Among eCommerce solutions, like Magento vs. Joomla, which platform performs better?
With the variety of eCommerce platforms, there is no doubt that online merchants might find it challenging to decide the most suitable one for their store. Many well-designed eCommerce solutions are worth noticing, such as Magento, WordPress, BigCommerce, Joomla, Shopify, and so much more.
Before choosing any platform, store owners should carefully evaluate each platform’s significant features to see if it fits their businesses or not, as there is nothing called ‘One size fits all.’ In this post, we will introduce two of the most well-known platforms, Magento vs. Joomla, to give you a detailed comparison of the similarities and differences for better understanding and selection.
If you are interested in other eCommerce platforms comparisons to widen your knowledge, you can find it here:
Magento vs. Joomla Overview
Table of Contents
Magento and Joomla are both recognized for their ultra-modern features. Still, some differences distinguish these two platforms, such as target customers, primary purposes, and many other aspects.
Magento
Created in 2007 by Varien Inc, a private software development company based in the U.S, Magento is an eCommerce platform with an open-source code base written in PHP scripting language and developed on Zend Framework. Varien Inc officially released Magento in March 2008 with the primary intent of providing the best eCommerce solution to online stores to run. Currently, Magento is owned by Adobe. For almost two decades of expansion, Magento has powered several outstanding and world-famous businesses, including Land Rover, HP, Nestle, Catbird, Canon, Aldo, Forever New, and many more. So far, the number of webshops constructed by Magento has exceeded more than 750,000, with over 2.5 million downloads, and it will continue to rise significantly at the global level.
Magento Commerce
Can be considered as one of the most leading eCommerce platforms, Magento offers two differentiating versions, including Magento Community Edition and Magento Enterprise Edition, which suits different businesses with different purposes.
- Magento Community Edition (Magento Open Source) is free to download and use. Even though this version does not require any payment, it comes with all the basic built-in features needed for a small business to run an uncomplicated online store.
- Magento Enterprise Edition comes with two plan options – Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud, with much more advanced features and functionalities than the free version.
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Joomla
Joomla is an open-source content management system that is used to produce web content and websites, which were launched in August 2005. Open Source Matters, Inc. developed this solution with the support of many volunteers. As same as Magento, Joomla is written in PHP but developed on a model–view–controller framework. Over the years, Joomla has gained stably in popularity, along with other content management systems like WordPress or Drupal. As of 2021, Joomla has been powered over 2.5 million active stores and downloaded more than 118 million times.
Joomla logo
Besides the Free version, Joomla provides three plans if businesses want to upgrade, including personal, business and agency. To have a fully functional eCommerce solution, plugins such as Zencart or Shopify must be downloaded and integrated with Joomla.
Magento vs. Joomla Comparison
Before selecting Magento or Joomla, let’s discover all components of these two eCommerce platforms.
1. Key features and Functionalities
The first thing that needs to be evaluated is key features and functionalities. Even though both Magento and Joomla offer all fundamental eCommerce features that an online store might need to work effectively, doubtlessly Magento is more outstanding in respect of the accessibility and premier attributes. That is all because Magento and Joomla were built for different purposes.
Magento is proudly integrated with a wide range of out-of-the-box built-in features that allow businesses of all sizes to bring consistent customer shopping experiences to their shoppers. Magento Commerce has several robust features that are worth noticing, including Visual merchandising, PCI Compliant, Order Management, Automated target rules, Multi-Source Inventory, Advanced Catalog Search, and so much more. Furthermore, apart from B2C functionalities, Magento Commerce has many state-of-the-art features, such as Expedite restocking, Large orders handling, Payments on account, Quick reordering, Requisitions list, to name a few. Therefore, Magento Commerce is also one of the top leading eCommerce solutions for B2B companies.
In contrast, as a sturdy content management system, Joomla has excellent document management and blogging features, as well as advanced multilingual functionalities. If online merchants want to access all premium eCommerce functionalities, they might need to download and install plugins or extensions independently.
All the updated information about Magento can be founded here.
2. SEO & Marketing
Another thing to review between Magento vs. Joomla is SEO and Marketing. As an open-source and self-hosted platform, Magento allows store owners to intercede and customize the website’s structure and designs for better SEO results. Also, to increase the chances of stores’ visibility on the search engines like Google, Magento provides various built-in SEO characteristics and tools, containing Products’ meta tags, image optimization, Personalized URL, Google Tools 301 directs, Site map, and others. In terms of Marketing, there are many sophisticated features that Magento Commerce offers, including:
- Promotions: Cart Price Rules, Gift Card Accounts, etc
- Private Sales: Events, Invitations
- Communications: Email Templates, Newsletter Subscribers, Email Reminders, etc
- Customer Engagement: Engagement Cloud, Exclusion Rules, etc
- User Content: Reviews
3. Pricing
Pricing is one the most critical elements that a business needs to consider as it is related to the financial aspect. When it comes to fees to build and run a website, it includes many things, such as the price to install extensions, apps, themes, etc.
As stated previously, it is free to download and use Magento Open Source, but once upgraded to Magento Commerce, the using fee depends on the business’s annual gross merchandise value as well as average order value. With Magento Commerce version and Cloud Edition, the license fees per year start from $22,000 and $40,000 respectively.
Magento Pricing Plans
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On the other hand, Joomla has one free version and three paid plans, that is Personal (from $99), Business (from $199) and Agency (from $399).
It can be seen clearly that operating a webshop on Joomla is relatively cheaper than on Magento Commerce. But, Magento customers can enjoy multiple high-end features without disconcertment; therefore, it is worth the price.
4. Scalability
Another critical component when thinking about eCommerce solutions is scalability. For businesses that have desires to expand, appraising scalability is compulsory. Scalability indicates the capabilities and proficiencies of an eCommerce website when dealing with high traffic volume and massive inventory, especially on worldwide shopping days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Single Day.
In terms of Magento, this leading eCommerce platform is the right solution for online companies with a large number of products with different categorization and a high amount of customer visits, but most importantly, want to grow and scale up faster. With an exceptional inventory management system that can hold countless products concomitantly and has abilities to embrace up to 50,000 visits hourly, Magento can provide the expanded capabilities that businesses of all sizes need.
Regarding Joomla, as a content-focus system, surely Joomla can handle tons of content. Moreover, it also captures innumerable users, so Joomla is quite scalable if store owners are attentive to hosting, plugins, server hardware and other elements.
5. Speed & Performance
Observing Magento vs. Joomla performance and speed, in particular, is important as speed is one of the most key factors in creating exceptional customer experiences for customers when shopping online. Moreover, over 40 percent of online users will desert a website if it takes over 3-second to load, and 70 percent will never come back to the one if they find the loading speed is slow. But, it is pretty complicated to ensure which one works faster, as the performance of a website is based on a lot of elements, such as the number of plugins, extensions, JavaScript, CSS files, HTTP requests, images are optimized or not and a lot more.
6. Security
To avoid your eCommerce store staying away from cybercrime, identity theft and fraud, contemplating security between Magento vs. Joomla is essential. Magento Community Edition’s users might require to install security extensions, but Magento Enterprise Editon’s website owners are privileged to enjoy integrated security features. In another manner, Magento also provides updating security patches to abandon any cyber endangers. However, this installation is manual which needs some coding; thus, users might need to get support from Magento partners.
Simultaneously, Joomla also has security extensions and updated versions with settled security holes and exploits.
7. Easy of Use
The simplicity of use of these two platforms needs to be reviewed. For website owners that are not tech-savvy, do not have primary knowledge about technical skills, both Magento and Joomla are not likely to be suitable. Although both solutions can be effortlessly downloaded, they still need to be customized by coding. Therefore, Magento and Joomla tend to be appropriate for people who have at least a basic understanding of technical things, or businesses with enough resources to outsource the website customizing processes to licensed Magento developers like BSS Commerce.
8. Support
Another aspect of judging when choosing Magento or Joomla is Support. About Magento, Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce have two separate levels in terms of support. With the Community Edition, customers only can receive technical instructions from official sources such as Magento Help Centre, Magento DevDocs, free-of-charge community-based forums like Magento Forums with over 450,000 members, or get supported from authorized Magento partners like BSS Commerce. On the contrary, Magento Enterprise Edition’s users will get top-end customer service and assistance to solve all of their concerns through live chat or email support.
As same as Magento, users of Joomla can get their questions answered through Community Portal, User Groups and email support.
Joomla Community Forum
9. Extensions and Plugins
Magento and Joomla’s differences are about the third-party extensions and plugins. To fulfill the shortcomings of all platforms, plugins are ‘invented.’ Fortunately, both Magento and Joomla come with diverse extensions and plugins that can be used to widen the capabilities of eCommerce stores.
With more than 4000 free and paid exclusive extensions in Magento Marketplace that are separated into different categories for easier finding, Magento users can install what they need to enhance their website’s functionality. Some types include Shipping & Fulfillment, Payment & Security, Customer Support, Accounting & Finance, Marketing, etc. To ensure the quality and technical aspects, each extension was evaluated carefully before available on the Marketplace. Apart from extensions of Magento itself, people can use extensions from Magento’s official associates’ marketplaces such as BSS.
Magento Marketplaces
Regarding Joomla, in respect of quantity, this platform provides significantly more extensions, with better categorization like Migration & Conversion, Search & Indexing, Ads & Affiliates, Structure & Navigation, Access & Security and a lot more.
More importantly, for merchants, you can’t miss available B2B features of Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce – three giants in the eCommerce world.
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Magento vs. Joomla: which one is the best eCommerce solution for your business?
In conclusion, Joomla is not a proper eCommerce platform, while Magento is. It is hard to answer directly which platform you should use, as it is based on your business purposes, size and various other aspects. If your business has a massive inventory and ambitious expansion goals, Magento is the right choice with countless robust features. Meanwhile, if your company has a smaller budget, concentrates mainly on delivering content-related things, as well as has a small number of products, Joomla is the best eCommerce solution. In a nutshell, you should consider gingerly your business situation before making a final decision.
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