Magento is an open-source e-commerce web application that was released on March 31, 2008. It had been created by Varien, created using the Zend Framework application. Magento Enterprise Edition, a paid adaption of Magento intended for larger businesses, was released on April 15, 2009. Varien, this company who created Magento Commerce, previously worked on behalf of os-Commerce(another extremely well-liked e-commerce platform). They initially intended to overhaul osCommerce, but soon after they decided to redraft it as their unique solution. Soon after the launch, many specialty magento hosting companies began to pop up.

Magento formally began development near the beginning of 2007, seven months later on August 31st the initial public beta version was released and met with critical praise. Among the best features of Magento, is ‘Magento Connect’. With this powerful built-in plug-in you’re able download and install several different modules, features as well as perform upgrades. It is possible to also access all of the open-source material developed by members from the community. Downloading and installing themes is made even easier, and you can actually easily purchase premium themes. The three different sections on Magento Connect are for Core Modules, Community Modules and Commercial Modules.

Several of the other key features of Magento are the built-in marketing and promotion tools, marketing via email, analytic’s and reporting, a detailed and graphical breakdown of sales, easy site management using the Magento API and advanced site management like URL rewrites, Google site map creation, etc.

There are a few downfalls of Magento, it definitely is by no means a perfect solution. A few of those downfalls include heavy resource usage, heavy mysql usage plus the MySQL tables are poorly structured, so it slows your store down a bit more than your typical eCommerce application would. The php_memory_;limit setting originally was recommended for 64mb when the beta came out. Most shared web hosting services typically limit someone to 32-64mb, though some permit you to increase this through your htaccess file. However, now Magento is recommending that you have a minimum of a 512mb php_memory_limit. Half a gigabyte of RAM for only one website! A regular shared hosting provider will not allow this, so you’ll have to consider a specialized magento hosting provider. This naturally comes with increased costs, one of the key factors many small businesses have to take into consideration when beginning, especially when forming an online business.

Choosing an excellent Magento host who specializes in Magento or at the very least offers some form of Magento Hosting will certainly increase the websites loading time and overall performance, so be sure that you think about this before purchasing a hosting plan!

Overall I’d give Magento an 8/10 – if the developers of it actually put some time into increasing the performance and loading times, resource requirements to cut back the costs of Magento hosting, and other prevalent issues, then it might gain a point from me instantly and go up to 9/10.