After decades of research, development, and innovation, eCommerce today is a massive industry in itself. If you take a closer look, it does not only involves the eCommerce retailers but also various supporting businesses that align with the market for growth.
One such market is eCommerce platforms, where numerous vendors boast of their USPs and innovative ways to let you build the eCommerce website of your dreams.
Out of various kinds of eCommerce solutions in the market, the oldest and most discussed ones are the open-source eCommerce platforms. They have been around for quite some time and probably, they are the reason why anyone today can imagine building an eCommerce store without spending fortunes.
What are the open-source eCommerce platforms?
They are ready-made software solutions to create an online store without developing them from scratch. They offer a set of predefined features, which you can simply use out of the box and start selling on the go from your eCommerce portal.
Now, the term open-source denotes that vendors provide you the source code access for these ready-made solutions. You can simply download the source code, install on a web-server, set up the store and the payment gateways, and start selling immediately.
Note: Open-source and Free eCommerce platforms are not the same. The term “Open-source” merely means open access to the source code. Though many open-source eCommerce platforms are free to download and use, there are premium open-source platforms in the market, too.
We are going to discuss five such eCommerce platformsin this article. We will go through the background of all solutions so that you can make an informed decision while selecting the best eCommerce platforms for your next project.
Note: All of these solutions in our list are equally capable of creating full-fledged eCommerce stores and possess every fundamental feature for a modern-day eCommerce business. When we talk about features in this list, we would be discussing the USPs and highlights that differentiate them from one another.
1. Magento Community Edition
Magento is one of the most popular and best eCommerce platforms in the market with dedicated solutions for both B2B and B2C eCommerce stores. However, here we are talking about the Magento community edition, which is the open-source and self-hosted version of Magento.
Highlighting Features:
- Multi-store: It allows you to manage multiple eCommerce stores under different domains from the same dashboard.
- API support: Web Services API to integrate any third-party application with your Magento store very easily.
- CMS: Integrated CMS to create and manage web pages from the dashboard without messing with the source code.
- Inbuilt-payment solutions: Integrated Amazon Payments, PayPal, Authorize.net, and Google Checkout APIs to starting receiving payments on the go.
Age and Community support:
They released the first version of Magento in 2008. As of now, it has received over 2.5 million downloads and accounts for over 4.4% of the total eCommerce platform market.As it is open-source, community developers who come up with innovative Magento extensions to extend the base feature. There are both Free and Premium Magento Extensions available in the market.
Versions in use:
- Magento 1
- Magento 2
Tech Stack of Magento:
| MAGENTO 2 | MAGENTO 1 |
| Apache 2.2 / 2.4 | Apache 2.x |
| Nginx 1.7 or greater | |
| PHP 5.6.x / 7.0.2 / 7.0.6 | PHP 5.2.x – 5.5.x |
| MySQL / MySQL Percona 5.6.x or greater | MySQL |
| Varnish 3.x / 4.x | |
| Redis 2.x / 3.x or Memcached 1.4.x | |
| HTML5 | HTML |
| CSS3 | CSS |
| JQuery | JQuery (In latest themes) |
| Zend Framework 1 / 2 | Zend Framework 1 |
| Symfony Framework |
Suitable for:
Magento community edition is suitable for building mid-sized eCommerce stores. The SKUs might range up to 300,000 – 500,000. It can handle massive website traffic if used with supporting technologies like better web-hosts and content delivery networks. It also has inbuilt SEO optimization and page loading speed optimization controls.
Initial Cost Factors:
The source code is free to download and use. So most of the initial investment would only incur in-
- Magento Themes
- Magento Templates
- Magento extensions
- Search Engine optimization
- Third-party API integrations
2. PrestaShop self-hosted
PrestaShop is a perfect competitor for Magento and one of the best eCommerce platformsin the open-source category. It is self-hosted like Magento and has become quite popular in the European countries. It also offers a cloud-hosted version with web hosting support.
Highlighting Features:
- Easy to use: Offers a seamless back-end design that even a non-technical person can manage.
- Powerful catalog: Powerful product catalog management with product variation support.
- One-page checkout: Supports single page checkout as optional checkout design out of the box.
- Integrated SEO tools: Supports SEO tools and features such as SEO friendly URL and Google analytics.
Age and Community support:
They released the first version of PrestaShop in 2007. Today, more than 250,000 shops worldwide use PrestaShop in 60 different languages.Being open-source code and free the eCommerce platform has a huge community of users and developers. There are both free and premium PrestaShop modules available on the official PrestaShop marketplace for modules, themes, and templates.
Versions in use:
Currently, the latest version in use is PrestaShop 1.7.6.1. This version got a major revamp in the technology stack when they moved from previous 1.6 version to 1.7. The major change from 1.6 to 1.7 was the introduction of the Symfony framework.
Tech Stack of PrestaShop:
Similar to Magento, PrestaShop works on the LAMP stack. The major technologies used by PrestaShop and PrestaShop developers include:
- PHP
- Apache
- MySQL
- Bootstrap
- Nginx
- JQuery
- Symfony
- Twig
- Smarty
Suitable for:
PrestaShop 1.7 is perfect for building mid-sized eCommerce stores with 4000-5000 SKUs. You may upscale your SKUs and website traffic handling by opting for a dedicated server and CDN services.
Initial Cost Factors:
The initial cost factors of PrestaShop are similar to the Magento Community edition. Except, PrestaShop development cost is cheaper than Magento.
3. OpenCartself-hosted version
Open-cart is yet another open-source and self-hosted eCommerce platform used by thousands of entrepreneurs today. It’s popular because of low-cost investment and huge community support.
Highlighting Features:
- Inbuiltcustomer loyalty programs: A rewards-points management system toboost customer loyalty and sales.
- Affiliate marketing: Built-in affiliate marketing system to boost sales and marketing campaigns.
- Discount Management: Built-in coupon management system to offer discount coupons to the customers.
- Massive payment solutions: Supports multiple currencies and 36 payment gateways out of the box.
Age and Community support:
Oldest of all the on our list here. They released the first version of OpenCart back in 1999. However, the first stable release happened only in February 2009. As of now, the market share of OpenCart is 1.64%%. The official community constitutes over 539,304 posts and over 90,000 members. Currently over, 27,591 websites are live on OpenCart.
Versions in use:
The latest OpenCart version in use as of today is 3.0.1.1, which they released in July 2018.
Tech Stack of OpenCart:
OpenCart was built on the LAMP stack. Its major technologies include-
- PHP
- HTML
- CSS
- MySQL
- XML
- AJAX
- JQUERY
Suitable for:
OpenCart is a more suitable solution to start a small-scale eCommerce business with up to 3000-5000 SKUs. It’s a module dependent platform and requires you to integrate several third-party modules to extend the features. The more modules you install, the slower the site gets.
Initial Cost Factors:
The initial cost factors to build an eCommerce website with OpenCart are almost similar to Magento and PrestaShop. However, an OpenCart development remains cheaper than both Magento and PrestaShop. It’s easier to find inexpensive OpenCart modules, themes, and templates.
4. WooCommerceWordPress Plugin
WooCommerce is the most popular open-source eCommerce solution on the planet. However, unlike all other solutions in our list, WooCommerce is not an independent eCommerce platform. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that adds eCommerce functionalities to the traditional CMS. You need to install WordPress first to install WooCommerce on your server.
Highlighting Features:
- Light Weight: Though it’s a WordPress plugin,its eCommerce functionalities work independently of the CMS. That’s why it’s lightweight.
- Surplus modules: A massive community supports WooCommerce. You will always find a module designed for every requirement.
- Inbuilt-payment gateways: Almost every popular payment gateway company has built a WooCommerce module for ready-made use.
- Template-based customization:You can build a WooCommerce store personalized for any kind of products and services using customized templates.
Age and Community support:
They released the first public version of WooCommerce in 2014. By 2015, WooCommerce already owned a 30% market share. Today, it’s the most popular eCommerce platform in all categories. As of today, WooCommerce is powering 22% of the top one 1 million eCommerce stores. There aremore than 1,135 WooCommerce templates on Theme Forest alone.
Versions in use:
The latest version of WooCommerce as of now is 3.7.1 with over 5+ million installations. It works on WordPress version 4.9 and above.
Tech Stack of WooCommerce:
- PHP
- Nginx
- JavaScript
- JQuery
- Bootstrap
- MySQL
- Ajax
- HTML5
- CSS3
Suitable for:
It works perfectly for small to mid-sized businesses. You won’t notice any performance lag up to 10,000 SKUs with proper optimization, CDN support, and optimal web servers.
Initial Cost Factors:
Both WordPress and WooCommerce plugins are free. Out of all the solutions in this list, WordPress has most of the free modules and plugins. Moreover, the premium modules are inexpensive. So getting any decent WooCommerce modules in affordable investment should not be a problem here.
5. ShopyGenA multi-vendor marketplace solution
ShopyGen Genstore differs from all the entries in two major ways. One, where rest entries are LAMP stack (PHP based), Genstore works on MEAN stack. It’s a Node.Js eCommerce shopping cart. Secondly, it’s not free; it’s a premium open-source script.
Highlighting Features:
Multi-vendor marketplace: Comes with multi-vendor marketplace support out of the box.
Highly Scalable: MEAN stack with Node.js makes the most scalable eCommerce platforms.
Full Stack Package: Comes with a complete suite of websites and mobile apps for iOS, Android.
Multiple Revenue channels: Also supports untraditional revenue channels subscription and commission.
Age and Community support:
They released the first version in 2016. It’s almost a four years old script now. The script powers more than 500 enterprise eCommerce businesses across the planet. As per the community support is concerned, all the support and development is done by the vendors itself. However, since its open-source, any skilled MEAN stack developer can do the customizations after referring the documentation.
Versions in use:
The latest version in use is Genstore 2.0.
Tech Stack of Genstore script:
- Linux Operating System
- NGINX
- NPM
- JAVASCRIPT
- MongoDB
- NODE.JS
- EXPRESS.JS
- ANGULAR.JS
Suitable for:
One of the best eCommerce platforms for small to large-scale multi-vendor eCommerce platforms. You can use the script to build a massive multi-vendor with millions of SKUs. It’s suitable for selling both physical and digital products.
Initial Cost Factors:
You have to purchase the source code of the script. Moreover, the costs will also include web hosting cost, customizations (if any), and third-party API integrations, etc.
Which is best eCommerce platform?
That depends on your requirements and the scale of the business. While WooCommerce is the best alternative to start an inventory-based store, you should consider Magento to setup a mid-size business. However, if you care about the technical complications and maintenance hassles, Magento is not a wise choice. You can go for OpenCart if you have only a few thousand SKUs to sell, as it is easy to set up, use, and maintain. However, if you want to start a large-scale business and have a decent investment budget, premium open-source solutions like Genstore could make things easier with the MEAN stack. Finally, if you want to start a multi-vendor store, I find Genstore and Magento as the only ones efficient to handle such kind of weight and website traffic.
