Magento and osCommerce: The Late-mover Advantage

  Mark  Wilston    August 20, 2012    736

 

There was a time when touch and feel was a must-do for customers before buying anything. That time is now gone, and today's world is witnessing a flourishing ecommerce industry. Thanks to Magento, osCommerce and other ecommerce platforms that helped merchants break new grounds in the ecomm world. But if we get deep into this world and have to decide between Magento and osCommerce, the situation becomes difficult. If we look at the popularity of both, however, Magento is way too ahead of osCommerce.

Magento (2008) came as a new player in the game that osCommerce was playing since 2000. But it soon became the top seed in the market. How? What are the major advantages and disadvantages of Magento – and of osCommerce, for that matter ?

Magento Community: A bigger one, a thriving one than that of osCommerce
There's no denying to the fact that Magento has a huge, thriving community. Magento Forum and Magento Answer are excellent places to find answers to all your issues. Magento Bug Tracking is another great way to depict and resolve a problem in your site. The community of osCommerce, though not as large as Magento's, has numerous relevant discussions going on at everyday basis and has also proved to be handy in solving the problems of users.

Magento provides you with a sea of features – But wait, is there any catch here?
Here you can not only find the major products of Magento but also easily compare them (on the basis of pricing and features). You'll observe that not all of them are free. Only Magento Community, which comparatively has very less features, lacks functionality and is recommended for developers only, comes free. The others (Magento Enterprise and Magento Enterprise Premium) cost you a good amount of money for that sea of features – like strong data encryption, targeted offerings, gifting options, reward points system, enhanced CMS etc. South Korean giant Samsung uses the enterprise version Magento.

There is another version of Magento, not free but relatively cheaper and specially designed for small businesses with big dreams. It's name is Magento Go – you must explore it, for you never know it might be the one for your business.  

osCommerce is absolutely free!  
On the other hand, osCommerce is completely a free software and you can see all its features here. Some of its major features are: SSL-based transactions, multi-lingual and multi-currency support, unlimited products, fast search, numerous online and offline payment gateways etc. It has always been a user-friendly platform, and its new version is coming soon in the market. However, it doesn't yet offer multiple store feature, which is also available in Magento Community. It similarly lacks features like cross-selling, image zoom-in, checking recently viewed products etc.

We hope we have given you a good overview of Magento and osCommerce. If you have any queries, you can ask us through your comments. 


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 Article keywords:
magento development, late-mover advantage

 


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