Magento vs Open Cart – Choosing the Right Ecommerce Solution
Choosing an ecommerce solution isn’t easy with all the excellent options out there. Many times, businesses have to decide which is the best choice for them and they are all a little different. Whether looking at Magento vs. Open Cart or BigCommerce vs. Zen Cart or any of the other choices, it’s important to figure out what you need and how the ecommerce solution will address your issues..
A Closer Look at Magento
A Closer Look at Open Cart
With Magento, you gain a professional system for online retailing. The place in which Open Cart falls short is exactly where Magento continues to provide benefits. You can take your business to a higher level with Magento and you gain many great SEO resources from the system. There are no design restraints and you can create a fully customizable shopping experience.
The advantage of Magento are numerous including nearly unlimited control over the way your shopping cart will look and how the user will interact with it. You can use content marketing within the system and you have complete control over the SEO settings of the system. The URL you use is search friendly and you can even use tagging for larger SEO benefits.
Within the system, you gain enhanced benefits, such as order history, product comparison, smart customer accounts, recently viewed products and more. This gives you plenty of power and they even provide you with award-winning technical support. Reports can be pulled for inventory, low stock, sales and product search, along with the ability to support multiple online stores from one administration area.
One of the major benefits is the way you can incorporate eBay, PayPal, Mil, Where, RedLaser, GSI Commerce and Magento together. This gives you a type of power you just cannot get with Open Cart.
If you have a small budget, Open Cart might be the right choice. This is a powerful ecommerce solution and geared towards start-ups. It also only requires a small investment compared to some of the other choices.
When you look at the features of Magento vs. Open Cart, you gain specific advantages from Open Cart. Many find it easier to set up and use, but it is a little bit limited on the high end. You can download it free of charge and they provide plenty of upgrades and support. The system is considered a lightweight system, which is easy to host.
The control panel is made for new users and many find it to be self-explanatory. You can find plenty of tutorials within the developer community and you’ll be able to accept PayPal, WorldPay, SagePay and many other forms of payment through Open Cart.
However, with any system, there are some limitations. Open Cart is a bit restrained when it comes to search engine optimization and you can’t use a custom URL. Some of the pre-installed options are limited and you won’t be able to customize the template as much as you can with Magento.
What’s Rigtht for You?
There’s no system out there considered as a one-size-fits-all, but there is a right system for your needs. As you go through the decision making process, you need to consider a few specific questions, including:
Are you planning to work with a professional web development company?
Do you need a custom solution or is it more important to get product online fast?
Which countries do you plan to sell your products in?
Does SEO factor into your marketing strategy?
Will you run just one store or multiple?
Do you need great support?
What type of budget are you working with?
