What is Magento? It’s History, Facts, Usage & More

What is Magento? It’s History, Facts, Usage & More

Everything that your Ecommerce Biz Should Know about the World’s Most Popular Ecommerce Platform.

If you’re an ecommerce seller, then the chances are that you have heard of Magento or are already using it for running your online store. Similarly, if you’re a consumer, then chances are that you have already shopped at a store running on Magento without knowing about it.

Here, in this post, you can find all that you need to know about this highly popular eCommerce solution – right from its history, the back story, to the reasons why it became so popular, the different versions of Magento, features and benefits, latest developments, future roadmap and more.

By the time you finish reading this, you would know all that you need to know to get started with Magento. Buckle up and let’s dive in.

First Things First, What is Magento?

It’s an open-source ecommerce platform that provides merchants with complete flexibility over the shopping cart, as well as complete control over the functionalities, look, and feel of the online store. It has a wide array of tools and features to help you build an ecommerce website. Introduced in 2007, Magento today has seen several versions and product updates.

Where to Find Information on Magento?

The official website, magento.com is the best starting point. It has an extensive catalog of all the extensions of Magento for both developers and partners.

Not only do you get to know the various versions and solutions offered by Magento, but also you can find the right Magento development agency. The website lets you search for the best Magento partner for your business, using the partner search directory.

A certified Magento partner is your trusted ally in your journey of using Magento ecommerce. The partner helps you provide your online customers with engaging and enriching customer experiences. Your Magento partner will help you with your end-to-end project implementations – including design, configuration, customization, development, integration, and deployment.

You can also check out Magento Marketplace, an extensive catalog of all the extensions of Magento built by developers and partners. Also, make sure to check out the Magento Community Forum. It’s the place to find help and answers to the problems you’re facing with Magento.

Additionally, you can share your experiences and insights on the platform with the other members of the community. You can also check out the Magento Help Center for FAQs, how-to guides, troubleshooting help, and more.

Just like all other open-source platforms, the strength of Magento is its thriving and supportive user community. Apart from these, there are tons of websites, tutorials, and blogs that help you with Magento usage.

Why Magento?

Very often, both ecommerce store owners and site developers have a hard time believing that Magento is undoubtedly the best ecommerce solution available. But, once they get the hang of it and understand the excellent features and benefits, they readily come on board. Before, we answer the question, “Why Magento is the best?” let’s take a look at why it was introduced.

Magento not only became the most popular ecommerce system within a short span but also continues to be the preferred choice for brands of all sizes and across industries, even today.

One of the biggest drawbacks of earlier ecommerce solutions (both commercial and open-source) was that they lacked flexibility. Ecommerce developers and online shop owners always had to make compromises. But, no more!

The open-source nature of Magento ensures that you can design your ecommerce store exactly the way you want, without making any compromises due to system restrictions.

To phrase it in a nutshell, Magento is a powerful, flexible, easily shapeable, and scalable system that any brand can customize to suit their specific needs.

History of Magento

The Beginning

Magento came into existence on 31st August 2007. It was the brainchild of Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner, who were then working for the platform, Varien. Initially, Magento was planned as a sub-system of the popular ecommerce solution, osCommerce.

The founder developers felt that osCommerce couldn’t accommodate all the functionalities they wanted in the new system. So, they branched out from it and built an entirely new system from scratch.

Timeline of Magento – The World’s #1 Open-Source Ecommerce Platform

2007 Developed by Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner. The first beta version was released in Aug 2007.
2008 Launched as Bento. The first community edition was introduced in June 2008.
2009 Magento soars in popularity. The Enterprise edition was released in April 2009.
2010 Magento mobile launched. eBay buys a 100% stake in Magento.
2012–14 Magento 1 saw several updates and revised versions.
2015 Magento 2.0 was officially launched. Permira took over ownership of Magento in November 2015.
2016 Launches: Magento Commerce Order Management, Magento 2.1, Magento Marketplace, Magento Commerce Cloud
2017 Launches: Magento 2.2, Magento Shipping, Magento Business Intelligence
2018 Adobe acquires Magento. Magento 2.3 is to be launched by the end of this year.

Here are 10 Interesting Facts That You Probably Weren’t Aware of Magento

#1: More than 250,000 online stores run on Magento including some of the biggest brands in the world like Samsung, Ford, Nike, Olympus, North Face, and more.

#2: In the first year of its launch, Magento was downloaded more than 500,000+ times.

#3: According to a recent study, Magento was the world’s second most popular ecommerce solution for businesses in 2017. WooCommerce has about 11% market share, while Magento comes a close second at 9%.

#4: The term “Magento” has been searched more times on Google than the word ecommerce.

#5: Magento provides ecommerce merchants the freedom to create their online store according to their exact specifications. However, it takes a bit of programming knowledge to work with Magento. If you aren’t familiar with coding, no worries! You can seek the help of a reputed Magento 2 web development certified partner.

#6: Magento is one of the few open-source ecommerce solutions. This means the code is available for anyone to use for free, making it one of the securest and most versatile ecommerce platforms.

#7: The Magento community has over 800,000+ members from all across the world. It’s a thriving and supportive forum, thereby providing Magento developers and users with excellent support.

#8: Though Magento has its headquarters in LA, the major share of the development happened in Ukraine. Yoav Kutner, the co-founder of Magento, was initially looking for an in-house team based in LA to help with the development. Coincidentally, he was contacted by an extremely talented Ukrainian programmer, who then introduced Yoav to other expert programmers from Ukraine. Thus, the code happened to be built from there.

#9: Initially, Magento was named Bento. But, due to trademark conflicts with FileMaker Inc, that name had to be abandoned. The word “Magento” is a mix of the words Mage and Bento. The word “Mage” refers to “Wizards” in the cult role-playing game, “Dungeons and Dragons.”

#10: The Magento Source code has over 13,507,099 lines of code and is written in over 11 programming languages.

Why Magento Reigns No.1 in Ecommerce – Feature Highlights

1. A Complex System with Advanced Functionalities

Magento is one of the most robust and advanced ecommerce platforms. While this may feel a bit daunting for beginners, once you get the hang of the system with the help of Magento 2 experts, you’ll be in complete control of all aspects of your online store.

Right from analytics to managing inventory, customizing user experience, tracking user details, SEO, and more, Magento handles the A – Z of your online store.

2. Endless Customization and Versatile

The Magento Marketplace has thousands of designs, templates, and features that help you to customize the look and feel of your online store. While some of these templates are available free of cost, you’ll have to pay a fee for others.

3. Complete Inventory Management

Managing an online store is not only time-consuming but also tedious. Magento simplifies the entire process, by providing you with all the details at your fingertips. Find out – how much of a product you have in stock, which products are running out of stock, which ones you need to reorder, and more with Magento’s interface.

4. Effective Product Management

This is one of the biggest benefits of Magento. It gives you complete control over your product attributes. You can define fields and list your products, just like you would do with a regular brick-and-mortar store.

Customers can then filter and search for products based on their specific requirements, helping them locate their preferred product with just a few clicks.

5. SEO and Digital Marketing

Magento lets you integrate your online store with popular digital marketing and SEO third-party tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, HubSpot, and more. This helps you improve and enhance your digital marketing tactics and SEO strategies, easily. You can up-sell, cross-sell, provide customers with personalized offers and do plenty more, with Magento’s outstanding functionality.

6. Multiple Payment Options

Magento gives you complete freedom and flexibility in deciding how you want your customers to pay. Single-click payment, billing purchases for later, checkout without registration, simple registration, and multiple payment options are some of the biggest benefits of using Magento.

Remember that you need to streamline payments efficiently to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and to increase Magento 2 conversion rates.

7. Integration with ERP

Magento can be easily integrated with external Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics AX, and others.

8. Magento Marketplace

It’s the biggest marketplace for all your ecommerce development requirements. Whether you’re looking for themes, extensions, services, or other applications to customize your Magento ecommerce system, the marketplace will help you find the right solution.

9. Security and Data Protection

When it comes to online shopping, you cannot afford to take chances with security and data protection. Magento provides users with a Security Center that helps you resolve and troubleshoot any problems that you may face in this area.

All this makes Magento one of the most secure ecommerce platforms available today.

10. Community and Support

As mentioned above, Magento has a thriving user community that provides you with exemplary support. Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a start-up, Magento provides you with the right solution specific to your requirements.

What’s more, if you need further help, you can always contact a certified Magento Partner to help you with the design and development of your ecommerce store.

Top Magento FAQ

1. Is it worth installing Magento 1?

According to ecommerce experts, it’s highly recommended that you give Magento 1 the skip if you’re designing your online store from scratch. Even if you have an existing ecommerce store that runs on Magento 1, you’ll have to opt for Magento 2 migration service, sooner or later.

While Magento still provides support for Magento 1, the platform doesn’t have the features required for modern ecommerce stores.

2. What are the Versions of Magento 2?

Very often, people assume that Magento 2 has only two products – the Magento 2 CE (Community Edition) and Magento 2 EE (Enterprise Edition). However, Magento has released several products to enhance the functionalities offered by Magento 2. They are:

  • Magento Commerce Cloud
  • Magento Order Management (OMS)
  • Magento Shipping
  • Magento Business Intelligence

3. What are the Top Features of Magento 2 compared with other Ecommerce Platforms?

Magento 2 has a wide range of features that surpass other competitors like WooCommerce, Shopify, and more. Here are the top features that you get with Magento 2:

  • Catalog Management
  • Content Management
  • Marketing Support
  • Order Management
  • Customer Management
  • Store Management
  • System Management
  • Analytics and Reporting
  • Scalability

Finally, Coming to the Big Question

Should I Switch to Magento for my Ecommerce Store?

A Big Yes! Magento 2 gives you complete control over your ecommerce store right from the design to deployment. With Magento, you can stop making compromises and start focusing on your bottom line.

Magento makes all the difference between a regular online and an enhanced, customer-friendly online store experience, that makes you stand out from the rest!

Get in touch with a certified ecommerce website development company to help you get started with the process.

Parth Patel, a skilled E-commerce Consultant and co-founder of Icecube Digital, dedicates his time to producing straightforward yet invaluable content. With a sharp attention to detail and a passion for innovation, Parth focuses on Magento, WordPress, Shopify, and other platforms in his commitment to advancing e-commerce solutions.

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