What is Magento (Adobe Commerce) Platform?

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform for creating online stores. 

In 2018, Adobe acquired Magento, making it part of the world’s largest software company, now known as Adobe Commerce or Magento Commerce, available in an on-premises version and as a service hosted by Adobe.

In this blog, understand the ins and outs of Magento. 

We will discuss the most basic fundamental aspects of Magento to how it stands among the other e-commerce platforms in the market — helping you decide if it is a right platform for you to grow your business and make the next move. 

History of Magento Platform

Magento was created in early 2007 by Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner, who founded Varien Inc., 

a private web development company in California.

Initially, Varien Inc. worked with osCommerce but decided to develop their own e-commerce platform from scratch. 

In August 2007, the first public beta version of Magento was released.

Later, in March 2008, a stable version of Magento 1.0 was released and quickly gained popularity as it was an open-source platform.

By 2009, Magento became the most popular e-commerce platform with over 1.5 million downloads, which continued in 2010 as well.

In June 2011, eBay acquired Magento, which became part of eBay’s X.commerce platform. During that time, Roy Rubin stepped down as CEO, selling his share to eBay, and Yoav Kutner left the company in 2012.

In 2015,  eBay split into two companies—eBay and PayPal. Later that year, in November 2015, Magento was sold to Permira, a private investment firm, making Magento an independent company once again. 

During this period, Magento introduced a wholly upgraded version, Magento 2, which was full of powerful features, scalable, and a more user-friendly interface.

In 2018, Adobe acquired Magento for $1.68 billion.

The platform was rebranded as Adobe Commerce or Magento Commerce. Their goal was to integrate Magento with the Adobe Experience Cloud, a platform designed to help businesses deliver personalized customer experiences. 

Later that year, they also introduced Adobe Sensei for AI product recommendations.

In 11 years, Magento went through multiple changes in terms of ownership and ideas. Starting as a small open-source project and becoming one of the leading names in the market, Magento has a story of its own. 

Now, Magento fully runs on the Magento 2 version. 

Since June 2020, Magento 1 has been no longer supported; Magento 2 is the only supported version.

The key difference between Magento 1 and Magento 2 lies in its performance, support, and the security that comes with the latest versions. 

Nearly 88,253 e-commerce sites are built using Magento 2. 

How Magento Works?

Magento is a customizable open-source platform that allows you to create an online store based on your business needs; it gives you the freedom to host services to make sure you have complete control over files and hosting options without restrictions.

This hosting difference happens when you have to pick between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce. 

Let’s see the difference between both.

Elements	Magento Open Source	Adobe Commerce
Pricing	Free platform	Paid platform
Hosting	Self-hosted	Cloud based hosting
Scalability	Suitable for small business with less requirement	Recommended for big business with complex requirement
Functionality	Limited tools	Advance AI tools
Security	Less secure	More secure
Support	Limited support	Constant 24×7 support
Best works for	B2C & D2C market	B2B market

While one excels in providing solutions for the B2B market and the other for B2C, Magento is able to cater to the needs of both businesses. 

Based on the choice of hosting provided, you can start creating the Magento store with  elements like:

✅ Products and categories pages

✅ Use an attractive Magento store theme

✅ Include payment gateways at checkout

✅ Manage inventory, shipping, and pricing & more 

Additionally, Magento supports mobile web design using HTML, ensuring an optimized shopping experience on smartphones and tablets. It allows integration with compatible third-party Magento 2 extensions to enhance the store functionality and operations.

Keeping the SEO elements in mind, Magento is designed for speed, ensuring fast-loading pages, which are crucial for ranking and improving conversions.

It also includes other SEO features like:

✅ Add search-friendly URLs

✅ Create sitemaps and robots.txt

✅ Include meta details

✅ Optimize using keywords

Cost of Magento Platform

Magento comes with both free and paid versions. 

Magento Open Source is free to download and use. The other two paid versions are Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud. 

Here‘s the overview of the cost to build your Magento e-commerce store.

Cost Element	Magento Open source	Magento Commerce	Magento Commerce Cloud
License	$0	$22,000 – $125,000/year	$40,000 –  $190,000/year
Hosting	$100 – $500/year	$500 – $6,500/year	$0
Domain	$10 – $400/year	$10 – $400/year	$10 – $400/year
SSL Certificate	$0 – $200/year	$0 – $200/year	$0 – $200/year
Theme	$0 – $1000/theme	$0 – $1000/theme	$0 – $1000/theme
Extension	$6 – $600/extension	$6 – $600/extension	$6 – $600/extension
SEO & Marketing	$10,000 – $40,000/year	$10,000 – $40,000/year	$10,000 – $40,000/year
Development	$1,800 – 10,000	$10,000	$10,000
Payment Provider	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction(Based on provider)	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction(Based on provider)	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction(Based on provider)
Maintenance	$50 – $100/per hour	$70 – $140/per hour	$70 – $140/per hour

With this Magento 2 cost, you will have to incur additional expenses in terms of any specific features you want to include in your store.

Pros & Cons of the Magento Platform

While no platform is perfect, it is good to have a complete view to make a sound choice.

Understand the pros and cons of Magento to know where it is excellent and areas in which it can do better.

Pros of Magento:

• High flexibility 
• Built-in features
• Vast community
• Hosting requirement 
• Mobile friendly 
• Multi-Store 
• Advanced SEO 

Cons of Magento:

• Costly development and maintenance
• Required technical support for customization
• Hosting requirement 

The great flexibility Magento comes with makes it easy for store owners to create a feature-rich store that is both scalable and SEO-friendly to bring traffic to your side. 

But on the flip side, if you individually decide to work on each feature production, the go-to-market time gets prolonged. This makes working with a Magento developer essential to cut down on time but with some cost involved.

Benefits of Using Magento for Your Store

Magento is a full package of built-in functions available in different versions. You can easily create your e-commerce website or take your business online and expand it using Magento.  

Here are some benefits you gain by using Magento.

Flexible Content Management

Magento offers a flexible Content Management System (CMS) that allows store owners to create pages, blog posts, product descriptions, and more with ease. 

Its user-friendly interface allows users to update content regularly. It also features a built-in page editor called What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG), which allows users to edit web pages without requiring technical help.

Open Source and Highly Customizable 

Magento is an open-source platform, making it free to use. It allows you to easily build an online store with various customization options, including themes and extensions. Additionally, you can modify its code to design the platform as per your specific requirements.

Global Utilization

Magento supports multiple languages, making it easy to use worldwide. With its multi-currency support, businesses can expand globally with ease. Its multi-language capabilities allows store owners to reach international markets. It also supports multi-store from a single admin panel.

Mobile Responsive

Magento offers in-built mobile responsive design capabilities that allows online stores to adapt to different screen sizes and features, it provides a separate set of tools for creating a unique mobile app for your e-commerce website, and it ensures a great user experience across all devices.

Scalability

Magento offers both open-source and on-premise versions, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Its modular architecture allows for easy scalability, adapting easily as the website grows.

Third Party Integration and Extension

Magento easily integrates with third-party Magento 2 extensions such as ERP, CRM, payment gateways, shipping providers, and marketing tools, it also offers a wide range of extensions and plugins that can be integrated into the platform to enhance functionality.

Magento System Requirements 

To set up a Magento e-commerce website, you must be aware of its requirements. Here is an overview.

Web Server	Apache 2.x  Nginx 1.x	Operating System(Linux x86-64)	RedHatUbuntuCentOS Debian
System Dependencies	bash, gzip, lsof, mysql, mysqldumpnice, php, sed, tar	Memory requirement	2 GB RAM for basic installation
Web BrowserAdmin panel	Chrome(Android also)Safari(macOS only)Microsoft EdgeFirefox	Database	MySQL 8.0 MariaDB 10.4
PHP Extension	Bcmath, ctype, curl, dom, gd, hash, iconv, intl, mbstringopenssl, pdo_mysql, simplexml, soap, spl, xsl, zip, libxml , json, iconv	Mail Server	Mail Transfer Agent(MTA)SMTP
SSL	A valid security certificate for HTTPSSelf signed certificate not supportedTransport layer security (TLS) required	Cache	RedisVanish PHP OPcache
Magento 2.4 supported versions	PHP 7.4, 8.1, 8.2MySQL 8.0 and MariaDB 10.4Elasticsearch 7.x and 8.x

What is the Latest Magento Version?

The latest version is Magento 2.4.8 released on April 8 2024.

This version comes with features like:

• Security – Added two-factor authentication, use of a VPN, platform security, etc
• Payment process – Updated options like PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay etc
• Shipping – Integrated with shipping carriers like FedEx and UPS
• Bug fixes – Over 150 quality fixes
• GraphQL – Improved cart management, order cancelation, and support for custom attribute 

Examples of Online Stores Using Magento Platform

Magento is a popular platform used by many online retailers. Here are some examples of brands using Magento. 

Omega

Omega is well known for its Swiss luxury watches. Its Magento-powered website is user-friendly and offers various features, including a nearest store recommendation, a product finder, and more.

Jaguar

Jaguar is world-famous for its athletic cars and sedans. A few years back they launched an electric car and a Magento-powered website for that model, featuring attractive designs that make it easy for buyers to select the model they need.

Coca-Cola  

Coca-Cola is loved worldwide by people of all ages. Its Magento powered website is simple yet attractive with various features like seamless navigation, personalized orders recommendation, etc. 

Puma

Puma is one of the largest sportswear brands. Its Magento powered website offers various options with a responsive structure and provides fast delivery to their buyers.

Land Rover

Land Rover, globally known for its SUVs and other vehicles, adopted a Magento-powered website to showcase aesthetic images, provide booking forms for test drives, and offer a seamless user experience with minimal effort.

Magento vs. Other E-commerce Platforms

Magento is a better choice for your e-commerce website as it offers a free version and many facilities compared to other platforms. 

Below is a detailed comparison between Magento and other e-commerce platforms. 

Element	Magento	Shopify	WooCommerce	BigCommerce
Hosting	Self hosted(cloud based)	Fully hosted	Self hosted(WordPress plugin)	Fully hosted
Flexibility	Require technical knowledge	Easy to use	Require WordPress knowledge	Easy to use
Pricing	Free (open source version)	Subscription cost	Free plugin (hosting & extension cost)	Subscription cost
SEO	Advance features	Basic features (limited options)	Basic features (depends on hosting)	Advance features
Customize	Highly customizable	Limited customization	Highlycustomizable	Limited customization
Security	High security (requires regular update)	Built-in security	Security (depends on plugins)	Built-in security
Suitable for	Large business	Small to medium business	Small business & WordPress users	Growing business

Frequently Asked Questions About Magento

What is Magento?

Magento, also known as Adobe Commerce, is an open-source and powerful e-commerce platform used to build online stores. It offers high flexibility, security, customization, and many other features for its users.

Is Magento free to use?

Magento offers both free and paid versions. The Open Source version is free but requires additional development costs, while Adobe Commerce (Magento Commerce) is a paid version with advanced features and support.

How to use Magento?

The steps are simple. First, you need to install the Magento version and start creating your online store with elements like themes, products, payments, and more. Then, you can optimize your store for SEO and launch your online store.  

What programming language Magento uses?

Magento is built using PHP with the element of Zend framework and MVC architecture.

What are the system requirements for Magento?

Here are system requirements for Magento: 

• A web server (Apache or Nginx)
• PHP 7.4 or higher
• MySQL 8.0+
• Elasticsearch for search functionality

The Future of E-commerce with Magento 

As e-commerce continues to grow, Magento remains at the forefront, providing businesses with the flexibility, scalability, and innovation needed to thrive in a competitive digital market. 

With its powerful features, customization options, and growing ecosystem, Magento is ready to meet the demands of the future. As technology advances, Magento will continue to shape the future of eCommerce, empowering brands to stay ahead of the curve.