Choosing the right eCommerce platform can confuse businesses planning to digitally transform their retail business.
There are numerous tools and methods to assist achieve atisfactory outcomes. However, it ultimately comes down to a few fundamental decisions, such as the website’s size, design requirements, SEO strategy and financial budget.
In this article, let’s focus on the comparison of 2 commonly used open-source eCommerce platforms in the market today, i.e. Magento and OpenCart. Also, briefly discuss the importance of eCommerce website development services for building the same.
1. Magento vs OpenCart – Commonality
Magento is the most widely used eCommerce platform. It is an open-source and secured platform built using PHP. Businesses needing a more stable and powerful eCommerce platform choose Magento.
Similarly, OpenCart is an open-source eCommerce platform developed with PHP. It helps to manage an online store in a user-friendly way. OpenCart provides multilingual and multi-currency support too.
There are certain commonalities between the 2 eCommerce platforms. Both platforms have lots of extensions, features and add-ons for enhanced usability. Being open-source, they are easy to customise also.
Both platforms easily allow adding products using a template approach. A recurring payment option is available too.
Installing them can be cost-free, but several additional charges are involved, like hosting, domain, development, extensions, maintenance, etc. Visit a reputed eCommerce website development company like ours for budget-friendly estimation and quotes.
2. Magento vs OpenCart – Performance Review
OpenCart displays a slow loading speed compared to Magento. The response time of OpenCart is greater than that of Magento.
Slow loading speeds negatively impact the shopping experience. Resulting which users may abandon the site.
Magento provides deferred parsing of JavaScript for improved loading speeds. It has incorporated client-side JavaScript optimisation and boosted static content browser caching.
Magento provides better-inbuilt features compared to OpenCart. To incorporate equivalent elements, adding new extensions or add-ons may be required in OpenCart. These additions of extensions and add-ons further delay the loading times.
Therefore it can be rightly determined that performance-wise Magento is the clear winner here. So experts advise appointing a Magento web development company to drive business growth.
3. Magento vs OpenCart – Development Cost
Magento and OpenCart are open-source, meaning they does not require any installation charges. However, additional charges may incur depending on specific requirements or feature addition.
OpenCart is slightly more user-friendly to manage compared to Magento, which requires technical expertise for accurate management. Therefore hiring a Magento web developer can be costly.
Magento has several inbuilt features that are highly useful. OpenCart requires the addition of extensions and add-ons for implementing those requirements. These additions or customisation may incur high charges. But it is comparatively lower compared to Magento.
Customisation of the features helps modify the eCommerce website according to the user’s demands. These may include custom themes, templates, design, third-party integration, etc. Hire an affordable Magento web development company to keep development costs within the planned budget.
Since there are no fixed charges, both platforms are at a tie here.
4. Magento vs OpenCart – Safety & Security
Magento receives timely and frequent updates and security patches to protect websites from external threats. It provides content security policies, PCI compliance and several other inbuilt security extensions to prevent cross-site scripting, session hijacking, skimming, etc.
Implementing these updates requires technical expertise and manage them from a single dashboard like Magento Security Center.
On the other hand, OpenCart does not provide frequent updates and security patches. Its frequency is far lesser than that of Magento, which increases the risk of hacking and data theft.
OpenCart users must implement several third-party extensions to formulate a website’s security equivalent to any Magento website. Incorporating these add-ons is risky too.
Magento has imposed stringent security measures for screening the add-ons available in its marketplace. But OpenCart does not implement any such checks.
Therefore, an always-up-to-date eCommerce platform like Magento is the best choice compared to OpenCart. Hire a trustworthy Magento web development company to secure an eCommerce website.
5. Magento vs OpenCart – Extensions & In-built Features
In-built features are a crucial considering factor in the eCommerce platform’s choice. Basic features may be good enough for a startup, but well-established businesses prefer feature-loaded platforms, which allow checking additional add-on costs.
Magento is suitable for large-scale businesses. Hire a Magento developer to develop new extensions according to business requirements. Features like Order Management System are user-friendly to access in Magento but rather complex in OpenCart.
Magento provides an extensive list of in-built analytical and reporting tools or features compared to OpenCart. Using these analytics, a company can deduce a better understanding of customer actions to improvise personalisation and marketing strategy.
Magento provides superior features to manage multiple inventories efficiently. It also provides customised search features to improve search results. All of these prove the effectiveness and usefulness of Magento over OpenCart concerning extensions and in-built features. Hire a Magento web development company now.
Ready to choose?
In nearly all aspects, Magento is superior to OpenCart, even if it requires technical expertise or outsourcing the project to a Magento web development company.
Initially, OpenCart may seem budget-friendly. But in the long run, in terms of scalability, performance and security, Magento will easily outperform. Compared to OpenCart, Magento has been extremely SEO-friendly from the very beginning.
Both platforms offer paid versions to extend the website’s functionality and expand the feature list. Magento meets all expectations in this area as well.
