Every business is different, so when you’re choosing an ecommerce solution to serve as your company’s virtual shopping cart, you want to take a good look at all the options. There are a lot of aspects to consider, from pricing and ease of use to SEO customization and technology. Magento and nopCommerce come from different ends of the ecommerce pool. Magento is one of the most established ecommerce support companies, while nopCommerce is an open source shopping cart program. So here’s what you need to know when considering Magento vs nopCommerce.
Overview of nopCommerce
nopCommerce is an open source ecommerce solution, which means it is available for free. It’s easy to set up and customize and has a whole range of features including mobile commerce, one-page checkout, gift cards and a lot of other both basic and more advanced options. Of course, as free open source software, it can be buggy at times. You also have to do your own hosting, there isn’t very much support available, and you have to use Microsoft licenses. On the whole, however, it’s a really solid shopping cart software solution that is incredibly impressive considering the fact that it’s free. When you are comparing Magento vs nopCommerce, nopCommerce can definitely stand on its own.
Overview of Magento
As one of the big names in the ecommerce software business (it’s owned by eBay), the standards are probably a little higher when considering Magento vs nopCommerce. Magento actually has a free community version that can be a solution for the extremely tech savvy, but they also have a heavy-duty Enterprise option. Magento is an ecommerce solution that is generally better for designers and developers who want unlimited customization options and know what to do with them. They also offer Magento Go, which is more accessible, but also has a fairly limited template and customization scheme.
SEO Customization
When you’re building an ecommerce site, you can’t underestimate the importance of good, flexible SEO. After all, your business won’t survive if the people who need to buy what you’re selling can’t find it. Magento has some really powerful SEO tools, including SEO friendly URLs, titles, and meta descriptions. nopCommerce doesn’t have SEO capabilities built in, but it is an open source software title, so there are plug-ins available that can add powerful SEO customization tools. Considering Magento vs nopCommerce for SEO, Magento’s tools definitely win out, but you can do a fair amount more than you might have thought with the open source option.
On the whole, considering Magento vs nopCommerce, both are ecommerce shopping cart solutions that work better for people who are already fairly tech savvy. If you can afford it and know how to use it, Magento is an incredibly flexible and impressive way to go. If you’re looking for something that won’t stress your business financially, you can’t do better than nopCommerce’s price of completely free. In the end, it really comes down to which features your business needs, so think long and hard about what will help you the most, and then choose the software that will work best for you.