Why choose Magento over WordPress for your Ecommerce Site

The war between Magento and WordPress has been in existence ever since these CMS platforms made their way into ecommerce. While WordPress supports MySQL and PHP language, Magento utilizes MySQL, PHP as well as Zend Framework. Magento also uses, model-view-controller and entity-attributes-value model to store in database.

While WordPress is a favorite for blogging platforms, Magento has carved out a name for itself as the better CMS platform for ecommerce sites. It is an open source cross-platform.  Both the platforms are highly SEO friendly and has huge user base.

Magento provides powerful features as well as control of marketers to manage their respective online stores. Magento provides its users with a huge range of shopping cart plugins and payment options. The Magento Admin panel is flooded with various forms of ecommerce plugins like shipping option, price management, inventory, payment integration and the likes. It is also a trusted site for secure payment integration. The easy customization and simple management makes Magento a preferred site for people who want to build ecommerce sites.

Magento is essentially divided into three parts.

Magento Community Version:

This is the open source version. Magento is considered the best tool for creating effective ecommerce sites. Magento community version allows developers to add functionalities, plugins and modules improving it regularly. Keeping it open sourced, has proved beneficial to the entire developer community who regularly use this CMS tool to build in ecommerce platforms.

Magento Enterprise Version:

Unlike the community version, Magento Enterprise version is not free. It actually has been created focusing on enterprise that prefers their ecommerce sites being created by a third party. Because, this site lets professionals develop sites for third party, hence you would find some added extensions and plugins in this version. Magento charges an annual maintenance fee for the interaction between the company that wishes to set up an ecommerce site, and the third party developer.

Magento Go:

This version of Magento is the least customizable. It works from a cloud base and permits web hosting. However because of the inflexible nature this is not used as the other two versions. This version is mainly used by small enterprise that works its way directly through the cloud.

Magento Inc however, plans to shut down the service of Magento Go in the first quarter of 2015.

Magento works on a more complex structure than WordPress. Hence if you as a developer have been previously familiar with WordPress, it might be a bit difficult for you to understand Magento’s workings. However, once you familiarize with the programs, you would be able to create more intricate and beautiful site with Magento. The static blocks in Magento help in controlling the design and elements in the theme. It separates the images and like files from other contents making editing of such files easier. These static blocks works in a similar fashion as “widgets” in WordPress. However unlike widgets that needs to be registered first, these CMS static blocks can be used first before being registered. However, if using in a template, you need to register in the theme’s XML files. Some codes that need to be manually added in WordPress are present in Magento by default. This saves time for the developers.

While WordPress is limited to a few number of PHP files, Magento is spread over a series of files and folders, which allows the developers a vast range of choice.

Using Magento to develop your eCommerce site is viable and logical because of the vast range of plugins and modules available to make it user friendly. With these creating a powerful ecommerce site with multiple features will be beneficial for your business.

About the Author:

Emma is a freelance writer who writes informative articles about Magento Website Development.