Magento is one of the most outstanding programs for the implementation of online stores. Features of the e-commerce tool and why it is special compared to other open source solutions.
Magento is a software for the creation of virtual stores on the web, Open Source, developed with PHP. Magento’s forte is its wide range of configuration possibilities for sellers, who can customize all kinds of elements in online stores, from design to content or the sales model itself.
The list of possibilities that we can implement with Magento is too large and complex to reproduce it here. By way of example only, we could discuss the possibility of creating products, packs that associate several products, suggestions for similar products, a complete CMS for content management, customer tracking and billing systems, shipments in different ways, multi-currency so that the client sees the prices with the currency that interests him the most, multi-language, sale of virtual goods and products for download, etc, etc. In addition to all these features, another advantage that makes Magento special is allowing you to set up different online stores in their corresponding domains, and control all of them from a single administration panel.
We can find Magento in the URL:
Magento is an Open Source product, but it is not a simple system, quite the contrary. It is a complex system that is often difficult to install or configure without advanced knowledge of server development and administration. In fact, due to this reason, Magento already offers different types of licenses, one free and others paid, which have the possibility of receiving support for installation and configuration.
On the Magento pages themselves, they warn that the free version (Community Edition) is only recommended for those professionals who know how to find a life on their own, its learning curve is quite wide and you always have to be updated by its constant versions. Templates, for example, from version 1.3 were not valid for version 1.4. Perhaps this presentation discourages more than one person and causes them to lose some customers, fleeing to simpler ecommerce solutions, such as Oscommerce, PrestaShop… It is surely a strategy for many other customers to decide on the payment solutions they have a value starting at $3,000 per year.
You can see one.
The system can be installed on Linux servers and on Apache. We will need PHP versions 5.2.13 or higher, which also have support for some PHP extensions such as PDO_MySQL, simplexml, mcrypt, hash, GD, DOM, iconv, curl and SOAP. In addition, it will be necessary to have MySQL 4.1.20 or higher, as well as SSL in case we want to configure payment gateways or other modules that need to be encrypted for security. However, all these difficulties are gradually diminishing, since there are currently many servers that offer you the autoinstall and allow you to launch a Magento store almost automatically, which is not as tedious as if you had to do it yourself.
Now, if you don’t want to see yourself in the need to configure your own server, a simple solution within the reach of any pocket is Magento GO. It is an online service of hosted stores that we have been testing for a couple of weeks. It is undoubtedly an excellent option to check if you are interested in Magento, since you can initially try it for free and then, if it interests you for your business, opt for one of its various paid hosting plans. In the following article on Magento os .
conclusion
Magento is perhaps the most advanced solution to make an online store. It has a free option and other paid options that, honestly, seem expensive to start a business, especially if we don’t know if it’s going to succeed or not.
If you have a business that you want to put online and want to start with quality tools, in one of the best electronic store software, you will be interested. If you have the investment capacity, it may be more convenient for you to start with the paid solution, which has several additional services, but if you have a low budget, you may be interested in trying to install the free version, contract a hosting with Magento autoinstall or try its Magento GO service.
Magento has endless options for selling products that administrators of other ecommerce solutions will crave. There are many external companies that develop modules, or custom and quality extensions for the Magento community. Perhaps its excessive technical knowledge requirements and the complexity of configuring the store can subtract some points, compared to other simpler online store solutions. But the good thing about Magento is that, almost certainly, the person who has a slight idea of what he wants, will be able to find ways to do what he needs.
Finally, if you are not convinced because it is too complicated, you can switch to other simpler Open Source e-commerce tools, such as Prestashop.
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