WordPress Vs Magento – Which Ecommerce platform is best for your new online store?
By Garth Howard
If you are currently operating a retail store or selling products online, you could be looking at integrating E-commerce functionality into your current website or business. If you have done your research you might feel overwhelmed with all the options available such as Magento, WordPress, Shopify and much more.
In this article, we will compare Magento and the combined solution of WordPress and Woo-Commerce as possible solutions. We will touch base on Shopify in our next article and compare all three eCommerce website platforms.
WordPress VS Magento
In our experience we have worked with both solutions and in principal they are relatively similar in terms of SEO friendliness, both can be customized and have a strong online community. WordPress and Magento are content management systems allowing shop owners, staff or your marketing team to be able to update content and products.
However, the main difference is the fact that Magento is exclusively dedicated to eCommerce and WordPress was originally developed as a blogging platform with CMS capabilities.
WordPress
WordPress is an easy to use open source blogging platform with CMS capabilities. Most of the World’s websites are powered by WordPress. WordPress combined with a 3rd party plugin such as the popular WooCommerce plugin can potentially deliver a fantastic eCommerce platform combined with the powerful content management and blogging functionality. WordPress also has additional plugins that can assist your business in reaching good organic search engine rankings.
Magento
Magento is also an open source platform and as mentioned above is exclusively dedicated to eCommerce functionality. Â Magento is a eCommerce platform trusted by some of the worlds largest brands ranging from small businesses to large retail chains.
Magento also offers a high level of customization and flexibility which allows merchants to align their eCommerce needs to their business goals. Magento provides rich features such as multi-store management, report generation, mobile commerce, marketing, Â search engine optimization advanced user management and excellent product attribution models. Â
Magento also allows for the creation of static pages, theme adjustments, static blocks and various content management functions. The recent Magento 2 upgrade has also had a major update in the usability and backend admin panel making it far more user friendly that version 1.
Magento is also by far the most secure option due to the high coding standards and robust framework. Magento has also recently released a security scanning tools that enables Magento merchants to regularly monitor their sites and receive updates regarding security risks, malware and unauthorized users. The security scan is a free service which can be run on both the Enterprise and Open Source Edition. In most cases WordPress has 3rd party plugins that you either need to purchase the security tools or use the limited unpaid features.
Purpose of your website
The purpose of your website is a big question and you will need to identify your goals and perhaps look at the future of your website as well.
- Do you want to sell virtual products? Virtual products do not require complex shipping arrangements, tracking of orders and can easily be done with WordPress using WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads. Magento can also cater for this however the cost of setup needs to be justified.
- Do you want to sell physical products? Both platforms can do this however the main question is how many products do you want to sell and how complex will your attribution model be. If you have over 500 products then the best answer is to go with Magento as your eCommerce solution. If not and you do not foresee growing your product base above 500 the WordPress will be a viable option.
- Do you want a multi vendor or marketplace? These are complex solutions and although WordPress can cater for this they are fairly far from perfect. Magento is by far the more robust system to offer you these solutions.
Here are some simple questions to ask?
- Will your shop contain more than 500 products?
- Will your store require multi vendors or a marketplace?
- Do you foresee yourself integrating a POS system in the future?
- Do you foresee yourself integrating your store with your ERP or logistics system?
- Are you expecting heavy traffic or are you already experiencing high levels of traffic?
If your answer is yes to most of the questions, then we would recommend Magento.
- Do you have a low budget ?
- Are you selling few products?
- Do you want to save on customizing your theme and avoid paying large sums for theme development?
- Are you looking at blogging and managing more content on your website?
If your answer is yes, then we would recommend WordPress.
Also note that combining WordPress and Magento could also assist your online venture and build a WordPress content engine to market your Magento online store.
NetMechanic offers both WordPress Solutions and Magento solutions depending on your business objective and requirements. We are also more than willing to advise and ask the relevant questions in order to establish the best solution for your business.
Please give us a call or make contact with us for a no obligation consultation.
