Sidharth Jain
6 min readSep 3, 2020

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Magento vs. WordPress: Which should be used & when?

Gone are those days, when creating a website was considered as an overwhelming process. Today, we are in the technology-mediated era, and for the aforementioned purpose, we employ a content management system to get our hands on the ready-made websites.

What do you mean by Content Management Systems, exactly?

A content management system popularly abbreviated as CMS is a renowned application that provides it, users, with the facility to manage the website content. The not so published content is saved in a database, allowing the user to read, edit, rewrite and omit some sentences. WordPress and Magento both are examples of CMS. And, both of them possess some special qualities over the other, and it is recommended to use them for your project wisely.

If you want to add e-commerce features to your already existing website then you employ Magento for the same purpose. On the other hand, WordPress cannot provide such facilities to its users. Both of these are the powerful open-source tools, but if you are a beginner level developer than this question must’ve haunted you for days. Well to understand the importance of such sites, and its right use, you should know what exactly is WordPress and Magento, and their benefits.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open-source CMS which is commonly written in PHP, and thus, is known to be a popular choice for all the e-commerce brands based websites. If the studies are to be believed than Magento is known to be a top contributor in 33% of the top- e-commerce websites.

The comprehensive yet popular e-commerce platform was made available for everyone’s use in the year 2008, and since its inception, it has enjoyed quite a popularity. And, Magento due to its features has landed itself as the most used CMS tool earning spot number 4. Magento provides its users with the extensions that are widely used by both 1st and third party website developers. The number of extensions is about 4000, and when on installation it is responsible to provide them with the features such as automated store coupon distribution as well as multi-vendor functionality.

Moreover, you might have observed that there are two types of Magento namely available in Google, Magento 1 and Magento 2. Well, without second-guessing Magento 2 is more powerful as compared to its previous version, and hence if you are wasting any more time thinking about both than you shouldn’t.

The Magento 2 further comes in its two popular versions which are Magento open source as well as the Magento Cloud. The former version of Magento, i.e. Magento open source is free for download. This is best for the small business who have had hired developers on their behalf. Moreover, as the name implies this version is an open-source that it allows with a plethora of added features such as-

  1. Coupons Distribution
  2. A plethora of Users
  3. Product categories addition, cross-sell and up-sell
  4. Provide community support

On the other hand, the latter version of Magento is paid as well as tailor-made to provide large businesses with better performance as well as scalability features. Moreover, this version is more limited to the likes of the experts who know their way, around this tool. This version provides you with hundreds of extensions that can let you have more control over this feature.

Now, let’s know what is WordPress?

WordPress was developed in the year 2003 for blogging. And, since then it has ventured in numerous realms. WordPress is known to be the most used CMS today and why not? It offers exemplary user experiences and the ability to customise the website according to your likes. Therefore, it accounts for creating the most websites.

Not only this, even if it limits in some criteria it is fulfilled by the use of plug-ins. Today, there are more than 56,000 extensions that are available on its marketplace which makes WordPress as one of the most flexible and easy sources to create a website template.

Magento vs WordPress in terms of-

Type of websites built:

Magento is used to create complex e-commerce websites. On the other hand, WordPress is used to create simple business websites as well as small e-commerce sites employing the use of the third-party plug-in. It has been witnessed, that Magento has some features such as adding varied products to the catalogue, coupon distribution which further makes the development and management of the e-commerce website quite easy.

2. Security-

Well, this is one of the most wanted features. And, if you have a business or an e-commerce website involving multiple transactions, this is the feature you cannot take for granted. Speaking of security in Magento, it offers an advanced level of data protection. Moreover, the core code for both Magento and WordPress is highly secure, but WordPress uses third-party plug-in to provide its users with advantages. The security of such plug-in is still in question. In such cases, it should not be used for e-commerce platforms.

On the other hand, Magento is known to provide the features without the use of third-party plugins. Therefore, it creates a safe and secure platform for e-commerce operations. Even if you have a doubt, you can always scan the Magento website for free using a tool. This action not only removes doubts from the minds of the users but make them aware that there is not any sort of vulnerabilities.

3. Process of installation-

As discussed before, you need to buy a paid subscription to use Magento, which further has two different versions. The users are more experts who want to create complex websites. Therefore, the use of this website as well as the installation process is not that easy. WordPress, on the other hand, is a free tool and is quite easy to use as well as has a simple installation process.

4 SEO -

One of the requisites a business have from its website is the ability to attract relevant traffic using on-page and off-page techniques. But, no matter how hard you try, some of the websites fail to lure the target audience, you may ask why? The answer is simple; a website must be optimised in terms of content, images and layout to be SEO friendly.

Magento has some in-built plug-in that allows the search engine optimization process. But, WordPress depends upon the third parties plug-in to initiate this process. One of the plug-in that it highly endorses is Yoast SEO. Moreover, WordPress was built as a blogging site, which implies that it provides its users with ample suggestions about meta-title, tags and descriptions and even a facility to tweak accordingly. And optimized content plays a huge part in the ability to perform SEO.

In simpler terms, both of the websites have something in store for its users, which on using can help them drive traffic better with SEO.

5. Templates-

If you are looking to design a customized website then you should opt for WordPress. WordPress is built in a way that it can offer its users with a variety of design templates to choose from. Not only this if you are looking for a customized business website or an innovative user experience than you should consider WordPress. Magento, on the contrary, focusses more on the features and convenience rather than the layout on the whole.

Combining the both-

Magento and WordPress are one of the widely used CMS for website development. And, choosing between the two is one of the most daunting decisions one has to take. But, what if you own an e-commerce site but also need to tell your story to your audience. One way of foretelling your story is by writing bogs. What then? WP engines can combine with Magento created websites with the WordPress bogs.

Enough Said!
Well, the advantages and disadvantages of one over the other is a simmering debate that will continue for ages!
Are you wondering which CMS can serve your purpose then look no more and contact us! We are a renowned name that is known to offer our clients the premium offshore website development service in India. For the same purpose, we have the best technology stack that can help you in attaining your goals.

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Sidharth Jain

Founder @ Graffersid.com | Building Website & Mobile Apps | Trusted by funded Startups | Awarded Best UX Design Team & Rising Star 2018