To simplify your selection process, we’ll compare two of the biggest players in the market: Magento and WordPress. Both have an impressive selection of design options and tools, but each offers a unique approach to building a powerful online store.
It’s important to note that both Magento and WordPress have different variants of a core product. Magento offers Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce: the former is a self-hosted platform and the latter is a premium fully-hosted solution for enterprise companies. WordPress offers WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform and WordPress.com is a premium hosting service.
In this article, we’ll limit our focus to the open-source variants of Magento and WordPress and explore their key differences. That way, you can better understand the experiences you’ll have on each self-hosted platform before deciding where to build your store. We'll also look at how the Magento WordPress plugin can offer the best of both worlds.
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Magento vs. WordPress Ecommerce Price Security SEO Blogging The Magento WordPress plugin
Magento vs. WordPress
Magento is a highly extensible open-source ecommerce platform designed to help users with at least a basic level of web development knowledge build and grow an online store. WordPress is a multi-purpose content management system that appeals to users with varying levels of technical knowledge. It lacks the out-of-the-box features required to create an ecommerce store but can be easily extended with plugins like WooCommerce.
Now that we’ve walked through a brief overview of the differences between WordPress and the WordPress alternative Magento, let’s compare the two platforms in terms of ecommerce, price, SEO, blogging, and more.
Magento vs. WordPress Ecommerce
U.S. retail ecommerce sales totaled $209.5 billion in the third quarter of 2020, according to the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce. This represents a 36.7% year-over-year growth. As ecommerce sales continue to rise, it’s increasingly important to evaluate how a website building platform can not only help you create and customize a website, but also sell products and services online.
With this in mind, let’s compare the ecommerce features and extensions of Magento and WordPress below.
Magento Ecommerce
As a dedicated ecommerce platform, Magento comes with built-in functionality that is essential to building and running a store online. This functionality includes product comparisons, product tiers, discounts, coupons, and multi-store management.
If you’re looking for additional functionality — like the ability to track and segment customers in a CRM — then you can explore over 3,000 add-ons and apps available in Magento’s Extensions marketplace.
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With a vast range of out-of-the-box features and marketplace of extensions, Magento is ideal for fast-growing small businesses.
WordPress Ecommerce
Because WordPress is not a dedicated ecommerce platform, it will require you to download a plugin like WooCommerce to set up an online store. Fortunately, this set-up process is easy so that users with no technical knowledge or ecommerce experience can set up an online store.
Although WooCommerce is the most popular, there are hundreds of ecommerce plugins available for WordPress to choose from.
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Not being a dedicated ecommerce platform also gives WordPress a unique advantage. While Magento only provides features and supports integrations for ecommerce, WordPress has features and plugins for virtually anything you can think of. You can integrate with major social media sites, optimize and compress your images automatically, display an event calendar, add a mega menu, and much more.
Magento vs. WordPress Price
As open-source software, Magento and WordPress are both free to download. But launching your store will require you to pay for hosting, domain registration, and any premium themes and add-ons you want to install. You may also need to hire a developer for help setting up your site.
Since you can use the same hosting providers and domain registrars for Magento and WordPress, the cost of hosting and domain registration will be similar. What sets these two platforms apart are their premium themes and extensions and developer costs.
Below we’ll focus on those three factors to compare how much it will cost to build and manage a store on Magento and WordPress.
Magento Price
The costs of premium themes, apps, and freelance developers tend to be higher on Magento than on WordPress. Let's take a closer look at each factor below.
Magento Themes
While Magento does offer free themes, they tend to be simple in design and functionality. Many Magento users prefer to purchase a premium theme from the Magento marketplace or third-party marketplaces like Themeforest. Premium themes range from $17 to $499, with the majority falling between $75 and $99.
Magento Apps
Magento offers a robust range of ecommerce features out-of-the-box, particularly in comparison to WordPress’s lack of any out-of-the-box features. However, you’ll likely be missing a few key features and need to install extensions from the Magento marketplace.
Of the nearly 4,000 apps available in the marketplace, over 1,000 are free. The rest range in price from $25 to $15,000. Don’t let that range scare you though. Most fall between a much more moderate range of $30 to $300.
