic (Robust hosting needed
- Fast changing product list (Activation/Deactivation on a daily basis)
- Payment gateway integration
- Logistic integration (ERP)
- Reverse logistic integration
- …
--> Full end to end e-commerce and logistic project
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Olivier
PS: Join the E-Commerce Network: http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=45691
Answers (7)
Harshal P.
Software Consulting & Development / Offshore Product Development / Custom Application Development
Best Answers in: Business Development (4), Project Management (4), Customer Relationship Management (3), Computers and Software (2), Customer Service (1), Lead Generation (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Software Development (1)
Pros:
1. Standard ready to use solution
2. Easy to configure
3. Open source (easily customizable)
4. GPL (zero cost)
5. Readily available open source plug-ins and add-ins
6. Multicurrency easily handled
7. Good support for multi-language
8. Easy integration of payment gateway
9. Quite a good offering for small and medium e-commerce needs
Cons:
1. Lesser Article/Content Management features
2. A lot of customizations needed to meet practical scenarios (like advertisements, templating, content management etc.)
3. Detailed understanding of the framework needed to make customization
4. Functionalities limited to e-commerce (which is not a good option in competitive world, a lot of multi channel branding ad functionalities should be there)
5. Making templates for it takes double time than that for Joomla etc.
6. Integration with other systems is not easy
7. Not suitable for bigger solutions (higher data transactions and large number of users)
This is not the right fit for full end-to-end e-commerce and logistic project as it is. There will be various customizations needed, so its better that you build a custom solution, this will help to keep it performance oriented (only needed functionalities) and you can make it scalable with respect to your future needs.
Todd S.
Senior Application Consultant at InterContinental Hotels Group
Best Answers in: E-Commerce (9), Customer Relationship Management (1), Small Business (1)
Is there a reason why you named only Magento as the option to consider opposite custom solution?
It's possible that there are larger (sure, also more expensive) ecom platforms available that could provide the same list of benefits, but also satisfy some of the other requirements that Magento doesn't (such as easy integration with your ERP).
So, before you decide on custom solution just because Magento doesn't give as many benefits as you might hope, I would do a little more research to see what other platform options might exist for your needs.
Olivier,
Thanks for raising the topic. Despite my bias (clearly), a few clarifications to address here:
1) CMS - Our next enterprise release will feature a significant enhancement to our content feature set. CMS+ will allow for the creation of multiple pages, restricting publishing privileges for authorized users only and support versioning. We will also introduce Widgets (configurable page blocks) for insertion to CMS pages.
2) Customization - Our experience in working with retailers using Magento over the past 18 months has shown that less customization work is needed in most scenarios. The more unique the business model off course, the more custom code that needs to be developed. The architecture supports such enhancements without jeopardizing upgrades. This is given due the products' rich feature set.
3) Templating - It does indeed take longer to template Magento initially (comparing to other open source solutions not proprietary). Magento's architecture is such that it allows for template hierarchies, reuse and all this without effecting upgrades. It is to the retailers benefit/advantage.
4) Integration - I would argue that integration is rather easy. Certainly easier than 3rd party proprietary systems that are closed by design. Our web services based API certainly helps as well.
5) Target Market - Magento today is consumed by all size retailers, including Fortune 500's, leading market brands, and billion dollar online companies. It's important to note that on the upper end, we have retailers doing tens of thousands of orders a day.
Hope this helps and I look forward to reading additional feedback.
Roy
CEO, Magento
Take a look at osCommerce as well. Development has been quite slow of late, however that lack of activity has led to the "community" creating a wealth of modifications and add-on modules.
Well Magneto was a solid villian of the x-men. Big fan
Andrew C.
E-Commerce Project Manager
Best Answers in: Enterprise Software (1), Computer Networking (1), Web Development (1)
Pros-
1. If you plan on targeting individual countries, Magento supports multiple websites and stores and allows you to control them from the same admin.
2. Magento development is done in the form of modules, allowing you to easily activate/deactivate features as you please and to split up the development. Creating modules rather than modifying the core also ensures that future upgrades go smoothly.
3. The new content staging features of the enterprise edition make it easier to verify that content is correct before you push it live.
4. While the Magento application is fairly large, it has proven to scale well when setup correctly. It features built-in support for a master/slave database setup, allowing you to distribute the database load across multiple servers. Memcached can be quickly integrated, making it easier to implement database caching. A static content location can be specified, allowing you to quickly setup a content delivery network or offload media to other servers.
5. Internally, Magento broadcasts events as they take place, allowing custom modules to be notified when things happen and take action by integrating with other systems (ERP/CRM). Conversely, other systems can tap into Magento’s data and interact with it using the Magento API.
6. The templating system used by Magento is one of the most advanced and, when used correctly, can decrease development time and eliminate duplicate functionality.
Cons-
1. Magento is not well documented. The MagentoCommerce website has a wiki, forums, and user guides, but developers are left to reverse engineer and discover how the application works without an SDK or developer guide.
In addition to the advantage of a free-of-charge platform with a worldwide community of extension developers, the long term benefits of using an out-of-the-box solution like Magento are huge. Clients can be very reluctant to move platforms so constant development over many years is required:
Developing new features to keep up with the new technologies.
Training developers on specialist technologies.
Producing user documentation.
Employing for a wide base of different user types for bug / usability testing.
Producing development documentation / reliance on core developers.
It can also be easier to manage client expectations if there are some clear limits to the feature set. Clients may also have some knowledge of the out-of-the-box admin system / common design patterns used. Many stock & product data / logistic integration companies will have experience of the platform.
To a degree, Magento can be customized in-house to match the advantages of a bespoke system's feature set.
I have found the template & theme system a delight to use.
The main advantage of a bespoke system with a high-end search indexing system would be the performance speed - although this is not easy to achieve.
