OpenCart vs Magento – Which Platform Suits The Best For Online Business Store?

OpenCart and Magento both are the ideal platforms, developed on PHP technology. They offer open source licensing model and templates that can be employed to upload products, which any user can simply manage.

Moreover, they both serve with their ideal plugins, extensions and numerous add-ons, which support the added modern functionalities and online store structures. They both are open-source platform and ideally developed for entrepreneurs who intend to build an ecommerce business store.
A brief comparison is given below at the free community edition of Magento and OpenCart. You can choose anyone of the platform that admires you more for your new online business.
Installation
Magento is familiar for its wide options that permit its users to perform any changes with their website. It simply might take some time and patience. But it is worth improved user experience and growth in revenues. Moreover, to pick Magento, you need a stronger hosting plan to support site’s performance. Shared hosting is not the way out.
OpenCart is supposed to be easier to use as compared to Magento. You can pick themes from a number of different themes when installing OpenCart. In case you lack skills in building websites, hosting or ecommerce, Magento may seem a bit confusing. If you need something to manage all the goods/services of your online store easily, OpenCart may be better for you unless you are experienced enough to improve Magento on your own.
Website’s Admin Area
Default website looks better when selecting such solutions as OpenCart or Prestashop. Opencart seems a bit more up-to-date than Magento. But it can be the first impression of those who are not considered experts.
As for Magento, anyone can install this platform without extra help, but the layout is very basic. Only a designer or developer will be able to provide your online store with original and attractive look to capture customer’s attention. You can check Magento or Opencart default page and admin interface by watching demo videos. You can notice that primarily OpenCart admin area looks better thanks to the modern interface. It includes a detailed summary of all the latest orders and sales analytics.
Pricing and Policy
Magento offers much more services. Unlike OpenCart, Magento editions require license, but it guarantees confidence to its users. The prices differ depending on the package you pick to develop your website. Do it after analyzing your business goals and needs. As for the extensions, you can find free and paid extensions to meet your requirements.
OpenCart does not require any license. Download and further modifications are available after spending about $7 per month purchasing a web hosting package. In general, OpenCart is usually cheaper thanks to its light weight, so it would be enough to satisfy the needs of tiny online stores.
 
Target Audience and Traffic
Magento is not only a solution for the small store owners, but also a good choice for large businesses and enterprises. It is a good place to go for those business owners who don’t want to spend time and energy in finding a trusted web hosting package. Also, Magento’s strong side is the ability to work stably with a greater variety of products or services and to sustain huge traffic. A special Enterprise edition increases the opportunities.
OpenCart was developed for a wide range of potential users: from small shop owners to big enterprises. Basically, it is all thanks to easy installation and use of this single shopping cart system. The store owners have to mind their hosting environment that OpenCart resides on.
SEO Aspect
Magento users also easily connect their online stores to a WordPress blog, while OpenCart does not offer it as easy.
Despite OpenCart can boast SEO friendly URLs, modifying metadata and performing actions are its weak sides. Thus, there are a few things that have to be improved. Even especially created extensions do not cope with SEO as efficiently as Magento does. This platform is capable of empowering site’s search engine optimization through optimizing titles, images, other content, and URLs.
Speed
Concerning Magento, you can speed it up by downloading free or paid extension. In return, it offers more features than OpenCart. When putting Magento vs OpenCart, it should be also mentioned that the first requires much higher end infrastructure, but we have discussed already why Magento is still worth trying.
In case you own a start-up which only needs to deliver goods quickly without many integrations, OpenCart is right for you. As you can guess from its name, powerful shopping cart is the primary advantage of this solution.
Users
Magento is perfect for medium and large-sized businesses due to its expanded opportunities and professional extensions. Also, Magento works better for multiple-stores.
Companies of different sizes and types often face the dilemma known as Magento vs OpenCart. OpenCart is suitable even for small businesses, while Magento is mostly preferred by experienced, large-scale ecommerce.