What’s new in Magento 2? Why does Magento 2 offer that is not available in Magento 1?
As leading Magento 2 certified developers, we are oft asked these questions. To answer your queries, we’ve put together a list of the complete set of features, offered in Magento 2 Open Source Edition.
What is Magento 2.0 Open Source?
Magento has become the go-to ecommerce platform for thousands of online retailers, and 1 in 4 businesses worldwide uses it. While Magento 1 was jam-packed with features, the makers of Magento have outdone themselves with Magento 2, which was released in 2015. The popular tool was rebuilt from scratch for the second version. Now, it offers several exclusive features that were not present in the earlier version and resolved the problems with Magento 1.
Magento 2 is available in two editions:
- Magento 2 Open Source – It’s the free version and is ideal for all small and medium ecommerce sellers.
- Magento Commerce 2 – It’s the enterprise version, aimed at large corporates that require extensive management support and business intelligence.
Complete List of Magento 2.0 Open Source Features
Marketing and Conversion Tools
- Up-sell, cross-sell, and group-related products
- Multiple images for each product, zoom-into product images, swatches for a closer product view
- Display stock availability
- Add products to the wish list
- Promotional pricing and flexible coupons for specific products, categories, customer groups, or individual sections of the store
- Export coupon codes to email newsletters, social media channels, offline distribution, and more
- Track coupon usage
- Multi-tier pricing based on product quantities and discounts
- Support for MAP (Minimum Advertised Price)
- Free shipping options
- Customizable product category for different landing pages
- Display recently viewed items, similar products, new items, etc
- A persistent shopping cart that holds non-purchased items for the customer’s next visit
- Email newsletters design and distribution
- Links to email, Facebook, and Twitter for sharing products
SEO Features
- Search engine-friendly URLs
- Complete control over URL rewrites
- Generate a Google sitemap automatically
- Create metadata for pages, categories, and products
Site Management Features
- Control multiple ecommerce stores from a single admin panel
- Define varying roles, and permissions to access the admin panel
- Integrated CMS (Content Management System) to create and edit pages and publish content
- Wide variety of customizable site templates
- Support for multiple currencies and languages, different tax rates based on product type, customer group, location, etc.
- Smooth integration between Magento 2 and other third-party applications
- CAPTCHA functionality, prevent fake logins
- Batch export and import of product catalogs and customer information
Catalogue Management Features
- Display single, bundled, grouped, configurable and virtual products
- Unlimited product attributes
- Pre-defined attribute sets that make it easy to create products
- Enhanced support for inventory management, automated inventory notifications
- Customize out-of-stock messages
- Set minimum and maximum product quantities that can be added to the cart
- Automatic resizing of product images, watermarking
- Moderate product reviews
- Advanced pricing like special pricing, tiered pricing, customer group pricing, and more
- Allows personalization of products in the store
Checkout, Payment, and Shipping Features
- One-page checkout, guest/registered user checkout
- Multiple shipping addresses for one order
- SSL security support
- Save shopping cart, save credit card for offline shopping
- Multiple PayPal gateways, PayPal credit
- Accept money orders, checks, and purchase orders for payment
- More payment options with Magento Connect
- Real-time shipping rates from leading couriers, flat-rate shipping, and select shipping method based on destination
- Offer on-site order tracking for customers
Order Management Features
- Enhanced order management right from the admin panel
- Multiple invoices, split fulfillment, credit memos, etc
- Print packing slips, invoices, shipping labels
- Email notifications and RSS feeds for order status
- The customer service team can create orders, and update shopping carts at the request of customers
Customer Accounts and Customer Service Features
- Comprehensive account dashboard
- Default billing/shipping address, unlimited addresses the in address book
- Check order history, current order status, recently ordered items, and more
- Manage newsletter subscriptions
- Create a shareable wish list
- View submitted product reviews and product tags
- Contact us from, feature-rich customer accounts
International Support Features
- Support for multiple currencies, multiple languages, various local taxes, localization, accented characters, text from right to left, and product translations in six languages (German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Chinese)
- Configure the list of countries for shipping, billing
- Support for fixed product taxes like the DEEE/WEEE, VAT-ID 2 in the EU,
- EU cookie notification
Analytics and Reporting Features
- Support for Google Analytics
- Access a wide variety of reports from the admin dashboard – sales reports, abandoned shopping cart reports, low stock reports, best-selling product reports, most viewed products reports, tax reports, coupon usage reports, and more
Mobile Commerce Features
- Responsive, mobile-friendly design
- Ecommerce site optimized for all devices
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10 Exciting Features of Magento 2 Open Source
1. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Magento 2 comes with the Magento PWA Studio that makes it easy to design your ecommerce store as a progressive web app. The Magento PWA Studio offers faster loading time, quick accessibility to your ecommerce store even in poor network conditions, offline mode, responsiveness, app-like appearance, faster loading times, engaging experience, and several other benefits.
2. Drag-and-Drop Functions to Create and Design Web Pages
Magento 2 is integrated with BlueFoot CMS and Page Builder, making it easy for ecommerce store owners to create and customize web pages even without any coding skills. You can now design pages with simple drag-and-drop functions. It’s effortless to use compared to the WYSIWYG editor available in Magento 1.
3. Enhanced Payments Module
Magento 2 is integrated with Klarna, which enhances the shopping experience. Instant checkouts, easy returns, and options for the customer to divide the payment into several parts are some of the benefits offered by Klarna Magento integration.
4. Sync Your Inventory and Store with Amazon
Though you may have a stand-alone ecommerce store, online retailers cannot afford to ignore Amazon. In 2018, Amazon accounted for 49% of online sales in the US. That’s nearly half the market share. By integrating your online store with Amazon, you can leverage the extensive experience of the ecommerce giant.
5. Instant Purchase
It makes it easy for returning customers to reduce the time taken to checkout. Fields are auto-filled using information saved in the customer account. The instant purchase button appears below the “add to cart” option on individual product pages.
6. Mobile-Friendly Shopping Experience
Magento 2 helps you create an ecommerce store that provides an optimal viewing experience across devices – mobiles, tablets, laptops, desktops, and more. It makes use of responsive designs that provide shoppers with an engaging and seamless shopping experience, irrespective of the device they are using.
7. Feature-Rich Admin Dashboard
Magento 2 provides ecommerce sellers with a modern and intuitive and feature-rich user interface. You can monitor all aspects of your online retail business – sales, order, inventory, invoices, customer service, and more, right from the dashboard.
8. Asynchronous API for Faster and Better Customer Experience
Instead of a traditional API, Magento 2 comes with an asynchronous API that reduces the server time for responses significantly. It enhances the user shopping experience, especially when you have a substantial ecommerce store with hundreds of products.
9. Support for ElasticSearch
Magento 2 fulfills one of the long-pending requests of ecommerce sellers by integrating the ElasticSearch with this version. Accurate, scalable, and intuitive, ElasticSearch enhances the user product search experience significantly, offering fast and improved results.
10. Two-Factor Authentication
Magento 2 improves security further by introducing two-factor authentication. Apart from the login id and password, users will have to verify their ID via an OTP sent to their mobile, email, or phone call.
Are You Ready to Move Over to Magento 2?
With so many features, Magento 2 caters to the needs of all – developers, admins, and customers. Migrating to a new ecommerce platform is a daunting task. It involves changing the underlying database structure, choosing themes, and working with new APIs. So, make sure that you hire expert Magento 2 migration service providers to ease the process and reduce the time taken.
Finally, a word of advice: Make sure to choose a Magento Web Development Services provider that has experience in your product niche to simplify the migration process. To give an example, if you’re an online jewelry seller, then make sure to choose a jewelry website design company as they are likely to have prior experience working with a store that is similar to yours. It is crucial as it helps to reduce the time taken for migration and reduces the possibility of errors.
Magento 2 offers a future-ready ecommerce platform. Transform your online store with Magento 2 and boost your online sales and increase revenues.
