Magento vs osCommerce 2021 – Which is Better?

Just like OpenCart, osCommerce and Magento are awarded as 2 of the top 10 eCommerce software for online store building. Now, after developing a comparison osCommerce VS OpenCart, we have worked out a comprehensive and impartial comparison between osCommerce and Magento to help you know more about them and choose the one suiting your needs best.

Before writing this comparison, we have carefully reviewed every aspect of the 2 eCommerce solutions and read a great many verified feedbacks from the 2 applications’ real users. According to our in-depth review and the real users’ voice, we developed this comparison from several aspects. Proceed to the details.

Costs & Requirements

Both of the 2 programs are open-source software, so they are free for anyone to download and use. Therefore, you are able to go to their official sites download the software. However, no matter which one you choose to download, you have to choose a secure and reliable web hosting company to host your online store. Here, we suggest you to choose a web host offering SSL and SSH, because with the 2 services you are able to enhance the security of both your and your clients’ data and remote management.

Although both of the 2 solutions are free to use, there are some requirements to use them. If you want to create a self-hosted online store using osCommerce, you have to choose a web hosting package including PHP 4+ and MySQL 3+, and hosting solutions coming with PHP 5+ and MySQL 5+ are highly recommended by the osCommerce.com. On the other hand, if you choose Magento, your hosting plan has to include PHP 5, MySQL 4.1.20, and the ability to override options in .htaccess files.

Payment

As for payment method, osCommerce supporpaymentts PayPal, Sage Pay and SecureBuy. With the support for PayPal, users’ buyers are able to pay online securely and easily. Besides, with the other 2 payment methods, buyers are able to finish a purchase quickly and safely. As for Magento, this software allows users’ customers to pay money using PayPal and credit cards, making the purchase is secure and easy.

Marketing

osCommerce has been partnered with Ezako for a long time, so its users are able to use EZ Personalization to show their customers personalized recommendations and to help them find the desired products. Besides, MailBees, a partner of osCommerce, gives users the ability to use helpful tools to create personalized and automated eCommerce email marketing campaigns, increasing the visibility of users’ products or services.

On the other hand, Magento offers many free tools for users to promote their services and products, among which Google Content API for Shopping, iBanners, Post Affiliate Pro Connector are free and extremely useful. Besides, they also allow online store owners to do social marketing to increase sales.

Templates & Themes

osCommerce community have uploaded 7,000+ add-ons, each of which is free for users to customize their online stores. Besides, they provide users with a large number of templates that are well designed and priced at a low price. By installing a quality template from oscTemplates, you are able to customize a special logo. What’s more, if you can’t find a satisfying template from oscTemplates, you can choose one from the top theme marketplaces, like ThemeForest.

As for Magento, to help their users create a professional and beautiful online store, they offer many free or paid themes, each of which is elegant and has been downloaded tens of thousands times. However, if you find these themes can’t meet your needs, you are capable of choosing a satisfying one from famous theme providers, like Mojo Themes.

Support

Having been in the industry for 14 years, osCommerce offers a high level of technical support to ensure their users have a good experience. In their forum, there are over 1.5 million articles developed by more than 270,000 community members including storeowners, service providers and developers, enabling you to find the answers of common issues. Besides, their partners with experts are able to help you resolve problems. What’s more, you are able to join their live chat room to ask for help from other community members and the professional developers.

With Magento, you are able to learn how to resolve issues and optimize your online store by reading the guides and tips, joining the webinars, browsing the eCommerce forums, and referring to eCommerce resource library. Besides, to ensure users can enjoy a good experience, Magento Expert Consulting Group offers the best analysis of your eCommerce site’s performance and advice and gives you useful suggestions. Moreover, Magento partners are ready to help you plan, build and optimize your online channel.

Conclusion

From the aspect-to-aspect comparison above, we are able to get a conclusion that both osCommerce and Magento are good eCommerce software, each of which provides many useful tools, elegant designs, and quality technical support. However, to be specific, osCommerce does a better job in technical support while its competitor does better in marketing. Therefore, we suggest people who are running a big online store to choose Magento, and those who have little hosting knowledge to stay with osCommerce.

After reviewing many eCommerce hosting, we have found the best osCommerce hosting and the best Magento hosting. To offer you more choices, we list the following web hosts, each of which provides extremely good eCommerce hosting suitable for both osCommerce users and Magento users.