Magento Reviews

I work mostly with clients who have online businesses and clients who are entrepreneurs who have new online businesses and want to expand them. I sit down with these clients, understand their business, and lay out their online business plan. We set up a framework for the business, then we set up their website and application so that they can sell their products online, very conveniently. I provide a solution to ensure that any brand, user or online merchant can sell their products online.

I am self-employed, but I do have a firm set up here in India for tax purposes. There are certain rules and regulations regarding taxation so my firm who provides certain additional support when we have a large set of tasks and work to support. I do work by myself most of the time, but there is always additional support if there is an influx of tasks or assistance needed.

Mostly, the clients need an e-commerce solution; whoever has an offline business or has any stores or physical setup, but they want to venture into an online business to sell their products. These clients use my services to set up their online business. A few examples would be grocery clients want to sell their products online, or clients from the clothing industries, or from the mechanical industry who have their own registered instruments and they want to sell online. In those cases, they use my services so that they can set up an online shop where they could conveniently manage their inventories and I would be able to handle their online sales. These are the areas where clients use us as a service provider.

I'll share an example of a site we helped. This is one of our premium clients who only had a physical shop selling fitness equipment within Australia. We understood their product structure. We determined how conveniently and how easily they can set up their online business. We figured out a plan and set it up. Their shipping and payment methods were previously handled via phone and email orders and inquiries. Instead, we streamlined their business to their online presence. Now with the website, all of their offline orders have been converted into the store business and their sales are improving 60% year on year and now they are one of the premium brands selling gym equipment across Australia. That's how we scale this business within the span of two to four years.

I have around another 10 to 15 examples like that.

I'll share another from the US. The company works in feeding equipment and they had certain trademarked products. The problem with their business was that they were not getting coverage. We set up the shop and we ran different online campaigns and did some social media promotion. Now almost 90% of their business has gone from retail to online. That was one of the agreements and they were very happy about. Now they can handle everything in one warehouse whereas earlier they had four to five warehouses because of the retail ordering. Now this online ordering has helped them reduce their cost substantially, by at least 60%. Additionally, their online sales are tied up with FedEx shipping so they also got preferred shipping rates for delivering those items. That's how we helped them on the gross margin level, increasing their sales six to 7%. Our margin on products was somewhere around 12 to 13% and now it improved to around 18 to 20%.

Magento has quite a few valuable features. Magento provides a strong backing, meaning it can handle the order processing, customer management, configuration, third party payment integration, and shipping matters. There is a standard, very well set up architecture already present in Magento that helps them set up their online shops with much precision. Clients can see their reports, their daily sales, their best selling products, and their best buying customers so that they can target them through mails or just follow up with them. These are the main default features which make Magento so attractive.

Magento can be set up on the cloud, a shared system, or any dedicated system. It's not SAS based but other than that it can be set up on any kind of server. It just needs to ensure that the server supports certain parameters but that's easily doable on the modern servers.

Magento has a solution for every business scale, but there were a few issues in the framework itself where there were minor performance issues which they are now working on. Hopefully within six to seven months, if those performance issues are fixed, they will provide a more flexible headless e-commerce approach to their framework, then there will be a greater scope for them overall to be on the larger scale. They are already a competitor with Shopify, but this can put them more on point on to the merchants.

Because Magento is relatively new, even though Magento 1 has been in market for 16 or 17 years, Magento 2 is only three to four years old, so it is an evolving technology. In certain areas on the front there were some glitches. For example, you can't do certain kinds of filters on data and you have certain speed issues on category pages due to the way it was written within Magento. Those were a few minor tweaks where we, as a community, found that to be a necessary scope of improvement. But I think they are working on it and hopefully they can solve these issues earlier than later.

I am a Magento certified professional and I have been using Magento since 2012, around seven, eight years. My area of expertise includes everything with Magento, even a headless e-commerce approach and development in other frameworks like full commerce, WordPress and others. But my major expertise is Magento development and design.

It is very stable. It's in league with any major e-commerce framework. I would say stability-wise, it has improved drastically in the last six, seven months with its latest updates and improvements. To prove on this argument, you can see Magento is constantly rolling out security patches and performance updates through its open source platform. (Ref URL:- https://devdocs.magento.com/gu...). With strong developer community working towards goal of stability, it is likely to get much more stable reliant in next six-nine months.

Magento is a fully scalable framework. Right now you can use it for any scale of business.  Magento has two types of solutions. One is community and the other is enterprise. The community edition is for slightly smaller merchants that have revenues somewhere around $30,000 to $50,000 per month. And the enterprise solution is for customers who have sales somewhere around a million dollars per month. They do have various options for each kind of merchant. So this framework can handle our requirements depending on the merchant and what scale of business he has.

Depending on the scale of business, normally what happens is that a small merchant has a manager who probably handles the online order part and another who handles the promotion part. So for small stores, I think three to four people are more than enough to handle the back end. But on large systems, normally 10 to 15 people are employed to handle the back end of the system.

A small merchant is one who has sales of around or below $15,000 US dollar per month and larger ones where the sales are around the half a million to million dollar mark. That is the larger scale of businesses. That's where a lot of different things need to be done on a regular basis which is why they employ people to handle different parts of this tool.

I have actually used the customer support. Magento has an extension system also, where you can publish your extension and sell it in your own way. During that time I have used their technical support for enterprise solutions, they have their own technical support that is very dedicated and professional and works 24/7.

I have worked on Shopify, Ruby on Rails, and on Laravel. Also on an Angular JS has NJS frameworks. The difference between them and Magento has evolved very rapidly in the last six, seven months in the handling of the scalability part of the business. With other frameworks what happens is, after achieving a certain scale, you might have to migrate to either custom e-commerce or get onto a Magento or a similar kind of framework that can handle a B2B system or large enterprise system. But with Magento, there is a greater level of flexibility when we have to scale our business. That's one of the major differences I see. I would say Magento is slightly complex at the code level for shop owners or merchants to understand, but if you have a reliable partner or development partner who can work along with you, then it's worth the time. That's one of the cons also, because shop owners cannot do all the things like they can do in Shopify or any other straightforward e-commerce platform. But in Magento he would need a development partner to handle those stats.

The initial, basic setup setup is more open and straightforward. A single business day will be enough to set up a straightforward shop and then we can do the customizing part after depending on the client's requirements. That's how we do it.

The basic deployment is straightforward, but the specific solutions and how the shop should be set up is done on a client to client basis, depending on their requirements. We actually modify it to the UI's, and the behavior of the shop, depending on how the client wants it. But I would say 60% to 70% of process is straightforward and identical for all the clients.

Magento is an open source framework. For the community edition, anyone can set up shop and use it. But overall what you have to keep in mind is just choosing the right solution within Magento also, depending on the scale of the business. That's the only thing they would have to keep in mind.

They should have a ready-made plan or know if they want to integrate their shop or they want to use this solution, and they should have a proper plan before going ahead. That is because this is a slightly complex e-commerce system, so you have to be ready with all the requirements in very great detail, much more than just going randomly with notes. Everything should be well documented in the plan before the execution. If that's done, then I think Magento will help in a greater way to solve your problem.

Magento offers a certification program. I would say developers should learn the right way and they should get the certification. Those certifications help us to be a credible source so that merchants can approach us and you can get the work right away.

The lessons I have learned are that overall it is a good e-commerce framework and it helps to understand certain programming concepts in depth. Because e-commerce is a slightly complex framework, before giving any estimates or before determining anything, there is always a physical checkup needed to be done on the server or whatever shop the person is trying to set up. On the personal side, it has helped me to evolve as a programmer because the program metric concepts are all getting used here. So it's a great framework for all the developers who want to work on proper programming and want to do things the right way. For them, it's kind of a knowledge bank. It has been helpful in learning other e-commerce frameworks more efficiently once I had a full knowledge of this framework.

On a scale of one to 10, where 10 is best, I would rate Magento as an eight. It has already achieved what needs to be done, but I feel that to get a nine, they have to do certain things right, and I hope they will be able to achieve it within six to eight months. It is a good product to have for businesses who want to set up online businesses. That's the main unique selling proposition of this product.

I was working as a service delivery manager in the Middle East. That's where I did Magento implementation for B2B. Currently, I am refreshing my knowledge. I am using the open-source version.

One of our clients was the largest radiator manufacturers in the Middle East. They were into manufacturing radiators for trucks, cars, and construction equipment, and they wanted a solution to reach out to the B2B market in Europe and other geographical areas. We did a Magento implementation with just B2B functionality, which actually helped them to get more traction. They started getting quite a lot of leads through online channels, and they had their marketing team engaged. Previously, they had to send their salespeople literally all over the northern part of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. After implementing Magento, they could get a lot of potential leads.

As compared to platforms such as ATG or Commerce Cloud, its interface is easy to use. Magento also provides seamless administration for business users. 

You can also integrate an OMS to an extent. You don't need to have a dedicated OMS. You can leverage the out-of-the-box features of Magento, which is very valuable for startups. Other platforms, such as Commerce Cloud, don't have an OMS, and you have to have your own OMS solution.

I am still playing around and trying to catch up with the latest version to understand all the features, but I do feel that its CMS can be much more streamlined. They provide a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor, which many customers prefer, but based on the implementations that I have done for more than seven years, I have seen that many times, it is run by the marketing team, and they don't find it very comfortable to use. They feel uncomfortable managing and changing the content. As a business user, you need to have at least basic knowledge of HTML, which you cannot expect from all marketing teams. Some companies or organizations have that competency, but many organizations, especially in the Middle East, have a very small team, so it becomes quite difficult for them. This is a common challenge that I have seen across the platforms. Magento is better and easier than Oracle Commerce Cloud, but Shopify is much easier than Magento. A layman or my 10-year-old kid can go ahead and set up a store in Shopify in probably 45 minutes, which is not the case with Magento.

Elasticsearch has really been a pain. It takes a toll on the performance. Starting with version 2.4, Magento requires Elasticsearch, which has been causing a lot of serious performance issues. We had a client in the US who was running a promo, and they lost a subsequent number of orders over one and a half hours. They were on the enterprise platform, not open-source. The team had to open a ticket with Magento. Its performance needs to be upgraded, or some kind of guidelines have to be provided for the setup. It looks like even Magento has no clue. When you go through the answers given in the online community, it seems that in spite of having the hardware configurations that they suggest, it is not performing at the optimal level.

It should also have a better way to measure performance. Performance measuring has to be much easier. Many times, we see CPU utilization going up and down. We see spikes without any reason. Therefore, we need a better performance management system.

I have about four to five years of experience in using this solution.

It is not stable.

Its scalability is actually good. You can start with the open-source version, and as you are scaling up, you can move to the enterprise version. Both options are there. In the enterprise version, you also get other benefits and advanced features. So scalability-wise, it is good, but there is a cost for scaling.

In terms of the number of users, we had the end-users and business users. The number of business users varied from four to ten. Up to ten business users were added for managing catalogs and content and for administration and other aspects. You need one person for deployment, code fixes, and maintenance. Apart from that, you need people for testing and catalog merchandising. A very small organization would require six to eight employees.

Their enterprise platform support has not been great, but it has improved. As compared to Oracle and other platforms that operate on SaaS models, Magento support is better.

Their response is great. They normally provide immediate responses, but when there is an infrastructure issue, there are delays. I have seen them taking days to get back. There have been instances where we had the Customer Success Manager from Magento sitting with us on calls for eight hours to ensure that somebody from their side delivers a solution. They just need to handle the infrastructure issues better.

It is slightly complex, and you need technical knowledge. It is not as easy as Shopify, where you just log in and create your domain and a store. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to set a store up in Shopify, and you can then start playing with its interfaces and other things, but that's not the case with Magento. It took me a couple of hours to set up Magento.

For deployment, it definitely requires at least one Magento certified lead or a senior developer. 

Many implementations were open-source. We also had a couple of enterprise-level implementations, but I didn't have visibility on the licensing cost.

I would recommend this solution, but if you are not technically strong, I would suggest Shopify.

I would rate Magento a six out of ten. It is a decent choice.

Magento 2 is basically a B2C solution for online retail shops. Our clients are majorly small to medium-sized businesses who are using this product to sell online and manage their orders. They also manage their products, catalog, and customers using it.

Our company includes a structure that caters to the needs of companies who are already using Magneto 2. We have a development team, a DevOps team, and a marketing team. We provide all of the services required to manage, maintain, develop, and implement this solution for our clients under one roof.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its modular approach.

The ecosystem includes thousands of vendors who are providing third-party add-ons. For anybody who is implementing this solution, they can easily get these extensions for a very cheap price, or even for free, from the market. This provides good value to small and medium-sized customers. Not only can they build a system at a cheap price, but they can get it live very quickly.

Many of our clients integrate this with third-party ERP and accounting applications.

There are multiple areas that are in need of improvement because even a small or mid-sized business requires features that are not included. Some of our clients need a CRM, which is not available in Magneto. Others need a complete accounting system, which is also not available by default.

Because of these missing components, we recommend our clients use third-party applications like QuickBooks or Odoo ERP and integrate them with Magento. However, if Magento provides us with these types of features then it will be a win-win because the customer won't have to integrate other systems to achieve the same functionality.

The performance is a bottleneck in Magento and there is a lot of room for improvement in this regard. There are multiple modules that come with Magento by default that are not needed by every business and should be removed. I have seen that in the newer releases, they are already starting to improve this.

Our clients for this solution are small to mid-sized businesses that have their own customer base.

Compared to other platforms, the initial setup of Magento is definitely complex. However, when I consider the value of using this application, I think that spending some time on the initial setup and configuration is worth it. It is not a waste of money because it is a very good solution and brings a lot of value.

Our development and DevOps teams implement and deploy this product for our clients.

Magento 2 provides very good value.

The cost of implementation is cheap compared to other solutions.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Magento is used as an eCommerce platform.

The solution's valuable features are the presentation layout and ease of use. When we have new people joining the team, it is simple for them to get involved very quickly.

The data analysis could be improved. The data that you receive whenever you go into the backend of the platform for the analysis is very simple and basic, it could be a little more sophisticated in order to be closer to the client. The data analysis and intelligence of the platform could be better.

Magento should have a totally SaaS solution that is cloud-based instead of memory-based. Additionally, there should be guaranteed updates on an annual basis. Salesforce Commerce Cloud has these features and that is why they are popular.

I have been using Magento for approximately six years.

We were using Magento subversion one, and then we chose not to go forward with Magento phase two because our understanding was that the new platform of Magento two was not as stable as one was. We are now switching from Magento to Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support has to go to a partner company, it is not directly related to Magento. It has to go to the development company and depending on that development companies ability will determine the level of support you receive. Partnering with a good company is important for support.

The price of the solution currently does not make sense because there are too many platforms that are very low scale, easy to use, and plug and play, such as Shopify or WooCommerce. These platforms are really easy to start with. If you are a starter company, it does not make sense to go with Magento. If you are a large company, you would want a higher scalability solution, such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud.  

At the moment, Magento is stuck in the middle of a nobody-wants-me market. 

We are currently evaluating Salesforce Commerce Cloud to replace Magento.

I rate Magento a six out of ten.

My clients use this solution for an e-commerce platform, mostly for retail.

The most valuable feature in this solution I have found to be that I have the ability to find all the analytics that I need. It has very good integrations with social media platforms and other tools. From the client's point of view, it is customizable, it has high performance, you can find a lot of tools and install them, and the developers are happy with it too.

The analytics are good but there is room for improvement. There are some limitations due to new regulations causing customer data time delays.

In a future release, I would like the solution to be easier to find tools. If you are new to using it, it can be difficult. Additionally, there could be some additional training material available.

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

The solution is stable even when you have a large product catalog.

My clients have found when it comes to scalability the solution can expand well. I had one client who created his own plugins for the solution. It is similar to an open-source platform. The solution is geared more towards larger product-sized companies. I would not recommend it for those having more than 1000 products. However, it does operate well for all-size companies.

This solution is cheaper than some of its competitors. However, the price depends on which country you are in. In some countries, such as Greece or some Southeastern European countries, the price for the client can be expensive. If you look at the center of North America and the North European countries, I think the price is very reasonable.

I have evaluated Shopify.

I think it is one of the best e-commerce platforms right now along with Shopify.

I rate Magento an eight out of ten.