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OpenCart vs Magento – Comprehensive
Comparison of the Two Leading Ecommerce
Platforms

Are you looking for the best eCommerce platform for your online store? Here’s the ultimate comparison of Magento vs OpenCart to help you choose the right platform between the two for your online store.

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Magento vs opencart

Which Platform is Suitable for Your Online Store?


When it comes to choosing the right eCommerce platform for your online store, you must remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re a merchant who is just starting your online eCommerce business, you may be overwhelmed by a variety of eCommerce platforms available in the eCommerce market.

Magento and OpenCart are two of the strongest contenders in the eCommerce solution market. Both of these platforms are extremely resourceful and are gaining a lot of popularity worldwide. That’s why deciding which one is the right option for your online store is a difficult task that many eCommerce business owners are bound to face.

Here’s a comprehensive Magento vs OpenCart comparison that will help you choose the right eCommerce solution for your store.

Overview

Magento

Lately owned by Adobe, Magento is unarguably the most popular and widely used open-source eCommerce platform. With Magento, you get full control over every aspect of your eCommerce store and high scalability with myriads of advanced features. If you have adequate technical knowledge, you can customize your store as you like.

Magento has provided two major eCommerce solutions along with other products. These are Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce. Magento Commerce also comes with a managed and automated hosting version called Magento Commerce Cloud. This version is an all-in-one eCommerce solution built exclusively for large, high-sales, enterprise-level online merchants as well as medium-sized businesses that are still growing.

According to BuiltWith, Magento powers more than 771,021 websites. Magento is popular amongst large enterprises and most of them hail from the USA, U.K, Netherlands, and Germany.

Now, let us show you all the key comparisons of Magento 2 vs OpenCart.

Opencart

OpenCart is a free, open-source eCommerce platform based on PHP/MySQL code, which is quite similar to the Magento platform. It is mostly preferred by developers and businesses because of its simplicity and ease of use. It comes with a user-friendly admin panel that allows you to manage products, orders, promotions, and reports without requiring any technical knowledge or expertise.

According to Builtwith, there are more than 904,024 websites that are based on OpenCart. Most of them are small-medium businesses located in the USA, Russia, Brazil, UK, and Ukraine.

Idea Valuation

Magento 2 Vs OpenCart – Key Comparison Parameters To Consider


Since both OpenCart and Magento are free, open-source platforms, their operating costs are quite similar. OpenCart and Magento platforms can be downloaded and installed free of cost. However, as you’re self-hosting your online store, there are several other factors that add to the overall cost of operating these two platforms – a web hosting plan, a domain name, an ideal Magento or OpenCart design/template, essential modules/extensions, an SSL certificate, and other factors. When it comes to web hosting, an OpenCart user has to pay less fee because of the platform’s light-weight architecture. With respect to extensions, the cost of many OpenCart’s premium extensions ranges from $10 to $489 per month. Magento extensions, on the other hand, can cost you anywhere between $50 to $500, with the Magento 2 development pricing varying from development company to company along with the feature set of the extensions.
Loading time is crucial for any website, especially an eCommerce website to retain customers. Customers these days are very impatient and a slow website will cause you to lose out on your existing as well as potential customers. When comparing Magento 2 vs OpenCart, Magento 2 leads the competition. The time taken by an OpenCart website to load is 831 milliseconds which is 1.6 times higher than Google’s recommendation for SEO. Even the product pages take 910 milliseconds to load which is bad. Therefore, loading time is one of the crucial factors that OpenCart needs to work on. Magento’s online product page load time is 665 milliseconds, which is more than the recommended loading time set by Google (500 milliseconds). However, this speed is acceptable to some extent for retaining clients until the end of the sales funnel. Magento undeniably beats the OpenCart platform with its impressive response time.
When it comes to Magento vs OpenCart comparison, the ease of use is another major factor that can help you select the right eCommerce platform for your online store. OpenCart is ideal for beginners as it provides an intuitive user interface and simple installation process. However, the user still needs to have basic technical knowledge of web development. Magento, on the other hand, is a robust and heavily-laden platform. It is not recommended for beginners as it requires strong technical knowledge and the installation process is also very complicated. Magento also has a steep learning curve and hence, amateurs can take time to learn how to play with the system. Magento is an ideal option for large, high-sales enterprises. Moreover, if you’re confident with your technical knowledge and expertise, you may opt for Magento. Highly customizable design, flexibility, and innumerable plugins are what make Magento an ideal one for you.
OpenCart provides only 500 free and paid themes and the paid ones cost from $60 to $70). All of these themes are attractive, slick, and sales-driving. They come with various layouts, flexible customizations, and amazing features. Some of the stunning OpenCart themes include Materialize Template, Journal, etc. OpenCart also allows you to preview a theme to see how your website will look before you pay for the theme. Once you purchase and install the theme, you can easily and efficiently customize or edit the theme using OpenCart’s Theme Editor. Meanwhile, Magento offers only 2 free default themes namely Luma, a demonstration theme, and Blank which is the base for custom theme creation. Both of these themes look dull and boring. If you want your website to look good and professional, you may go to Magento Marketplace which offers 17 themes costing from $0 to $500. Just like OpenCart, Magento themes also allow you to preview themes to see how your website will look like with the theme before you pay for it. Even though Magento does not offer many themes, it offers endless opportunities to customize and design your store from scratch until you get the desired look of your website, thanks to Magento’s open-source traits. Thus, OpenCart is a clear winner in this round as it offers plenty of themes at affordable prices.
OpenCart offers limited SEO features. However, the platform enables you to make certain modifications like editing the meta tags as well as adding 301 referrals and rel canonical. You can add meta descriptions and keywords and create SEO-friendly URLs. There are also additional SEO plugins available in OpenCart. With OpenCart, you can still rank your page higher, however, it isn’t a good option for high-end SEO purposes. Magento offers endless possibilities for making your website SEO-friendly. You can simply download SEO extensions and optimize titles, URLs, meta tags, and images. Moreover, redirects and canonical tags are also accessible easily. To improve your SEO, you can also add blogs and target many new keywords using blog posts. When comparing OpenCart vs Magento 2, OpenCart lags behind in the competition. If you’re looking for high-end SEO solutions, then Magento has got you covered.
You can get almost everything in Magento Marketplace. Since Magento was exclusively intended for large-scale eCommerce enterprises, it offers a vast collection of extensions that integrate seamlessly with Magento backend. With more than 5000 extensions available in the Marketplace, Magento enables you to add more features and functionalities to your online store without writing a single line of code. Magento Marketplace has extensions that are checked for coding standards, plagiarism, compatibility, and security. Contrarily, OpenCart offers over 13,000 extensions. You can find a huge range of functionalities, plugins, themes, and modules at the OpenCart Extension Store.
With open-source platforms, there is no live chat, phone support, or email for dedicated customer service. You can ask for help on Magento Help Center, however, your concerns will be addressed by salespersons who are well-trained to help you sign up for Magento Commerce. Magento is supported by a large, active community of 300,000 members including developers who share their experience, and technical knowledge. You can freely drop your queries and ask for help, however, the accuracy ratio is not always high as every member of the community has the right to answer your questions or solve your problems. Additionally, you can also find comprehensive step-by-step guides on Magento’s official website regarding easy-to-understand installation, the configuration of themes, extensions, etc. OpenCart provides 2 types of support to its users. The Community Forum allows contributors and developers across the globe to share their knowledge and experience in operating an online business. To get dedicated and satisfactory support, OpenCart users can avail of support service by paying a monthly fee of $99.
Magento constantly releases Magento security patches to ensure that your Magento store is secure always and your customers feel safe when shopping from your online store. You can regularly update with new security patches to improve site performance. You can also check your website’s security state using third-party tools like Mage Scan and Mage Report. You also have access to self-help resources provided by Magento security guidelines. Additionally, Magento also provides Content Security Policy (CSP) for open-source Magento. CSP offers an organized collection of guidelines that can restrict the content of browsers so that only whitelisted services are visible. This way the browser decides which web tools need to be blocked and which ones can be trusted. On the contrary, since OpenCart is not liable for your website’s security, you must ensure your server’s level of security. Being an open-source platform, it is more susceptible to cyber-attacks. As the internal code and framework of OpenCart are available to the public, hackers can identify and exploit the security vulnerabilities more easily. OpenCart is also not regular in releasing security patches. Besides, you also need to be careful with third-party extensions as they might contain some security vulnerabilities and may harm your website if your website is not secure. Therefore, when comparing Magento 2 vs Opencart in terms of website security, Magento leads the competition.
In the debate of OpenCart vs Magento 2, Opencart beats Magento down with the number of payment options available. OpenCart allows you to integrate multiple payment gateways into it including Authorize.Net, PayPal, SagePay, 2Checkout, WorldPay, etc. Apart from these, additional payment options can be downloaded from the OpenCart Extension Dictionary. By default, all OpenCart payment methods are PA-DSS compliant which means they do not save any card details. Magento offers PayPal, Braintree by default and additional payment options can be later according to your preferences through Magento Connect. You can also experiment with features like one-click payments, guest checkouts, etc. While OpenCart offers several payment methods, adding more payment gateways costs additional expenses.

Magento vs OpenCart – Summary


Magento OpenCart
Cost Open-source, Free to use, but the additional cost is associated (hosting, domain, SSL, etc.) Open-source, Free to use, but the additional cost is associated (hosting, domain, SSL, etc.)
Site Performance Site Loading Time – 568 milliseconds (Quanta) Site Loading Time – 936 milliseconds (Quanta)
Ease of Use Quick, self-hosting setup and reasonable user interface Simple installation process, coding structure, and intuitive user interface.
Theme 2,100+ free themes and 30,000 paid themes (cost up to $500) Only 500 free and paid themes ($60-$70)
SEO High-end SEO solution Limited customization options
Support Large, active Community support (300,000 members) OpenCart forum
Security Magento takes security seriously and releases security patches regularly to keep the Magento store secure Does not ensure high-end security because its extensions are not as secure as those developed by other platforms
Payment Options There are 2 leading payment gateways available by default There are 160+ payment methods (PayPal, FedEx, etc.)
Idea Valuation

OpenCart vs Magento 2 – Which One is the Right Platform for Your Store?

So, these are some of the key features of Magento and OpenCart that you can review and consider for your online store.

While Magento is a more powerful platform than OpenCart, it requires more advanced technical knowledge and expertise. If you’re operating a large store that is growing fast and having a bigger budget, then you should go for Magento. OpenCart, on the other hand, is suitable for amateurs and is a cost-effective eCommerce solution for small-medium businesses.

Above all, if you want to decide between Magento 2 vs OpenCart, you need to make sure that your chosen platform suffices all your specific requirements.

Do You Want To Migrate Your Ecommerce Store?

Whether you want to migrate your existing website from OpenCart to Magento 2 or Magento 2 to OpenCart, we are here to help you. We employ advanced automated migration tools that make the migration process quick, seamless, and secure. With higher levels of accuracy and security, we promise to meet all our clients’ requirements. We are available 24×7 to answer all your queries, so you can contact us anytime and we’ll get back to you shortly..

Idea Valuation

Frequently Asked Questions


We offer a complete suite of OpenCart web development services including:
  • OpenCart Customization Services
  • OpenCart Plugin Development
  • OpenCart Module Development
  • OpenCart Theme Development
  • OpenCart Plugin Development
  • OpenCart Maintenance and Support
  • OpenCart Installation and Setup
  • OpenCart Platform Migration
  • PSD to OpenCart Conversion
  • OpenCart Mobile App Development
  • Magento 2 Customization Services
  • Magento 2 Plugin Development
  • Magento 2 Module Development
  • Magento 2 Theme Development
  • Magento 2 Plugin Development
  • Magento 2 Maintenance and Support
  • Magento 2 Installation and Setup
  • Magento 2 Platform Migration
  • PSD to Magento Conversion
  • Magento PWA Development
  • Magento 2 Integrations
OpenCart is an online eCommerce store management system based on PHP/MySQL. It is a framework as well as a system with basic eCommerce store functionalities integrated by default. You may download, install, and integrate OpenCart extensions and customize them according to your requirements.
Magento is the best multi-channel eCommerce solution because it is robust, fast, optimized, SEO, and user-friendly. If you’re running a large-scale, enterprise-level online store, you can go for Magento as it will help you streamline all your business processes, manage the store from a centralized admin panel, improve your site ranking, increase sales, and keep your store secure. Have More Questions Regarding the Two Prominent Ecommerce Platforms? Ask Our Experts Today!