Magento & Mobile osCommerce – Where Lies the Difference?
No one can deny the popularity and prevalence of online retail and e-commerce with sales increasing by billions of dollars year after year. Double digit growth is expected to continue, so opening an e-commerce shop can be profitable. But which e-commerce solution should you use, Magento or osCommerce? The following information will outline the difference between Magento and osCommerce, as well as their good and bad points. You can also visit site Mobimanage.com for more details.
Magento Features and Versions:
Magento is open source, and it comes in three versions. Community, Professional and Enterprise and each one can be customized to suit your needs. Magento also comes with a shopping cart for free and each edition has support as well as chat support in forums.
Besides the free Community Edition, there’s also Magento Professional which comes with revenue generating features as well as Reward Points, Increase Customer Retention and you also have the option to sell gift cards and certificates.
The Professional Edition also has a Store Credit module and superior data encryption which is essential for the satisfaction and peace of mind of your customers. The professional edition of Magento has a licensing annual fee of $2995 and has a host of interesting features. The Community Edition also has many notable features.
Magento Enterprise:
The Magento Enterprise has all the features of the Community and Professional Editions and begins at $12,990. Aside from having all the features of the other editions, it also comes with automated marketing reminders, customer conversion, and more. The Enterprise edition of Magento, in other words, is very complete, and something that few platforms can compete with.
The Enterprise edition can also make sales pages that can only be viewed by users you target. Each version has its own set of different features that make it easier for entrepreneurs to use. The fact that there are different versions means you have more options.
Magento Pros:
One of its strong points is Store View which lets you set up several stores in one administrator area, even if the products and prices are the same and in different languages. Another nice feature is the back-end, which is better organized than osCommerce. The majority of items you need are covered comprehensively, and it also has re-writable URLs, handy for optimization.
Magento Cons:
Magento is very powerful but it requires dedicated servers to operate particularly if you are running several shops. Also, it will take some time before you can use all its features and it isn’t easy to learn particularly for those who are new to e-commerce. The other things you need to remember is that the platform needs competency in server side programming, client side and design programming.
osCommerce Pros:
osCommerce is an open source online store and e-commerce program. One of its biggest advantages is the large number of modules, so there are plenty of customization options here. In addition, these are also easy to add and administering them is quite easy.
Another benefit of osCommerce is that you can translate it into other languages. Because it’s been around much longer than Magento, it has a development work board, community, bug reporter and knowledge base. Another benefit of osCommerce is that the reference files are in text format, so you don’t have to worry about the file being corrupt.
osCommerce Cons:
The biggest problem with osCommerce is that it’s old and it doesn’t have as many updates as Magento does. Also, if you need to change the code; it’s going to take some time, which can be a hindrance if you need to customize it. Moreover, osCommerce’s attributes system isn’t as good as Magento’s as there is no SKU identifier or stock control attributes. There’s also the fact that a lot of other e-commerce platforms have overtaken it in terms of features.
Magento and osCommerce Head to Head:
Aside from the pros and cons, here is a comparison of their other features. Magento has a nice template that you can work with, and the multi-store capability is also a nice feature as well as a 40 hour developer course to help you get started. There are also lots of extensions for Magento.
osCommerce on the other hand, doesn’t have any graphic templates so modifying it for design purposes can be difficult, and unlike Magento, it takes a lot of time to install the add-ons. These add-ons by the way will cost money. But as pointed out earlier, the biggest disadvantage here is that it isn’t updated that often.
Bug Fixing and Code Updating:
Magento may be one of the newer shopping carts, but it has already established itself and actually, a lot of osCommerce users have switched to it. There are many reasons for this, aside from the ones mentioned earlier. For instance, Magento is based on newest object orienting standards.
And as mentioned earlier, the developer is very active in fixing bugs and updating the code. Unfortunately, the same thing can’t be said for osCommerce. Few things are important than a secure platform, so the bug fixing aspect is vital.
Conclusion:
The bottom line is that Magento is the better choice. It’s not just because it has more features, but it’s also newer and has more options for advanced e-commerce operations. As anyone who is into e-commerce will tell you, updates and support are necessary for success and Magento has the edge here. The frequency of the updates, the nice template and wide support makes it an ideal e-commerce solution.