Open Source or SAAS is like Renting vs Owning your E-commerce store. What is right for you?
Open Source or SAAS platforms can be great for early starters. Maintenance, hosting, and analytics are all done for you by the platform. To check out our reason for going to Shopify, check out our Shopify and BigCommerce services (here).
But we are here to discuss why a rental platform can be shut off for any reason the software as a service company decides. This could be for a range of issues, political or high-risk reasons. When you use Open Source software, like WooCommerce or Magento, you own the code and can run it on any server or hosting company you want to use. If the hosting company doesn’t like you or your store for any reason, you take your code and move hosts. No big deal. Many companies, like NuEthic, have the experience to migrate your store to a new host.
Take Shopify shutting off CBD oil stores or the Trump store because they did not agree with them. That is like a rental and you have no control. This doesn’t happen when you own your E-commerce store. Many eCommerce owners are still having questions in their minds whether the highly popularized Shopify is the right way to open a new store or to go with another platform. In these unprecedented times, people have become increasingly wary of their hard-earned money to invest in online businesses. The possibility of a new wave of the pandemic is still breeding fear among investors. It leaves a cloud of doubt on whether they would face the challenge and risk opening an online business or skip on the opportunity.
The good news is: There is Magento and WooCommerce, both an open-source platform that no one can take down because they aren’t controlled by the BIG TECH Companies. If you are planning on building an online store, you need to consider these open source platforms. Below are among the salient features of both WooCommerce and Magento.
MAGENTO
1. Powerful Ecommerce Development Platform– Magento is a powerful e-commerce platform even when you are only a small business owner who aims to become big in the future. Whether you have a small or large number of products accommodated in your online store. Magento is going to help you by making you a powerful e-commerce store.
2. Advanced and SEO-friendly– With the help of Magento, the process of helping you become more search-engine-friendly is not a problem. In fact, it is a great advantage. With tons of extensions and plugins, you will have all the power at your fingertips to get your store indexed higher.
3. Fast Loading Web pages– The web pages are easy to load, making your customers stay for longer periods of time. The bounce rate is small because Magento is built to load faster than any other e-commerce platform on the internet. Helping increase conversions on your store.
4. Flexible Content Management– Content management is superb and very easy to manage using the content flexible content Management platform Magento designed for customers.
5. Support Multi-currency & Language– Wherever countries are you, the Magento management can support countries outside of the United States and elsewhere in the world.
6. Third-party integration– Third-party integrations are very much welcome in Magento development. There are online stores devoted just to selling integrations and extensions
7. It is an Open-Source Platform– Magento’s start was an open-source platform. Starting with developers who would volunteer their time into patching Magento. Since those days Magento has come a long way. Owned by Adobe now, Magento sports 2 options. One is open
8. Vast Magento community– Since its inception, Magento has had a large community following. You can always find help and useful information on help boards and threads.
9. Advanced Search Filtering – Like any other platform, Magento offers an affordable yet stunning web store. There is also advanced search filtering to help you convert more visitors.
WOOCOMMERCE
WooCommerce is another open-source platform that is now making waves in the community of WooCommerce users around the world. Let’s learn more about WooCommerce.
1. WooCommerce turns WordPress sites into a powerful online store– With WooCommerce and WordPress paired up they have been unstoppable, no wonder WordPress powers over 400 million websites.
2. Plugins-WooCommerce plugin has turned any WordPress site into one of the highly respected and famous online stores around the world. Since Woo is an open-source platform, it is free to Install. Thus, making it the most ideal and the best for conscious users. However, you also need to pay for hosting and security.
3. Ease of use for WooCommerce users – WooCommerce is a little tricky to set up but as easy to use as WordPress. Once you have WooCommerce set up you’ll have the ability to navigate and edit pages, even as a beginner.