In open source e-commerce technologies Outsourcify offers these 3 solutions depending on the case:
- WooCommerce/Wordpress : https://fr.wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/
- Magento : https://magento.com/
- Sylius : https://sylius.com/sylius-vs-magento/
These 3 technologies bring a panel of administration made for the management of an online store (products, customers, orders etc.), like those of proprietary e-commerce solutions (such as Shopify) but they are open source solutions that can be installed on a private server, you are therefore the full owner of your site contrary to Shopify which remains the owner of its technology and you “rent” your site to them.
These solutions work with plugins that allow you to add features (payment methods, discount rules etc.), some are free, others are paid.
WooCommerce and Magento are relatively comparable. WooCommerce benefits from the other advantages of the WordPress CMS but on the other hand WordPress is not made at the beginning for e-commerce so we quickly reach certain limits, it is rather made for modest stores. Magento is a 100% e-commerce solution, therefore more solid, which allows to manage an unlimited number of products, therefore potentially for any type of store, but the administration interface is less easy to handle than WordPress, especially for the management of content outside the store (blog posts and content of other pages).
For these 2 technologies we propose 2 approaches to design: “custom” or “template”. In both cases, we start by understanding the needs, the customers, the products. The first approach is to go through a real prototyping phase and then the creation of a 100% unique design (our art director is French) then creation of a custom theme from scratch (for WordPress or Magento). The second approach is a low budget approach, it consists in using an existing theme, as for Shopify the store will then look like hundreds of others and the design flexibility once the theme is chosen will be minimal.
As an alternative to Magento, we can use Prestashop but we are offering this solution less lately.
At Outsourcify, we have an in-house Magento/Prestashop team leader and a WooCommerce/Wordpress team leader who each manage a team of developers.
Concerning Sylius, it is a more technologically advanced e-commerce solution and offers better performance, but it requires specific developments, we are closer to a 100% custom solution at the development level. The custom approach to design is required. The budget required is comparable to that of a Magento with custom design. It is easier to customize the features by creating plugins (it is better to use existing plugins with Magento at the risk of having to adapt to what the plugin offers and lose in overall performance of the site).
