OpenCart vs. Magento: What You Should Choose in 2022?

“Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.”

-Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Enterprises starting their new venture often seem confused about which e-commerce platform they should choose exactly. Because in the e-commerce world, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

There are many e-commerce platforms in the market, but Magento and OpenCart are somehow a choice of many. Though, Magento enjoys greater popularity than OpenCart in the market. But OpenCart is no less, either.

The above graph clearly depicts that OpenCart is tough competition to Magento. Therefore, there are certain areas where OpenCart also leads, which we get to know in this blog.

Here, we’ll discuss everything in detail, including the pros & cons, market popularity, cost, security, and more to help you make the right choice.

So, let’s get started…

A Major Overview of OpenCart & Magento

What is Magento?

Magento is a fully-fledged ecommerce platform that has been very successful in the market for over a decade now. It started its journey from being an open-source platform, and after that, it got purchased by eBay and then was sold to Permira Funds and other investors in August 2010.

It is one of the most customizable ecommerce platforms, which is easy to use and has an excellent collection of extensions.

Pros of Magento

• Easy to use for someone who already has a basic knowledge of ecommerce.
• Highly customizable, which means you can easily make customization in your store.
• The most significant advantage over OpenCart is its vast range of extensions and capabilities that will allow you to create almost any kind of store. All these extensions are also available at a very reasonable price.
• Magento has excellent SEO and marketing tools that let you efficiently promote your products and services.
• Magento community is huge, which means there are always people who can help you when you get stuck.

Cons of Magento

• Magento is one of the most expensive ecommerce platforms.
• Requires a lot of server resources and can be very slow if not correctly configured.
• The biggest drawback of Magento is its poor documentation.

What is OpenCart?

OpenCart is an open-source shopping cart solution for small to medium-scale online business owners. It started as a free and open-source shopping cart, but now, it’s also possible to obtain a paid license with its upcoming releases. It has all the standard features required by any ecommerce software and some additional features that make it an exciting platform.

Netcat developed this software in PHP and MySQL and is currently maintained by “opencart.com” (the official website). OpenCart is mainly popular in Germany, the UK, Australia, and the USA.

Pros of OpenCart

• OpenCart is extremely easy to install. So, if you want a speedy ecommerce website implementation, it’s the best choice for you.
• Opencart installation and customization charges are low. It has a fantastic community that can help when you get stuck.
• There are lots of extensions available for OpenCart that lets you extend the features of your shopping cart.
• The most beautiful thing about OpenCart is its price compared to Magento.

Cons of OpenCart

• Less customizable than Magento and lacks many essential features for ecommerce websites.
• There are not so many extensions available for OpenCart compared to Magento.
• Less SEO-friendly than Magento, which means you will have to put more effort into marketing your website.

A Detailed Comparison of OpenCart & Magento

1. Performance- The best speed that an ecommerce website should offer is 200–300 milliseconds.

A study proved that the top 1000 online stores lose 40% revenue due to slow speed, which means a 1 second delay in load time can cost you around $1,664 per 1 million page views. In other words, it’s essential to make your store as fast as possible.

Magento is extremely fast when it comes to loading pages and rendering content. It can make your website up to 50 times faster. Any decent server with a suitable caching mechanism can make Magento fly. Also, you can easily configure your caching system in a way that all the queries are served from a local cache instead of hitting the database over and over again.

OpenCart isn’t as fast as Magento. It works on a flat-file system which means it loads a file from the disk every time you access a product or category page. This makes OpenCart very slow, and since there is no caching mechanism available for flat-file systems, it’s even more important to have a good server for OpenCart.

Winner-Magento

2. Cost-How much does the e-commerce platform cost?

OpenCart is entirely free. There are no license fees, hosting fees, maintenance costs. However, the official website offers a 20% discount on all their extensions. Also, there are third-party extension providers who sell extensions at affordable prices. You can quickly build an online store with 100s of dynamic features using OpenCart. Every year there is one major release that completely upgrades your OpenCart system.

Magento’s free version has all the core features you need to build a store, but it lacks many essential features like user management, abandoned cart recovery, multi-store view, etc.

Winner- OpenCart

3. Ease of Use- Which has an easy setup process?

OpenCart is very easy to install and configure. It has good documentation that will help you solve all kinds of issues. The most challenging job you’ll have with OpenCart is installing your SSL certificate, especially if you are using shared hosting. Other than that, it’s elementary to set up an online store with OpenCart.

Magento is also easy to use. However, it’s a bit complex as compared to OpenCart. With Magento, you need to take care of many details, but there shouldn’t be an issue if you have a good development team for your project.

Winner- OpenCart

4. SEO and Marketing Tools-Which provides comprehensive SEO options?

OpenCart is not much SEO-friendly. The data in OpenCart are stored in the database, so when you try to change specific parameters or add information to a product, it will be saved directly into your database, which means that URL structure changes can’t be tracked correctly.

Magento provides all the tools that you need to create an SEO-friendly website. In addition, it is extremely fast when it comes to indexing pages since it doesn’t have a flat-file system. Instead, everything is being stored in the database.

Winner- Magento

5. Extensions and Apps- Which provides higher and better extensions?

OpenCart’s marketplace offers a wide variety of extensions and apps, so you’ll have no problem finding whatever extension you are looking for. It is all about community, so it’s not surprising to see so many extensions available for this platform!

Magento has the most significant marketplace among all ecommerce platforms. There are more than 20,000 extensions available to choose from.

Winner- Magento

6. Support- Which has a better support system?

OpenCart and Magento both offer support for their users. Suppose you are experiencing any issues with either of these ecommerce platforms. In that case, you can quickly get in touch with the online community via forums or even use paid services offered by the site if required. You can take advanced help from experts, and they’ll guide you to resolve any issue.

Winner- Tie

7. Security- Is your website SSL Certified?

OpenCart is not as secure as Magento. It doesn’t use HTTPS, which means all the payment details, user information, and other sensitive data are transmitted over an insecure network connection, leaving your site vulnerable to various security threats.

Magento has one of the most secure platforms available. It encrypts all the credit card information and uses a PCI DSS and SSL Certificate to ensure that all the financial and personal data is safe. It also has a white-hat security team that will do everything it takes to keep your website secure.

Winner- Magento

8. Payment Methods-How many payment methods does your store support?

OpenCart currently offers around eight payment gateways, while Magento offers more than 50 globally accepted payment methods, including PayPal, Skrill, consumer credit cards, etc.

The Magento community released a payment gateway extension that will help you add additional payment options. Therefore, with a third-party payment gateway, you can easily add more than 50 worldwide accepted payment methods to your Magento website.

Winner- Magento

9. Inventory Management- Which provides better inventory management?

OpenCart only allows you to manage products, but it doesn’t have an option for managing orders. OpenCart is not suitable for inventory management and reports such as stock levels, profit margins, etc. It simply can’t compare to Magento in this department.

Magento has the most advanced inventory management system. It allows you to monitor stock levels, profits, etc., efficiently. Magento also provides various reports related to sales, customer reviews, etc.

Winner- Magento

Conclusion-Who takes the crown of the best e-commerce platform?

After discussing every major e-commerce factor in detail, we have concluded that Magento wins over OpenCart by a wide margin. Magento provides more features and functionalities to create a fully functional online store. On top of that, its marketplaces have plenty of extensions and apps, so there’s no problem with flexibility here. PixelCrayons has a team of professional magento development company.

However, OpenCart has a community of developers who are constantly working on the platform and adding new features to make it better. You can expect it to become a full-fledged ecommerce platform soon.

So, now you have all the details required to make the right choice between Magento and OpenCart. All the information shared in the blog is well enough to make the right call between the two. But still, if needed assistance, consult an eCommerce development company in India. They’ll help you out better.