Should you manage your eStore
with Magento Open Source?

Most of the eCommerce fraternity understand the basic difference between Magento Open Source and enterprise edition (If not, please do read our blog). Free is always good, right? Who loses this opportunity like – an open source software, which can do almost anything. But, as a famous yet very old saying “as you sow so you reap”, the simpler the process, the more your business grows. We intend to investigate, in this article, whether you should manage your eStore with Magento Open Source or not.
Magneto is considered too technical to develop by a single person and it is not cost-effective. I say- this is an absolute “myth”. Not, because we run a Magento consulting company, our comments are based on our association with many Magento store owners. Our customers who faced many issues earlier with other eCommerce platforms have finally concluded that for them – Magento is the only option that could serve them best.
Let us first give you four prime factors helping you to decide Magento is the right option for you to opt.

• If you have an extremely unique representation of products

  The below image is a product from one of our customer who sells products relevant to kids younger than 5 years. They have a unique representation of product display. For each product, they display a video of a how-to-use video, different parts associated with the product, etc. This type of product presentation is preferred as the products pertaining to kids, which are extremely important to handle with care. One has to know completely about the product before anyone buys one. Source: Qhousekids.com

• If you have extremely unique products to sell

  Another customer is a US-based largest wheelchair van marketer. Owing to their products, they need to highlight the details about mobility equipment and features. The end customer can analyze based on those factors mentioned.
  Source: MobilityExpress

• If you have complex marketing and sales techniques

  One of our clients is a professional music equipment seller, which are used in live concerts and high-end production facilities. They have a Magento Store and have storefronts in marketplaces like eBay and Amazon. Along with those, there is an online marketplace called reverb.com to buy and sell new, used, and vintage music gears. Importing and exporting the product details to these marketplaces, dealing with special discount offers through coupons, references etc., requires complex and custom business workflows.
  They also have a shipping policy with a fixed warehouse. Managing the shipping and inventory also requires certain automation. For all these features to execute in an online store- Magento serves the best option.

• If you have self-labeling and packaging

  Click2mail is involved in labeling and packaging of printed marketing materials. They have strategically located printing plants and share the materials like brochures, flyers with barcodes and mailing address.

Most wonder “Does Magento Open Source edition gives you the feasibility to serve the above 4 factors?”. This is important because you need the best possible platform to make your online store as your prime promoter.
Our answer would be – consider these two basic factors before your choice to go with the Magento Enterprise over the Open Source edition.

• User Freedom

  User freedom is all about giving the business user to experiment with business logic and implement all those he wanted to.
  Magento is built for marketers and eStore owners. You have flexible pricing rules applied to the products. You can play with couponing, referring kind of promotions, upsell, cross-sell and import related products with both the versions. However, when it comes to special premium packaging structure you need enterprise edition. Some of them like reward points, gifting options, price segregation based on prime customers, etc.
  For example, Didax is a book publishing organization helping educators to address diverse students’ needs. Didax has been publishing and distributing high-quality subject books, mind puzzles and games in the elementary subjects like Math, Reading, Science, and Art for Grades Pre-K to 12. They have also been providing student test software for schools for over 40 years.
  They have a unique and primitive pricing structure for different category of customers. Typically, their customers are schools, NGO’s, children healthcare organizations and individuals. They have special discounts, coupons, and rewards for each customer segments.
  Magento Open Source edition cannot support these kinds of business promotional and other related activities.

• Developer freedom

  Magento is built with PHP and it makes the platform extensively user-friendly. The code is exclusively object-oriented modular code. Traditional procedural codes run by a list of tasks. However, object-oriented modular code helps the developer to run the code through the objects interacting. The modular code helps a developer to upgrade the version easily by simply upgrading the files. Another advantage is the design files are maintained separately. There is an area where you can design front end separately allowing the designer to make changes in the design quickly.

An Enterprise edition can give you enhancements with tax calculations, social integrations, and separate administrator access rights with fully integrated backup systems.

Some Additional Benefits of Magento Enterprise Edition:

• Full-page cache:

  It is nothing but, storing the full output of a page in a cache. You must have seen websites showing a pop-up of having cookies. This is extremely useful when you are witnessing high volumes of traffic at peak times. The amount of memory use load the page when such huge loads occur is handled efficiently with this feature.

• Solr search:

  With a large number of benefits, Apache Solr search is a strong alternative to the standard search tool.

• Technology Integrations:

  It can easily integrate with another technology partner you have.

It is a tough decision to choose between community edition and enterprise edition unless you know the benefits in depth. You cannot expect some of the fine features that are required for betterment. However, it purely depends on your business need.
That might be the reason behind Magento being the favorite of large enterprises which handle multiple warehouses, inventory, multi-national stores (online & offline) etc. If you were in the bucket of above-mentioned characteristics, it is worth checking with Magento enterprise edition. Reach us info@i95dev.com to understand you really need and estimation required.