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Who are / What is Magento?
Magento is an e-commerce platform, purchased by Adobe in 2018, and built on open source technology with almost 200,000 merchants globally.
Magento provides online merchants with a flexible shopping cart system, as well as control over the look, content and functionality of their online store.
Magento offers powerful marketing, search engine optimisation, and catalogue-management tools.
Who uses Magento?
Companies of all sizes use Magento from owner managed start-ups to enterprise level global brands.
Their decision will depend on which plan is selected that directly correlates to the amount of time available, having technical awareness/experience is advised .. or leave it all to us.
If you choose Magento you'll be in great company with leading brands such as Nike, Land Rover, Ford, Nespresso ... with this roster of clients you're in good company.
Magento Flexibility
Magento's ability to scale allows shops with only a few products and simple needs to easily expand to tens of thousands of products and complex custom behavior without changing platforms.
It offers a variety of plug-ins and themes which can easily enhance a customer's experience.
There are a lot of aspects to the online store which need to be configured. When it comes to custom functionality, however, that is where more complex programming is required.
Magento Plans
Let's investigate the Magento plans and highlight the difference is between Open Source and Magento Commerce
1. 'Open Source' - Licence is free to download.
This is a starting point that provides Checkout, Catalogue and Oder Management, Site Search, Instant Purchase, Global Selling and access to the App Marketplace to increase functionality. No direct Magento support is available but sourced via the community network or us.
Depending on your needs and budget the store will still need to be designed or a theme purchased, installed and customised. In addition the correct hosting solution, of your choice, is a requirement.
2. Magento Commerce
This solution is for mid-sized to enterprise level companies or start-ups/small businesses that are time restricted but have the budget available.
The licence costs are based on GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) which is the value of total sales, and has a minimum annual starting fee of $22,000 of $0-$1m
As you would expect the solution is very comprehensive and includes BI (Business Intelligence) dashboards, B2B, Drag & Drop page builder, Product Recommendations, Advanced Marketing Tools and much more, including Technical Support, Success Manager
There are 2 licence options: 'Self-hosted' or 'Cloud'
'Magento Commerce self-hosted $22000+ p/a
All the features listed above but it's the client's responsibility for e.g. hosting, CDN, performance monitoring, enhanced security, PCI Compliance.
'Magento Commerce Cloud' $40000+ p/a
All the features listed above and the ideal choice for merchants who need an all-in-one cloud solution that is optimised for Magento sites, easy to deploy, provides enhanced security, and packed with additional integrated capabilities to accelerate sales.
Rounding Up
Magento is a customizable e-commerce software for businesses -- if you know how to use it.
If you're not tech-savvy, Magento may not be the best option for you. This isn't to say that you need to be a programmer or developer to use the software, but there is a learning curve for some merchants.
Compared to plug-and-play solutions, you'll need to invest a little more time customising the software before you launch.