Shopify $1 For 3 Months: The Limited-Time Offer Is Back!
The Shopify 1 dollar 3-month deal is officially back from Oct 31, 2024. Now, all new merchants can enjoy 3 months of Shopify for $1/month. See how to claim the deal now!
Vinh Jacker | 10-01-2024
The Most Popular Extension Builder for Magento 2
With a big catalog of 224+ extensions for your online store
We’re living in the digital age where the role of websites for businesses is indispensable. Without a business website, you might lose out on opportunities to reach your target market and scale your online presence.
From the early stage with eCommerce, choosing the best eCommerce platforms is not an easy task, especially if you have to balance between the cost and web quality.
If you feel unsure and confused among the sea of available open-source eCommerce platforms in 2024 to consider.
If you’re looking for an economical solution when it comes to crafting an online shop, an open-source eCommerce cms platform might be a great starting point. For a non-tech-savvy person, the “open-source” term can be understood as:
The software whose original source code is developed freely available
Users can take, modify, or enhance the code however they like without any restrictions
Typically don’t have to pay a dime to download and use the code source to build your site
An open-source eCommerce platform, by means, is a piece of software that enables you to build a website and run your business online. In the long-run, the open-source eCommerce platform comes with more benefits than just being budget-friendly.
People choose open-source platforms since they are packed with unique features and developer-friendly.
Pros of open-source eCommerce platforms
No vendor lockdown: Any vendor developer can use or distribute the original source code
Huge support community: Though open-source platforms don’t have the support staff like enterprise solution, each goes with a dedicated community for fixed and workarounds
High flexibility: As there are no licensing restrictions, businesses can install additional copies to get development and scalability needs without extra cost
Excellent customizability: The customizability of open-source goes hand-in-hand with its flexibility. With lots of freedom, you can modify and shape the source code to your specifications with no difficulty compared to licensed software
Cons of open-source eCommerce platforms
Complexity: The complexity of an open-source platform is the result of its extreme flexibility and freedom. The software maintenance, compliance towards relevant laws, and security are not ensured during the software development process.
Long learning curve for non-tech-savvy people.
Hidden costs: They can come with various unexpected expenses,such as the cost for hiring an expert web developer to customize your site or plugins to your platforms, etc.
Security risk: To create a comprehensive eCommerce site via open-source code, you need plugin support. But some of which can breach your security protocols because of malicious and negligent design
Challenge for implementation: There’re various unexpected factors when it comes to building a website from scratch. You don’t get any help from the customer support team and is left to the forums, blog posts, or documentation of the platform
Simply put, we can point out the primary advantage of open-source eCommerce platforms is extreme flexibility and customization. Still, along with that freedom, they come to the severe need for lots of handholding.
SaaS stands for “Software as a Service,” which is a form of software delivery provided by vendors to end-users based on cloud technology.
To put it simply, businesses pay a fee to access and use the software over the Internet. This application is typically used through a web browser or made available through mobile apps provided by the service provider.
SaaS can be seen as an alternative solution to open-source eCommerce platforms. Each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages for you to consider when choosing one to build your website.
Open-source platform | SaaS | |
---|---|---|
Features | - Pre-designed with features ranging from basic to advanced | - Basic functions for early-stage eCommerce businesses |
Customization | - Extensive and highly customizable | - Limited - Dependent on themes and plugins |
Control | - Full control over hosting, code, and updates | - Limited control - Managed hosting and updates |
Scalability | - Highly scalable if having technical expertise | - Designed for scalability with support team |
Community Support | - Active developer communities for support and feature development | - Vendor-provided customer support |
Ease of Use | - Needs technical know-how to set up and maintain | - User-friendly - Easier for non-technical users - Documents or courses are available with step-by-step instructions for use |
Security | - Managed security by business itself | - Managed security by the SaaS provider |
Hosting | - Up to business itself | - Hosting is provided and managed by the SaaS provider |
Cost | - Initial lower cost - Ongoing development and hosting expenses |
- Subscription fees - Potential long-term costs |
Whether you’re using an open-source eCommerce platform or a SaaS platform, these are still the features you should look for to build a good, reliable website and develop it for the long term.
With more than 250.000 users by now, Magento is one of the leaders of world eCommerce platforms (after Woocomerce and Shopify).
The biggest reason for its growth is how it’s completely tailored for eCommerce applications with the essential features and advanced customization to run an online shop.
Magento comes with 2 options for merchants:
In this post’s scope, we only discuss the Open Source version of Magento.
Pros:
Cons:
Read more:
Hire Magento Developers
What you need to do is only describing desired features of the Magento website, we will help you to build the store that ticks all the boxes!
Get StartedWooCommerce is by far the most popular open-source eCommerce solution when it comes to the WordPress user community. Therefore, WooCommerce is a worth-trying tool for WordPress users.
Technically, WooCommerce is a supportive extension with essential features that turn your WordPress website into a fully functional online store, for instance:
Upload and manage an infinite number of products, orders, coupons, and categories effortlessly
Run a blog, optimize SEO and other sales activities
Pros:
Cons:
Along with the popularity of Magento and WooCommerce, OpenCart is recommended for its user-friendliness and clarity. In fact, it’s a perfect choice for inexperienced users, particularly small businesses, startups, or ones with string budgets.
You don’t need to mess around much with code issues but still live up your online shop to its fullest potential.
Pros:
Don’t take too much time and programming experience to customize the website from scratch
Lightweight leads to fast loading speed
Offer many themes and plugins to customize your store
Cons: Though OpenCart is easy to use and good enough for running a business online, there are some flipsides of this PHP-based eCommerce platform, particularly:
nopCommerce is another open-source eCommerce platform developed on ASP.NET technology with more than 60.000 customers.
Like OpenCart, nopCommerce offers high flexibility to meet most merchant requirements. But in terms of sales and marketing tools, the performance of nopCommerce is more outstanding. You can run multi-stores, multi-languages, and multi-currencies features.
Pros:
Cons:
Though Zen Cart might not be the most modern eCommerce platform, it’s one of the best open-source solutions to experience for those who’re fans of old-school templates.
The core system of Zen Cart is easily extensible to add new features to your eCommerce site. And, while some other platforms can charge quite expensive if you want to add plugins, extensions, or modules, Zen Cart provides all plugins listed on their site for free.
Another positive aspect of Zen Cart, based on my experience, is that its user community is extremely friendly and welcoming to questions from newbies..
Pros:
Cons:
PrestaShop is one of the most popular open-source eCommerce solutions in Europe and Latin America. This means that if your business is based in these two regions or targets them as primary markets, PrestaShop can offer many advantages, from a user community to modules designed to serve a customer base that is largely located in Europe and Latin America.
The platform’s rich features make it a good option in your consideration list. It works best for small and mid-sized enterprises.
Pros:
Cons:
Launched in 2000, with over 20-year experience in the industry, OsCommerce is known as an old and reliable option for small and medium businesses to scale on digital platforms.
Furthermore, you have a chance to assess a thriving community of experienced people (developers and users) to check out and discuss the best solutions for your problems.
In 2022, osCommerce officially released osCommerce v4, and it has received user reviews highlighting significant improvements compared to previous versions, making it a worthwhile experience.
Pros:
Cons:
Another WordPress plugin option for merchants, WP eCommerce yet is more like an overshadowed cousin of WooCommerce. This comes as no surprise since WP eCommerce offers fewer themes and is not regularly updated.
Just like WooCommere, WP eCommerce is a solid WordPress plugin that transforms a regular WordPress dashboard into an eCommerce control center. You can add products, run promotions, and many more marketing activities on your site.
Pros:
Cons:
Drupal is an open-source content management system (CMS) platform written in PHP. In simple terms, with Drupal, you can create the website you need and have access to applications that allow you to modify and edit the content of your website. Drupal was first introduced in 2000, and it is still regularly updated by its developers. The latest release is Drupal 10, which was launched in December of last year.
Apart from Magento, Drupal is one of the most comprehensive open-source eCommerce platforms these days.
Pros:
Cons:
Like Zen Cart, TomatoCart is a straightforward and user-friendly eCommerce shopping cart application and an independent branch of osCommerce 3. Furthermore, TomatoCart can be completely customized via a basic built-in CMS.
Pros:
Cons:
Founded in 2000, Shopware is among the most popular eCommerce platforms these days, with more than 12.000 users.
The remarkable thing about Shopware is that it has a distinct local character in the German eCommerce market, where it owns a 3.76% share. For businesses focusing mainly on this market, choosing Shopware will likely provide quicker support and better insights into user behavior in Germany compared to other open-source platform solutions.
Pros:
Cons:
What’s outstanding about the open-source of Spree Commerce is its customizability and the admin module.
A worth considering option for eCommerce merchants to grow their multi-language and multi-currency business worldwide with a flexible CMS. With Spree’s support, you get the most basic features to build a personalized eCommerce website.
Pros:
Cons:
Similar to WooCommerce and WP eCommerce, Jigo is a third option for WordPress users. It usually gets compared to WooCommerce in terms of simple interface and ease of use.
JigoShop focuses strongly on user experience so that you can start building your eCommerce site as a beginner with no difficulty.
Pros:
Cons:
Compared to others, Branchbob is a lesser-known eCommerce platform for online merchants. The special thing of Branchbob is that it comes with no monthly fee or transaction fees. Ease of use and simplicity are the 2 most significant advantages of this open-source eCommerce solution.
Pros:
Cons:
Joomla will be the last name on the list of open-source eCommerce platforms that’s designed to enable both novice and expert web developers to build their websites.
Joomla is a flexible and highly user-friendly platform that provides thousands of free templates and extensions to streamline any online business.
Pros:
Cons:
Typically, “open-source” can indeed imply that the platform is free to download and use. However, when building an eCommerce website based on an open-source framework, the costs extend beyond just that. Here are some additional expenses to consider in 2024:
In total, if we only consider basic costs and don’t account for additional expenses like custom website design or development of unique features, you can set up an eCommerce website with essential features for approximately $100-$1,000 per year. However, this is a theoretical estimate.
Consider more figures from previous reports and studies for a more objective and practical perspective:
For a more concrete perspective, based on the experiences shared by some individuals who have created and maintained eCommerce websites:
Hundreds of eCommerce solutions have popped up in recent years due to the rapid growth of eCommerce and modern shopping trends.
Open-source platforms are the preferable options for startups, small and mid-sized enterprises because of their cost optimization and constant development.
Because it’s hard to define which one is the “best”, you are the only one who can decide what’s optimal for your business by considering each ideal open-source eCommerce platform very carefully.