The Bottom Line

There is a paid tier available for enterprise users, but at a basic level the software is free for you to use. Magento is used by massive retailers like Samsung and Nespresso, as well as countless small e-commerce operators, so it’s a serious contender for any business looking to make the move into online retail.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP.

More than 150,000 online stores have been created on the platform. The platform code has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, and $155 billion worth of goods were sold through Magento-based systems in 2019. As of April 2021, Magento holds a 2.32% market share in global e-commerce platforms.

Varien published the first general-availability release of the software on March 31, 2008. Roy Rubin, the former CEO of Varien, later sold a share of the company to eBay, which eventually completely acquired and then sold the company to Permira; Permira later sold it to Adobe.

Magento Pros & Cons 2022

Pros
  • Self-host on any PHP web hosting
  • Easy to find developers to customize your store
  • Free to get started
  • Large user community – the Magento Forum has a comprehensive answer for just about anything
  • Very flexible platform – there are no limitations to how you can design your store, as long as you know how to code
  • Ideal for medium to large businesses – an advanced platform suitable for businesses with their own web development teams, or that have money to spend on hiring a developer
Cons
  • Can be overcomplicated for smaller stores
  • Requires some technical knowledge
  • Unsuitable for beginners – you’ll need to know how to code, and the software uses web developer jargon that isn’t very beginner-friendly
  • Not easy to install – unlike other open-source software, it’s harder to find a hosting provider that will support Magento (SiteGround is one that will)
  • Not SEO friendly out of the box

Who’s Magento Ecommerce Platform best suited for?

Magento is a great platform for a shop that you know will do well. If you’re an ultra-small business making your first move into e-commerce, there may well be less heavyweight solutions that can do the job. But if you have an established model, the funding to back it up, and the time to mould and sculpt Magento to fit your needs, it may well prove the perfect platform for your online store.

Magento is also optimized to work with thousands of products, tons of traffic, and a big number of sales. In other words, it’s for the bigger e-commerce stores out there.

Features in Magento Ecommerce Platform

Here are the most important features of Magento:

  • Inventory management.
  • Handling shipping charges.
  • Coupon management.
  • Multiple payment gateway options.
  • API for web services.
  • 5,000+ extensions available.
  • Built-in multilingual support.
  • Optimized for mobiles and tablets.
  • SEO features built-in.
  • Customer groups.
  • Product bundles.
  • Newsletter management.
  • Marketing tools.
  • Site management features.
  • Order processing.
  • Customer service.
  • Gifts.

Magento Pricing, The Cost of Magento

I have good news and bad news for you.

  • Good: You can get the Community version of Magento for free. Just download it from the main website and install it on your web server.
  • Bad: The Enterprise version – the one that’s set up by the Magento guys for you – is a lot more expensive. In fact, the company doesn’t even list the prices openly on the website. To get a quote, you have to fill out a contact form and tell them about your business first. After that, it’s been reported that you can hear anything from $15,000 to even $50,000 / year.

Magento Usage Statistics 2022

Magento Usage Statistics: Worldwide

Here are the latest stats about Magento’s usage world-wide:

  • There are upwards of 267,000 Magento 1 & 2 stores live on the internet.
  • It’s used for 0.9% of all online retail stores.
  • It powers 0.6% of the internet as a whole.
  • Almost 100,000 of the total Magento stores run on Magento 2.
  • As of October 2022, Magento has a 0.9% market share of all websites that use a known content management systems (Source: w3techs).
  • Magento is downloaded nearly 5,000 times every day.

Magento Usage Statistics: Location

Here are the latest Magento stats pertaining to location*

  • The majority of Magento users are in the United States, with 59,739 sites on Magento 1 and 35,906 on Magento 2.
  • The country with the second most Magento powered websites is the United Kingdom, with 12,628 websites live there on Magento 1 and 8,601 on Magento 2.
  • Netherlands comes in third with a total of 10,644 sites using Magento 1 and 7,364 using Magento 2.
  • 9 of the top 10 countries for Magento 1 stores are in the Americas and Europe with the exception of #8, Australia. And it’s almost the same for Magento 2, which also include India in the top 10 countries.

*These figures are all taken from Builtwith.com for Magento 1 and Magento 2, and are correct at the time of writing (10/07/2022).

Magento Usage Statistics: Performance

And here’s the latest on the performance of retailers that choose Magento:

  • 202 Magento users are in the Internet Retailer Top 1000 list (Source: Maven eCommerce).
  • Magento continues to be used and trusted by some of the biggest brands on the planet, including household names like Coca Cola and Ford.
  • Magento handles $155 billion (USD) worth of transactions every year (Source: Web Tribunal).

Top Rated Magento Alternatives

  • Shopify

    Visitors:

    58M

    Price:

    Staring $29 per month

    Dropshipping integrations, omnichannel selling, built-in selling features

  • Wix

    Visitors:

    45.7M

    Price:

    Starting $16 per month

    All-inclusive plans, recurring payments, abandoned cart recovery

  • WooCommerce

    Visitors:

    2.7M

    Price:

    Free; $0 to $249 for extensions

    Transform a WordPress site into an online store, online bookings, sell subscriptions

  • Squarespace

    Visitors:

    34.4M

    Price:

    Starting $23 per month

    Free domain and SSL certificate, no transaction fees, award-winning templates

  • Square Online

    Visitors:

    36.4M

    Price:

    Free; $12 per month

    Free site, sell in store, sell on social, multiple delivery options (e.g., pickup, delivery, shipping)

  • Ecwid

    Visitors:

    3.3M

    Price:

    Free; Starting $12.50/month

    Turn an existing site into an online store, no transaction fees, multichannel selling

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