Updated: May 13, 2022 
Magento is a popular choice worldwide and a longstanding giant in the ecommerce industry. Magento, an open-source platform, which means it is free to use, offers merchants the complete flexibility and functionality of the online store.
In fact, according to one source, Magento has around 736,435 websites, and we can see that 1.13% of the top 1 million sites utilize the platform. There are more than 250,000 Magento stores live on the internet. The largest percentage of Magento websites comes from the US.
As you are starting to develop your e-commerce store, choosing your platform becomes challenging. It offers you the required facilities, design, development, hosting, security, etc., at an affordable price.
Being a renowned service provider, Magento is a chief option because of its customizable nature, code-level access, hundreds of unique features, and hassle-free scalability; it is a favorite option among entrepreneurs.
However, it is not an ideal preference for every business professional. It is good to discover your option before hiring a Magento website development company and discover what else is dominating the development industry. Let’s deep dive into the top 5 Magento alternatives this year you might consider. Are you ready to make an informed decision to build your ecommerce store?
Magento Overview
Magento is a leading ecommerce platform and currently the most popular solution for ecommerce site development. Magento is free, having various features by downloading it from the official site. This means that whosoever has Magento software can change the source code to customize the shopping cart.
Magento Commerce on-prem is an on-premise premium option with added features and support. This premium version is only a choice for big enterprises as the monthly cost is high.
Magento Commerce cloud offers the same features as on-prem, but an enterprise need not self-host the website as it is cloud-hosted.
Furthermore, Magento is indeed a complicated platform because it is expensive, making it an option only for mid and large-scale organizations. But, we cannot deny that it is the best ecommerce platform available today.
The open-source nature of Magento gives you the access to design your store the way you want, without making any settlements due to constraints.
Why Look for Magento Alternatives?
Despite its prominent features, we cannot deny the Magento platform’s popularity, but it requires a huge development cost (hosting, design, maintenance, and security). In addition, its code is complex, and you need to understand it first to code.
1.Costly software:
Magento is for big-budget businesses, and the cost will depend upon Magento website development features and platform. Magento open source is free, but you need to pay the design and development fees to get your website live. Further, it will include the monthly hosting cost, which constitutes to be approximately $22,000 to $125,000. Magento Commerce Cloud will cost you more, around $40,000 to $125,000 annually.
2.Software development with Magento requires time:
Magento allows access to extreme customization, but Magento development professionals need around 6 weeks for a basic website to make complex changes so that there is no interruption in integration and data flow.
3.Slow speed:
With the help of Magento development, you can create a user-friendly website the way you want. This somehow becomes its greatest shortcoming because various extensions, plugins, and complexity may lead to failure in terms of speed. Thus, it becomes time-consuming for developers to optimize the website for speed.
4.Difficult to maintain:
Magento has thousands of characteristics that bring your site on top. But due to these factors, there may be bugs and technical glitches with the software. And to overcome these issues, the development team needs to keep timekeeping behind other important projects.
5.Platform upgradation issues:
If your website is developed in the Magento platform, you need to keep on migrating the website. For example, Magento stopped supporting sites with Magento 1 2 years back, and if there are any sites still with the old version, the risk of payment gateway and other issues like loss of extensions. Thus, if you are using Magento, you need to migrate the site to Magento 2 because of differences among platforms, and it will continue with the re-platforming.
What to look for in Magento alternatives?
If not Magento, where are you planning to take your business? Magento offers out-of-the-box e-commerce functionalities, so make sure to look for an alternative having these qualities. Depending upon your nature of business, customer base, and structure, look for something your ecommerce solution should fix.
Website builder features:
Magento has varied features to customize your website. Unless you have development skills, you must hire a Magento ecommerce development company to develop a customized site for you. So, accordingly, if you want an alternative, look for a user-friendly store.
Templates and themes:
Look for a platform with varied themes and templates with easily customizable options.
Easy plugin integrations:
Magento platform offers thousands of extensions, and that is what you must look for a range of and easy to install plugins.
Support:
Do you want a quick response to your queries with Magento? In that case, consider a platform that offers 24/7 support and resolves your issues.
Payment gateways:
Payment gateways are a pain to integrate with your ecommerce store, but it’s best to look for a platform that offers pre-installed payment processing, for example, Paypal, Stripe, and Apple Pay, Venmo, and more. Also, make sure the alternative platforms cover the transaction fees.
Best Magento Alternatives: Top 5 Competitors
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an open and flexible Saas platform that offers owners of an organization an ecommerce website solution that presents them with beautiful templates and reliable uptime.
If you are an entrepreneur and want to start a new business or migrate your website to big commerce, it is ideal for an ecommerce store as it offers various built-in tools and features to scale your business. It comes with customization features, letting you build your online store easily and increasing the store’s visibility to sell on an online marketplace like Amazon.
The tool helps increase your store’s visibility by letting you link and sell on online marketplaces, such as Instagram or Amazon.
Features:
- Theme customization available
- Integration with top marketplaces such as Amazon and more
- Scalable product
- Access to detailed reports and eCommerce analytics
- Shared SSL certificate included with subscription
- Multi-language and multi-currency support
Advantages of Bigcommerce platform:
- Allow you to launch your new business website quickly and efficiently.
- Built-in tools are easy to use and have various out-of-the-box features.
- Robust SEO benefits.
- WordPress integration for CMS
- Customer support is available 24/7
- Flexible APIs, open-source software-like experience
- Multichannel selling
- No transaction fee
Disadvantage:
- BigCommerce doesn’t offer native multi-store functionality
- The free trial is for a shorter span
Pricing:
Bigcommerce offers a free trial for 15 days, then afterward standard plan costs $29.95 a month, plus costs $79.95 a month(unlocks marketing tools), and the pro costs $299.95 a month (best for business scaling).
Shopify
Shopify is another best ecommerce website builder. It has been a powerful Saas option for small and medium businesses since 2004. It is an ecommerce solution with free, premium customized templates and theme options with drag-and-drop features.
Also, it offers an easy-to-use UI and various tools required to develop a successful online store, including an app marketplace with a dashboard that displays valuable information about an overview of your business health.
Shopify offers built-in SEO tools and marketing tools for running a successful marketing campaign. Talking about payment gateways, with Shopify, you can choose Payments and Shopify Pay to give all the options to the customer while making a payment. It is PCI compliant and assures secure payments, and allows you to sell on digital channels like Amazon and Instagram.
Features:
- Option to sell unlimited products with free shipping or with flexible shipping rates
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth to support a big product catalog
- Mobile optimized themes
- A free SSL certificate
- Various gift cards and discount codes
- Automatic tax calculator at checkout
- Numerous sales channels to increase sales
- Security for a safe shopping experience for customers
- various payment gateways
- Multiple language support
- Dropshipping integrations
- SEO optimization tools
Advantages of having a Shopify platform:
- Ease of use user interface.
- User-friendly designs for businesses
- It can be integrated with other platforms
- An ideal choice for small and big businesses.
- Robust ecommerce features.
- 24/7 support for email, phone, and chat
- Various SaaS benefits such as PCI compliance and an uptime record.
Disadvantage:
- Professional functionality requires add-on cost.
- Shopify charges transaction fees to let customers use a payment gateway other than Shopify payments.
- If you are not using Shopify Shipping, providing real-time carrier quotes to customers is expensive.
- High app cost.
Pricing:
Shopify offers a free trial for 90 days without any credit card requirement, making it a worth trial. After completing the trial period, the basic plan costs $29 a month, Shopify costs $79 a month(tools to grow your business), and the advanced Shopify costs $299 a month (Advanced features for business scaling basically for large scale businesses).
OpenCart
OpenCart shopping platform, founded in 2005, is a powerful platform for ecommerce websites. It is quite common with the Magento platform as both are open-source; as a Magento development company, professionals use PHP code, and Opencart also uses the same language and templates to upload products.
Other than this, OpenCart offers varied customization options, which is a plus sign for experienced professionals, but for a non-experienced person, it will be a daunting task.
Features:
- Product reviews and ratings
- Multi-store management with one admin interface
- Add product Variables
- Simple administrator dashboard
- Website back-ups and restoration
- Discount and coupons options
- Guest checkout
- Regular payments
- Themes from third party web design agencies
Advantages of choosing the OpenCart platform:
- Easy transition from Magento because of similarities in platforms
- Multi-language and currency options
- Multiple template options
Disadvantage:
- OpenCart features are expensive
- Additional development and support costs, i.e., $99 per year
- Limited preference for built-in marketing features
Pricing:
OpenCart is free to download, but various themes are paid. Also, you need to pay a monthly fee of $99 per month for any technical glitch and hosting, security, and domain fees.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a popular platform for ecommerce websites. It is a trusted plugin for WordPress today, making a wordpress website a robust store. It is customizable, has an open-source CMS, and has a simple interface for all business sizes.
WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform and powers around 30% of stores online. It allows access to extendable functionality and various plugins, product filtering tools, unlimited images, products, galleries, built-in payment processing, and extensions. It is said to be a similar alternative to the Maganeto free plan for your ecommerce store.
Features:
- Flexible and secure payment gateway like Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Paypal
- WordPress’s expansive content marketing features
- Automated tax and live shipping rate
- Option to sell goods both physically and online
- Inventory management tools
- Multiple themes available
- WooCommerce marketplace for store enhancements, marketing extensions, and more
- SEO optimization tools
- Analytics and reporting
- Plenty of marketing tools and features
- Customization options
- WooCommerce is multilingual and has multiple currencies
Advantages of Bigcommerce platform:
- Free plugins, but domain hosting, theme, plugins are paid
- Access to WordPress blog and content management features
- A large number of plugins
- No transaction fee
- Part of an extensive WordPress community
Disadvantage:
- Heavy dependence on the development team
- Limited support available
- Only available for WordPress users
- Technical knowledge is a must as it is not user-friendly
Pricing:
It is free to install, but you need to invest in extra features like hosting ( $35-$50 annually) and extensions ( $0 to $299), theme design ($39+), security, and website maintenance.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
WooCommerce Commerce Cloud, later known as Demandware before its acquisition in 2016 by SalesForce. It is another SaaS ecommerce solution with popular customer relationship management (CRM) systems and offers great freedom to your ecommerce store.
It delivers customers a personalized shopping experience by utilizing visitor information in the best possible manner. It is the ideal solution for larger businesses, and to use this platform; you need to have some programming knowledge.
Features:
- Multi-site management available
- Marketing and merchandising tools for campaigns
- Real-time reports
- Order management features
- Best CRM solution in the world
- Various integrations and extensions
- Comprehensive development platform
- Cart recovery feature for lost sales
- Fully customizable platform
Advantages of Bigcommerce platform:
- Best SaaS, scalable, agile, and secure platform
- Advanced personalization option
- Best for B2C and B2B ecommerce businesses
- Robust merchandising features
- Good omnichannel features
- Easy to set up an ecommerce store for people not many tech-savvy people
- Responsive mobile design
Disadvantage:
- The user interface is difficult to understand, and hard-to-access features
- Not good for small businesses
- Slow customer support service
- Proper training is required to understand the platform
Pricing:
Salesforce B2B Commerce editions charge $4/order while B2C costs 1% gross merchandise value, and B2B2C Commerce pricing is the same 1% Gross Merchandise Value as B2C.
Conclusion
There are a lot of alternatives for developing your ecommerce store. Thus, it is best to look out for your requirements and research the platform considering various best factors for your business.
Remember, Magento is not the first and last option. You now can select from the 5 alternatives to Magento we have discussed in the article. Select the platform according to your business needs, and launch your ecommerce store now!
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