[Comparison Guide] Layered Navigation for Magento 2: Amasty, Webkul, Mageplaza, Mirasvit

Layered Navigation is one of the basic functionalities for any Magento 2 store. But statistically, only 16% of websites have an intuitive filtering system that improves their user experience.

For this article, we compared 4 Layered Navigation extensions by Amasty, Webkul, Mageplaza, and Mirasvit to tell the difference and help you choose the one that suits the best. 

Amasty Improved Layered Navigation

Amasty Layered Navigation comes in 3 plans: Lite, Pro, and Premium. This concept was used to make this extension affordable for businesses of different sizes and financial space. Every plan varies in the set of features and price. To make our comparison with other extensions complete, we’ll take the Premium plan. 

Read more about Amasty’s 3-plan concept→ 

Navigation features

This module covers basic and advanced needs. Let’s see the most valuable ones, for example, 5 filter display modes:

• labels
• drop-down
• images
• images and labels
• text watches.

A store owner can choose a mod that fits their store layout. Also, to save space and not to divert users’ attention, they can configure dependencies between filters so that dependent filters will be shown if a user chooses the value of the main filter. For the same purpose, they can fold all the filters or set how many filters to keep unfolded by default and create horizontal navigation blocks:

Of course, the filter multiselect is also available. Thus, if a user is looking for several options, they can pick them all at once.

If a store has filters with a long list of options, a store owner can enable vertical scrolling with a search bar for them. Moreover, they can create attribute mapping. For example, having grouped all the shades of blue, you can show a user looking for a blue sweatshirt results that include all the possible options:

SEO features

Amasty Layered Navigation allows creating SEO-friendly URLs  and customizing metadata for filter results and brand pages:

Also, this extension adds canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content on a Magento website and rewrites the meta robots tag.

Shop by Brand features

For a multi-brand store, there are brand filters that can be added to a store navigation panel and Brands dropdown for the top navigation menu:

Also, there is the “More from this brand” block that can be added to product pages together with brand logos and links:

User experience features

Finally, this extension has multiple tools to provide users with a seamless shopping experience. A store can use smart quick filters like ‘On Sale’, ‘New’, ‘Rating’ and ‘Stock’, display the number of products available with this filtering option, use price sliders, ranges, and “from-to” widgets for numeric attributes. 

Users can change filter values on the fly, thanks to the AJAX technology that speeds up the filtering process. With AJAX, users don’t wait until the entire page is reloaded, as this extension reloads changed information only.

Infinite Scroll 

Infinite Scroll browses new products on demand when the user scrolls to the bottom of the list or when they click on Load More. So, new products appear without reloading the whole page. This feature is available for category and search result pages.

Go to Improved Layered Navigation by Amasty→ 

Mirasvit Layered Navigation 

Layered Navigation by Mirasvit has one pricing option and comes with free installation and configuration services. This extension includes many similar features:

• multiple filter options
• AJAX navigation
• price slider
• filters by new, “on-sale”, stock, ratings
• SEO URLs
• horizontal navigation
• infinite scroll
• branded pages.

But let’s see what makes this module different.

First off, this extension can keep recently used filters and offer them as quick navigation options:

Also, this extension has more design customization options. You can choose the colors of borders and other details.

Finally, the biggest difference is that this extension includes the Improved Sorting module. It enables additional sorting options for customers and store managers like:

• Sort by Bestsellers
• Sort by Top Rated
• Sort by Reviews Count
• Sort by Biggest Saving
• Sort by Most Wished For
• Sort by Most Viewed.

Get Mirasvit Layered Navigation Magento 2 Extension

Mageplaza Layered Navigation

Layered Navigation by Mageplaza also comes in 3 plans: standard, professional, and ultimate. To make conditions equal for every module, we will consider the advanced version.

This extension keeps up with competitors in functionality. Let’s quickly go over those functions that are similar to other modules:

• AJAX page loading
• multi-filter option
• price slider
• SEO-friendly URLs
• ‘Shop By’ options
• images in the category tree
• product count.

This module stands out with 6 types of sliders:

• default
• flat UI
• HTML 5
• modern
• nice white
• simple dark.

Also, this plugin supports custom CSS, so you can design your filters to make them fit your corporate identity.

Moreover, the Ultimate version has Shop by Brand and Advanced AJAX Search included.

The search tool is a valuable addition to the navigation system that can improve user experience. With this tool, a Magento store can present 10 specific products in the dropdown when the user clicks on the search box. In doing so, store owners can stimulate sales of new arrivals and best-sellers.

Go to Mageplaza Layered Navigation for Magento 2

Webkul Advanced Layered Navigation

Finally, let’s see the AJAX Layered Navigation by Webkul. This extension is the most basic one. It includes only must-have features like:

• horizontal navigation
• multi-filter support
• AJAX loading
• price slider.

And in addition to them, this module offers the filter by attribute in the carousel. This is a customizable widget that can be configured in the admin panel:

Get Webkul Advanced Layered Navigation Magento 2 Extension

Summing up

We gathered 25 core features of these navigation extensions and compared them in this table:

As you can see, Amasty Layered Navigation Premium has the richest functionality compared to other popular options on the market. It has the most powerful set of navigation features, SEO part, and comes with other extensions, like Infinite AJAX Scroll and Shop by Brand.

But the final choice is always yours. We hope that this article will help you choose the option that suits best your business needs.

Author: Polina Kratovich

Bio: Polina is an Amasty technical writer. She is passionate about explaining complex products in simple terms. She likes to help other people and navigate them through tangled technical details.