Magento for E-commerce Startups: A Quick Guide

Starting a new business seems easy because you can sell your product quickly, especially for those with an e-commerce business. But when your company is getting bigger and joining the other experienced high-flyers, you will soon face fierce competition in this business world.

That is why online businesses, especially startups, need the best e-commerce platform to run their business successfully. You can get it from the Magento e-Commerce platform for startups which has gained the trust as the best-known e-commerce platform and leading among global brands.

What is Magento?

You might have heard about Magento but still doubt whether you should choose Magento or seek another e-commerce platform. Magento is one of the e-commerce platforms that is used to build highly interactive and feature-rich eCommerce websites. 

Magento is quite popular among startups compared to other e-commerce platforms. It is because Magento provides everything required to run an online business effortlessly, such as advanced features like marketing tools that will help you establish your position in the market. 

Magento in Numbers

When talking about Magento’s popularity, Magento has a client base of more than 250,000 online businesses using Magento eCommerce globally. And according to Store Leads, 158,589 live stores are running on the Magento platform now, with the historical growth of stores running Magento increasing 14% year-over-year in 2022 Q1.

In 2021, more than 7500 merchants migrated to Magento’s mobile app, and worldwide eCommerce sales on Magento are anticipated to surpass US$225 billion. Magento e-Commerce platform of 1.9% share of CMS market. Magento CE has 24.8% of the e-commerce market share, while Shopify has 9%.

Why Startups Choose Magento?

Brands and businesses that try to reach new markets will be quickly drawn to Magento because Magento has an open-source option that is free to download. Even though it is free, it does not include hosting, domain, security, or other potential extras. 

If you have an extra budget for creating an e-commerce platform, you can choose the paid options, Adobe Commerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud, which come with a hefty price tag but offer complete packages. 

Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce offer built-in features but are also easier to alter and customize your website and customer experience. The built-in features that might be resourceful for startups are: 

• Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation is essential for decision-making and creating strategy regardless of the business size and age. The good news is you can segment your customer base based on several factors with Magento. This feature capabilities include several categories such as user activity, demographics, purchasing history, and shopping cart details.

Customer segmentation helps companies better plan online marketing and sales strategies. It is possible because Magento can gather data that give them relevant information about the customers’ behavior and the different customer segments they have reached.

• Mobility

Mobility capabilities are now essential for all kinds of businesses. It is because of the massive increase of mobile users worldwide and changing habits in shopping behavior. That’s why mobile-friendly websites are an essential need. 

Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce offer mobile responsiveness in UX/UI, resulting in a mobile adaptive website. But the Adobe Commerce platform provides the ability to compile native mobile for iPad/iPhone and Android with an HTML5 interface.

• Security

Security is the top priority for all businesses, particularly eCommerce site startups. It’s a big challenge amongst eCommerce site startups. But with Adobe Commerce, an e-commerce website development company can secure its customers since all transactions of a Magento website are secured with effective data encryption, and there will be no security gaps. 

Read more: 15 Benefits of Magento Development Services for Business & How to Consider the Best Ones 

• E-commerce platform flexibility

Compared to other e-commerce platforms, such as the SaaS platform, every app or website deployed on the Magento e-commerce platform, the respective business gains full ownership and access to hosting. Moreover, Magento provides a package packed with helpful features that offer a high level of protection and support for your business. 

Magento also offers advanced features such as advanced search filters and product catalogs to meet your business needs. Magento’s user management capabilities allow business owners to configure their online store from scratch. Supporting multiple languages and currencies is the most popular advantage of this application.

• Ready-to-use extension

If you are looking for any features or functionality for your online store, Magento is well-known for its ready-to-use extensions. These ready-to-use extensions are the main strength of Magento built by the community members as a problem-solving in the real world of startups and businesses. Besides, the ready-made extensions also enhance the ease of development and help developers to provide fast response times to their customers.

The Drawbacks

Although Magento has a lot of benefits and advantages, it also comes with disadvantages. And here is the list of the dark side of Magento that you should consider too.

• Complexity

Since Magento offers many features, the system has a substantial and complex structure. So, if you need to build an online store using Magento, you will need powerful and professional teams consisting of developers and testers.

• Cost

Well, the Magento Community Edition is indeed free. But, if you want more features and abilities, you should install a quite costly extension to hire a developer. Or you can choose the Enterprise Edition, for example, with powerful built-in features, but don’t forget that it requires an additional annual fee. 

• Time-Consuming 

Magento site development took a significant investment of time and knowledge because Magento has a slow loading time due to its flexible architecture. Setting up Magento is complicated and time-consuming compared to other e-commerce platforms. Another challenge is not easy switching from another e-commerce platform to Magento.

But no worries if you choose Adobe Commerce or Commerce Cloud because it is pretty fast compared to Magento Open Source.

• Hosting

You should know that hosting is not included in the Magento platform. It means you will have to pay for hosting separately. But at the same time, it is an excellent opportunity to choose the hosting environment and find the right one with the best specifications. You can consider four essential hosting solutions for every budget and scale.

The Takeaways

Magento is one of the ten most popular eCommerce platforms you can use to create a fully functional online store. It has two options, Magento Open Source if you have a limited budget and Adobe Commerce, which will cost you a hefty amount of money. But both offer all the features you might need and can achieve things that could be very difficult otherwise, making them an excellent choice for startups. 

The features are pretty limitless, from gamification techniques to banking and mobile apps to augmented reality. It is specifically designed to cover almost all the needs of an e-commerce website or an online shop. 

So, suppose you are an entrepreneur who wants to build a robust and scalable e-commerce website or enhance your online store’s functionality and win or rank higher in the competition, Magento will be your best answer. 

Have doubts about Magento for startups? Just reach out to us, Lime Commerce, a Magento commerce agency that enables your startups to get a competitive edge and #endlesspossibilities through our Magento development services and solutions. We provide fixed and hourly rates with competitive prices starting from US$25/hour. Please get in touch with us; our business development will gladly assist with your needs.