Adobe Ecommerce (Magento) Review

Update on 9/5/2024

Magento Review – The Perfect eCommerce Solution?

In terms of self-hosted solutions, Magento is undoubtedly the most well-known ecommerce platform. First released in 2008, it was purchased by eBay before being sold to Adobe. Magento processes approximately $100 billion in gross product value each year.

Generally, ecommerce platforms can be categorized into three groups based on programming experience: platforms that require no experience, some experience, and lots of experience.

Even though Magento fits within the latter category, Magento is used on 20% of all online e-commerce sites. Magento’s adaptability and versatility are two of the reasons behind this.

Magento allows you to add almost any sort of feature to your site, which is why so many large and fast-growing companies choose it. In this Magento review, we’ll discuss the services that Magento offers, the advantages as well as the disadvantages, and other e-commerce features it possesses.

Features Table:

Here’s a key features table for Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) with ratings based on performance, flexibility, and popularity in the e-commerce world:

Feature	Description	Rating (out of 5)
Customization and Flexibility	Adobe Commerce offers extensive customization options. It’s an open-source platform, allowing businesses to customize storefronts and functionalities freely.	5/5
Scalability	Designed for businesses of all sizes, Adobe Commerce can easily scale to handle small stores or large enterprises with high traffic and complex operations.	5/5
SEO Optimization	Built-in SEO features allow for better search engine visibility. It offers URL rewrites, meta tags, sitemaps, and more, ensuring a high level of SEO friendliness.	4.5/5
Performance and Speed	While it offers strong performance capabilities, optimal speed often requires proper hosting and additional performance optimizations.	4/5
Security Features	Adobe Commerce offers advanced security features like two-factor authentication (2FA), custom admin URL, and regular security patches to protect your store.	5/5
B2B Features	The platform has robust built-in B2B capabilities, such as custom catalogs, pricing, and buyer roles, making it ideal for B2B e-commerce.	5/5
Third-Party Integrations	Supports a wide range of third-party integrations for payment gateways, CRM, marketing automation, and more through its marketplace and APIs.	4.5/5
Multi-Store and Multilingual Support	Adobe Commerce allows managing multiple stores from a single backend and offers multilingual and multi-currency support, perfect for international expansion.	5/5
Mobile Responsiveness	Fully responsive design ensures that your store looks great on mobile devices. Mobile performance can depend on theme optimization.	4.5/5
Analytics and Reporting	Advanced reporting and analytics tools are available, providing insights into sales, products, customers, and more.	4.5/5
Cost	Adobe Commerce’s enterprise solutions can be expensive, especially for smaller businesses. However, the investment is justified by its vast capabilities.	3.5/5
Support and Community	Adobe offers premium support for enterprise clients, and the platform has a large community of developers and contributors for help and guidance.	4.5/5
Marketing Tools	Includes features for promotions, upselling, cross-selling, and marketing automation tools, integrating with Adobe Experience Cloud for advanced marketing.	4.5/5

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

This table provides a quick look at Adobe Commerce’s features, with the highest points given for its flexibility, scalability, and security, making it a top choice for medium to large e-commerce businesses. However, the cost and performance optimization requirements might be a consideration for smaller stores.

What Does Magento Offer?

Magento, also known as Adobe Commerce, can be used in two ways. You can download it at no cost and install it on your own server, or you can use it as a hosted server. In this case, you don’t need to install anything. However, the price will be significantly higher.

Magento is an all-inclusive e-commerce platform. However, it is a rather sophisticated solution as there are almost no holes in the features that Magento offers. Thus, the platform can be a challenge if you don’t have any web development experience.

Magento is an excellent platform for a well-established store. However, if you own a small company and you’re a complete beginner to e-commerce, it may be better for you to look into cheaper solutions.

But suppose you have a stable income and an established business with enough time on your hands to overcome the initial learning curve. In that case, Magento might just be the perfect e-commerce solution for your online business.

Magento is also capable of handling a significant number of customers, items, purchases, and transactions. This is thanks to the richest feature sets available in e-commerce solutions.

Everything is covered, from advertising to consumer segmentation. With tools for Google sitemaps, Google Content APIs, and search engine-friendly URLs included in the open-source Magento, you can work on SEO strategies.

Coupon codes, customer groups, product bundling, and newsletter management are all marketing and conversion strategies included on the platform.

When it comes to features, the list is vast, but here’s a quick rundown of the most crucial ones:

• Conversions, marketing, and promotions
• Catalog management
• Catalog management
• Catalog and Product browsing
• Payment, checkout, and shipping

Magento Advantages

Besides the vast list of features, Magento has other advantages that contribute to its superiority over a quarter of e-commerce websites.

Flexibility and Customization

This platform features a straightforward user interface with a variety of customization possibilities. You can change the code, adjust layouts, and modify the features to your liking.

The API-led design makes it easy to integrate third-party software like CRM, ERP, and payment gateways.
This will help to keep your website running smoothly without any slowdown. Magento can be customized to fit the needs of any retail business.

With the open-source system, you can even select templates and extensions from the Magento marketplace. Although some of the themes on this website are free, expect to pay for the best ones.

ThemeForest is another site to find templates. It’s also a great place to look at user reviews and ratings to help you make judgments. Prices begin at $60 and rise to $100.

Note that picking a Magento theme won’t magically transform your website into exactly what you desire. It takes knowledge of PHP and a few other programming languages to make changes.

 To solve this, Magento introduced a new Page Builder extension to upgrade the layout and customization features of the builder.

It’s simple to change the content categories on a website using this drag-and-drop solution. In addition, it reduces the need for scripting for end-users and allows you to see live previews of the shop.

However, you will need to download an additional extension, which may be inconvenient for some clients.

Great Scalability

All online retailers’ worst nightmare is a laggy, unresponsive website. With the Magento ecommerce platform, you won’t have to worry about that. Whether you’re selling 50 or 2,000,000 SKUs, Magento can handle it with ease and without the need for extensive performance adjustment.

The platform can handle 500k+ commodities and thousands of transactions per hour on a single server with enough RAM (32-64GB).

A Big Community

More than 360,000 forum users, 8,000 certified developers, 5,900 contributors, and 1,150 partners are available to you through Magento.

Many third-party suppliers also adapt their systems to meet the platform needs of Magento. Furthermore, the platform provider is invested in its merchants’ success and hosts meetings, conferences, and contribution days.

Merchants gain from the popularity in two ways. First, you won’t have any trouble hiring a vendor to help you run your business.

Additionally, a large community of developers will assist you in quickly resolving any Magento-related issues. The platform is offered in a variety of languages, including Spanish, French, and others. However, the content is only in English.

SEO Friendly

The method of bringing your website to the top of the search results page is known as SEO (search engine optimization). An e-commerce platform’s native SEO skills will help you get on Google’s, Bing’s, or whatever other search engine your clients currently use.

Metadata for the homepage, product/category pages, rich snippets, and prefixes and suffixes for title tags are all built-in Magento features and advantages. You won’t require any further extensions or models.

Mobile Friendly

Consumers are increasingly focused on their mobile devices. Failure to implement a mobile-friendly website means losing a marketing game. Smartphones have become vital in every point of the purchasing experience, from brand recognition to price discounts.

Magento provides all of the capabilities needed to create a mobile-friendly ecommerce site for iPhones, Tablets, and Android smartphones.

A Magento PWA Studio, on the other hand, allows a merchant to enhance the customer experience by creating a dependable, quick, and interactive mobile app. Magento’s mobile-friendly capabilities become a genuine benefit in an age where mobile users spend more than 90% of their time in applications rather than mobile browsers.

Magento Disadvantages

Magento has a few disadvantages, especially for users with no or little programming experience.

Skill Requirements

Magento requires some practice to master, and coding skills are essential. Building a Magento store for a beginner retailer with no technical knowledge will be difficult.

The learning curve for Magento development is significantly longer than for other apps. This implies that the process of creating your website will take longer. That said, customers typically agree that after you’ve gotten over the learning curve, you’ll get a significant return on your investment.

Hosting

Magento customers, unlike Shopify and other e-commerce solutions, must host their websites on third-party servers. It can be hosted on a VPS (Virtual Private Server), cloud, or dedicated server. The platform supplies the essential software but is not liable for the technical aspects.

Many users are unfamiliar with domain names, hosting services, and so on. Hence, prior knowledge of hosting is necessary.

Magento Ease of Use

The administration and everyday operations of Magento are pretty straightforward. However, the initial setup and customization procedure is complex. If you have little to no expertise with web design, it’s recommended to hire a developer to assist you in creating and implementing your business.

The best approach to experiment with the program without downloading it is to go to a partnered website with a functional demo. In addition, there are a variety of third-party experts available who would gladly assist you at a reasonable cost.

Magento Pricing

Magento has several versions to choose from. The first is known as Magento Open Source (formerly the Community Edition). It is an open-source offering that is freely available. As a result, anyone may get the software from the Magento website.

You may also sign up for a free demo of the Magento Commerce plan, but you must send a message with all of your contact information.

The Magento Commerce package is a robust platform for large and rapidly expanding companies. It’s not fair to compare it to Volusion or Shopify because the possibilities with Magento are limitless. Keep in mind that Magento Commerce’s price is often tailored to each firm and might become prohibitively expensive.

Magento requests that you contact or email them to ask for a price as configuring Magento for large businesses needs some advanced technical skills.

This implies that each client receives a separate quote based on the size of the firm. It has been estimated that you may get an offer of anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 every year.

Consider moving to Magento if your company is fast developing and has a strong cash flow. It’s one of the greatest options for growing your internet business.

If you own a small business with a limited or uncertain cash flow, you could use the Magento Open-Source version – but only if you or someone on your present staff is a developer. If you don’t have access to a low-cost developer, you should avoid Magento.

Payment Processing

You can take all types of orders available right out of the box with Magento regarding payment processing. However, you have to connect to a payment gateway to process the card payments for most clients.

Thanks to the partnership with PayPal and Braintree, Magento offers an integrated processing option. However, you’re not bound to it.

You can search the Magento marketplace for payment connector extensions. You’ll find more than 50,0 results to choose from. The average price for these extensions is around $700, but the costs can differ from zero to $3,000.

Although there are free options, don’t forget to research each processor’s price structure. Keep in mind that credit and debit card payment processing isn’t without cost.

Even though PayPal, Braintree, Square, and Stripe have put processing connectors at your disposal with Magento Open Source, you still have the option to add your own integration. A developer can help you to do so.

Inventory Management

Magento inventory management enables various changes to track which products flow in and out of your shop.

You may, for example, check on back-ordered products and adjust the minimum and maximum quantity values.

In addition, to keep complete control over your own website, you can sell downloadable items in your shop, assign infinite product attributes, and even censor product tags and reviews.

You may also connect to a broad range of sales outlets, such as eBay and Amazon. The Magento connection is fantastic as it syncs all of your inventory with the website. As a result, your clients will not be purchasing out-of-stock items.

Another aspect of Magento inventory that is handy is automation. For example, algorithms are used to calculate shipping and taxes.

You may also provide your consumers with one-of-a-kind purchasing choices, such as an inventory site search and an immediate purchase button. Global selling also gives you a considerable advantage because you can deal with numerous languages and currencies.

Analytics and SEO

Magento connects with Google Analytics and provides built-in reporting, allowing you to examine information such as sales, taxes, abandoned shopping carts, and more.

Thanks to the automated and regularly updated reports, you will be able to access and analyze data anywhere. You will get started with up to 100 commerce reports and dashboards.

It is also possible to export your data and visualizations outside of the platform. There is also Magento’s report builder that allows you to make advanced analyses.

The great thing with Magento is that you don’t have to rely on other marketing solutions to obtain anything you want, from email marketing to site advertisements. Unless you go in and adjust things yourself, SEO is automatically configured.

The opportunity to upsell items, offer special pricing, and distribute coupons are all marketing advantages.

In addition, the email marketing platform is convenient, and the multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts encourages consumers to spend a little more to qualify for those discounts.

Some of the most complex marketing functions are still available only to Magento Commerce users. The built-in customer loyalty features are a perfect illustration of this.

If you’re only using Magento Open Source, the best option for you would be to find an add-on or to hire a developer to create your own loyalty program.

Finally, both Magento versions feature mobile optimization and regular SEO tools. So, you can relax knowing that search engines are discovering your site and that everything is displaying correctly on smaller devices.

Security

If anything happens to your website, Magento provides services to help you fix it. They have an entire Security Center devoted to this function. Magento charges between $1,000 and $5,000 for SQL injection issues.

Unfortunately, you won’t have the same security if you’re using Magento as an open-source shop. It is your responsibility to install your own SSL certificate.

All Magento sites must be PCI compliant, which means that consumer information is not kept or shared without their knowledge. However, you must ensure that you follow the guidelines to make your site compliant.

The good thing is that Magento 2 has some solid tools to secure the client buying experience. Two-factor authentication and Google reCAPTCHA, for example, are standard features of the Magento 2 system.

You can also increase your security with the aid of a Magento developer or by reviewing the guidelines and best practices on the Magento website.

Magento Support

Customer assistance is practically non-existent with Magento, as it is with other open-source platforms. For retailers using Magento Open Source, there are no help options through live chat, email, or phone.

You can contact Magento via phone or email, but only for sales-related inquiries. Most of the individuals you speak with on the phone are salespeople trained to get you signed up for Magento Commerce, not to assist you with a crashed website.

You’re mainly on your own if you have an issue with any area of Magento or how your website is working. As a result, this isn’t the best e-commerce platform for novices.

You’ll have to make do with the Magento website’s resources and the advice of your community. The problematic aspect here is choosing which resources to employ.

Users must rely on the materials offered on Magento’s website. Fortunately, there is an active user community that can assist you through forums and paid support.

Make sure your search for solutions focuses on resources appropriate to the version of Magento you’re using — Magento Open Source vs. Magento Commerce, Magento 1 vs. Magento 2, and so on.

Is Magento the Perfect Solution for You?

Magento’s powerful feature set and ever-expanding pool of add-ons and extensions make it a dependable solution for many shops looking to expand. But it is definitely not a perfect solution for everyone.

As mentioned in our Magento review, the price is somewhat on the expensive side. Therefore, it is best to evaluate your company’s needs and capabilities.

For example, if your income is not stable and satisfactory and you don’t have the proper skill set, the platform may be too expensive and time-consuming for you.

However, after some practice, the essential business operations are pretty simple. So, if you’re willing to work your way up the fairly steep introductory learning curve, Magento might be the solid software solution you’ve been waiting for to start your online store.