Oct 29 2008
Is Magento Commerce the new Joomla?
If you are in the open source eCommerce industry, you probably heard about the new kid around the block: Magento Commerce. If you follow the industry news, you know that since its announcement back in April of 2007, Magento’s popularity is nothing shy of sky rocketing. Certainly feels like mid-2005 with the emergence of Joomla and the demise of Mambo in the CMS space. So, what makes this open source ecommerce platform so popular? What is it still lacking, but seem unimportant? First, we can clearly see an obvious trend: the emergence of Magento and the decline of both Zen Cart and osCommerce:
Search trends for the terms Zen Cart, osCommerce, and Magento
The notion of ecommerce built from the ground up with today’s modern tools gives shopping cart owners a warm fuzzy feeling. Top it with the fact that the modern tools are solid MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern and the Zend Framework and you get a bunch of online stores that are ready to jump on this promising bandwagon. Ok, I am missing one important fact! These days, admit it or not, looks and coolness are gold. Not surprisingly, this is were Magento shines!
But wait a minute, is Magento Commerce ready for prime time? Well, this is where you see a divide in the industry, this is where the chasm and the bell curve comes in. Yes, Magento does lack performance, stability, scalability, and some trivial features that existed for many years in other carts like Zen Cart and osCommerce. But the trend is obvious and there is no going back. If history repeats itself Magento will become a leader very very soon!
Viva la competicion!
Ron,
Thanks for the nice writeup and assessment. We are excited to be at the forefront of online commerce and look forward to taking the lead. In the next few months, large scale brands will launch on Magento which will push the product further ahead. Stay tuned for more exciting things …
Thanks again.
Roy / Magento