You’d agree with me that for any individual or company that wishes to venture into e-commerce business must have heard of Spree Commerce or Magento. These e-commerce platforms are very popular, the functionality of Spree and Magento is the same but the features differs to some extent. This now brings an argument, which of the platform is more preferable?
In the cause of reading this article, you will have a better view of Spree commerce features, Magento features, and spree commerce vs Magento comparison. After reading this article, one can easily point out which is the best for startups.
Spree Commerce
Spree commerce is an open source cart with quite a huge amount of tools and features embedded in it which allows you to build an online store. Spree commerce has proven to be more convenient for individual or business that are seeking a more adaptable, fast, simple and cost-effective. Spree commerce was built using Ruby on Rails and it requires a good developer and designer due to its technicality.
Spree commerce convenience came to reality due to its features. Here are few Spree commerce features:
- it’s flexible and responsive sites
- it has customization options
- good modular architecture
- product configuration
- customers subscriptions
- comprehensive API
- Robust Open source community
- training and support
Spree Commerce pricing is visible in terms of designing, hosting, security etc but aside from these factors, it is actually free. It is an open source software you can easily download.
Magento
Magento is an open source platform that was written in PHP with an element of the Zend framework. Magento has more than eight (8) millions of lines of code which makes it more complicated to handle. This open source is subdivided into three distinct platforms, Magento Community Edition, Magento Enterprise Edition and Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition.
The beauty of Magento features is one of the main benefits of Magento. These features make it easy to develop, manage, and maintain a successful online store. Here are some main features of Magento:
- product browsing
- catalog management
- customer accounts
- customer service
- order management
- analytics and reporting
- shipping
- site management
- marketing promotion and tools
Magento has set to have increased rapidly with about 35% in the year 2017 according to different sources. The cost was set to have increased from $18,000 to $24,000. The new Magento pricing came shortly Magento 2.0 was released.
We’ve seen an overview of both Spree Commerce and Magento as well as its features. Here in the table below, is a comparison of the both features:
| Features | Spree Commerce | Magento |
| Better page load time | Yes | Yes |
| Faster indexing | Yes | Yes |
| Full page caching | Yes | Yes |
| Better scalability | Yes | Yes |
| Large pool of extensions | Yes | Yes |
Magento VS Spree Commerce Comparison
Here we will compare some couple of the top 2017 core aspects of Spree commerce and Magento Enterprise which business owners can desire to consider before launching their project. It distinctively differentiates between the two e-commerce platform.
| Magento | Spree Commerce | |
| Pricing | Magento Enterprise market itself a big business solution and it prices itself accordingly. The starting price is $15,000 and can go to as high as $200,000 | On the other hand, spree commerce begins at $0. You can have the access code, extensions, community support and all additional features for free. Though, developing your platform will require some cost depending on the developers and designers you chose. |
| Sources code | Magento was built using PHP and it has over 8 million lines of code | Spree Commerce was built using Ruby on Rails with 45 thousand lines of code. |
| UX experience | Magento’s backend is a bit untidy. Developers can easily forget which screens control which settings due to navigation of tab after sub-tab. | Spree commerce is neat and tidy. You will never have to look for options or a roadmap anytime you need to change. |
| Language and currency support | In view of payment gateway and language modules, Magento can handle approximately 75 solutions | While on the other hand, Spree Commerce comes with a bundled of over 125 different solutions. |
| Supported Integration | Magento supports integration with following business systems and applications:
|
Spree commerce supports the following:
|
| Company Size | Large Enterprises | Small business |
| Devices |
|
|
In conclusion, Magento and Spree Commerce have lots of features in common and they have proved to be capable of offering a secure, friendly online shopping for users(visitors). However, the cost and duration of deploying an e-commerce platform should be well considered when making a decision between Spree and Magento. Nevertheless, for startups, spree commerce will always be the first option to look into and explore before making a final decision.
