Currently, on the market there is a wide range of solutions that will allow you to implement an online store, however, not all of them are a good option for developing an online sales business.

We have found it convenient to focus this article on two online store engines that will allow you to carry out a reliable, scalable, and powerful project: on one side, you have Magento, which is probably the most powerful and feature-rich platform for e-commerce-oriented cms, but it requires a higher investment than its competing platforms; and on the other, you have Opencart which has fewer features and is less flexible but it is also a very complete platform and it must be also considered.

Let’s see which one is the best.

Magento Vs Opencart

Magento

Overview (Magento Vs Opencart)

Magento is one of the easiest, richest, fastest-growing platforms in the world. Endlessly customizable and easy to maintain, offering customers a seamless online shopping experience. Owners can be in complete control and customize their eCommerce store.

It is a very popular online sales solution for merchants who want to have a robust online store.

Features

Promotions and marketing tools

• Flexible coupons (pricing rules) with the ability to restrict to stores.
• Customer groups, time period, products and categories.
• Promotional prices and catalogs.

Analysis and Reporting

• Admin panel for general report.
• Abandoned Shopping Report.
• The best clients report by Total and Number of orders.

Search Engine Optimization

• Google Site Map.
• URL Rewrite will give full control of the URL.
• Meta- information for products and categories.

Site management

• Control of multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel.
• Web services API for easy integration between Magento and any third party application.
• A / B and Multiple tests.

Catalog management

• Import and export of batches from the catalog.
• Google Base integration.
• Downloadable / Digital Products.
• The rules on advanced rates and support for special prices (see marketing tools)

Search by index

• Layers / carving navigation for filtering products in categories
• Layers / carving navigation for filtering products in search results
• Product comparisons
• Product reviews
• Multiple images per product

International Support

• Multi –Lingual
• Multiple currency support

Box

• One-page Checkout
• Order without account / Guest Order
• Shipping to multiple addresses in one order

Shipment

• Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
• Multiple shipments per order
• Free shipping

Payment

• Multiple payment options supported
• Payment extensions available through Magento Connect
• Configurable authorization and fundraising

Customers

• Account re-orders
• Downloadable Products
• Last requested articles

Orders management

• View, edit, create and fulfill orders from the administration panel.
• Create one or more invoices, shipments and credit notes for the purpose of allowing division fulfillment.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Search system in Ajax.
• Design and development of multiple virtual stores, sharing everything in a single administration.
• It supports around 60 languages, multiple currencies (euro, pound, Colombian peso, etc) and taxes (VAT).
• Layer navigation allows the user to customize view options by categories. This means that products can be organized by colors, sizes, personal options, etc.
•  Magento community version comes with web services. This flexibility allows external applications to access Magento data without the need to alter a single line of code on the website.
• The permitted protocols are SOAP and XML-RPC.
• Magento incorporates SEO (Search Engine Optimization) from the start. Friendly URLs that make it easy for search engines to index the site you are creating.
• Offer real-time pricing for your transportation services, you have additional options like multiple shipping addresses or gift message to place an order.
• Varien’s team has designed a structure of three main sections: core, functionality and design. This allows images and CSS to be easily modified without affecting the functionality of the site. You can also customize or complete Magento by creating “local” modules or from Magento Connect download “community” modules without altering the core of your virtual store.
• Magento community version is licensed under Open Software (OSL), this means that it has no cost and also generates a large online community that can help you in your project.
• It has the Mobile Commerce option pre-configured from the moment the installation is performed.
• It allows integration with various ERPs (for example, Oracle, SAP, Great Plains, MAS 90/2000, Netsuite, Quickbooks, Peachtree, etc.).

Cons

• Flexible but complex environment, difficult to learn and dependent on increased server resources.
• When Magento code is modified to customize it to the needs of a business, it can lead to significant increases in the response time of the platform.
• Magento has a complex structure, which makes customization settings take longer and cost more money.
• Magento requires a lot of processing on the server where it is installed compared to other online store platforms.

Why Choose Magento?

It is a solution that provides merchants and companies selling online flexibility and control over the appearance, content and functionality of their store, giving them the ability to create sites that are tailored like a glove to their particular business needs.

Compared to Opencart, Magento stands out for its diversity, i. e., it offers more extensions related to aspects related to critical points and the operational logic of the company such as:

• Multichannel, modules to manage points of sale from another terminal (for example a physical point of sale or update sales from a telephone channel), although it is a disadvantage, Magento is, compared to OpenCart, the solution that can best address this kind of problem.
• Support and CRM, ticketing systems for incidents or customer control.
• B2B, diversity of functionalities for wholesalers who want to sell to their retailers.
• Integrations, Magento integrations with other systems such as ERPs, CRMs, payment methods, or logistics operators are much simpler and less expensive.

Opencart

Overview (Magento Vs Opencart)

OpenCart is an open source eCommerce solution, very light and rich in functionality.

We can think of OpenCart as an alteration of Magento for small and medium e-commerce stores since with almost the same characteristics it is lighter in load.

Here we would like to highlight some of the features of an online store in OpenCart.

Features

Product Management

• Unlimited Categories
• Unlimited products
• Unlimited Manufacturers
• Downloadable Products
• Related products

Store Management

• Design using templates
• Multiple stores

SEO

• Friendly urls

Sales

• Collection in one stage or in several
• Charging without registering on the guest page
• Gift messages / Gift wrapping

Shipping

• Multiple shipping methods
• Billing / shipping addresses

Payments

• Payment modules with different providers.
• Taxes by countries.
• Various types of currency

Marketing

• Product reviews
• Product Ratings
• Discount coupon system

Customers

• Customer groups with group prices
• Tracking orders
• Returns management
• Quantity discounts

Translations / Localization

• Multi-Language
• Multi-currency

Safety

• PCI Compliant
• SSL support
• Error log

Analytics / Reporting

• Sales reports
• Products viewed
• Products purchased

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Set unlimited categories that give great extensibility to OpenCart websites.
• OpenCart has no limits on the number of products.
• Establish multiple languages and multiple currencies to ensure global reach.
• Opinions about products and ratings that make the shopping experience more complete.
• Numerous payment options.
• OpenCart offers quick customization through numerous modules, add-ons, and plug-ins.
• It has very few templates to customize the online store.
• Few accessories to give it a different look.
• Some versions are vulnerable to attack

Cons

• It has very few templates to customize the online store.
• Few accessories to give it a different look.
• Some versions are vulnerable to attack.

Why Choose Opencart?

OpenCart is one of the most widely used solutions in the world to launch an e-commerce with advanced features. It is free software that we can use and customize in any type of project, even the most demanding. In addition, OpenCart is another of the applications available in the Arsys Cloud Servers Application Catalog, so we can install it in minutes, on a high-performance, secure and flexible platform.

If what you are looking for is a multi-store with unlimited use, Opencart is for you since there are no restrictions on the use of our virtual store, being able to support any number of users, products, etc. Also, we can manage several virtual stores, it has dozens of payment method integration alternatives, from gateways to systems such as Paypal. It offers a desktop from which the store is managed, it allows us not only to manage products, but also users, access reports, etc.

In addition, OpenCart is a widely used solution all over the world, which allows us to find a large community that publishes all kinds of solutions, documents and tutorials to be able to configure anything we propose.

Conclusion

In case you don’t have budget problems, Magento is for you because it is a bit more expensive than Opencart because it offers more options. Also, in case your company/store is large, Magento is the most chosen since it has more capacity to support the growth of your business. However, if your company is smaller, it is convenient to start with Opencart since its use is also very simple. The choice is in your hands.