Magento vs WordPress

When you’re considering an eCommerce platform, aside from ease of customization, functionality, and cost, you should also consider your eCommerce goal. Do you intend for your business to grow, and if so, how large to you expect it to get and how quickly do you think it will take?

Some eCommerce platforms are geared towards small businesses that have a limited number of products and an equally limited amount of inventory. Others are geared towards businesses that plan to grow, increase their inventory, and expand their product offerings. When comparing Magento and WordPress, these are some of the factors that you should consider.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) and is used by individuals, large companies, and small businesses. For example, eBay uses WordPress for its blog. This is primarily what WordPress was designed for. It’s flexible, free, easily customizable, and has a wide variety of plugins and widgets to add functionality to your blog. It can be run with no programming experience whatsoever.

Magento

Magento, on the other hand, was designed for eCommerce. It has three different editions, each geared towards a particular market. Magento Go is for small businesses, Magento Community for medium-sized businesses, and Magento Enterprise for large companies such as Nike, which uses the Magento platform.

That’s not to say WordPress is not a good eCommerce platform. WordPress is easy to run, customize, and requires little maintenance. It’s easy to add products and to alter the themes to produce the presentation you desire.

Creating an eCommerce Site

To convert your simple WordPress blog into an eCommerce site you need only install a third-party plug-in. These plug-ins give you access to all of the tools you’ll need, including shopping carts, catalogs, and sales functionality. But if you plan to expand your business and increase your product lines, you may want to go with a platform specifically designed for eCommerce due to the limitations of plug-and-play functionality.

Because it was designed to be an eCommerce platform, Magento has the customizable functionality and appearance that you would expect for a platform that can grow with your business. If you expect your business and product lines to expand rapidly, you will need the ability to expand the functionality of your eCommerce platform as well. Magento has the features that can mimic what a brick-and-mortar store has, including inventory control, sales statistics, and other administrative management options.