The Biggest, Baddest Magento Myths. Debunked.

Loch Ness.

Bigfoot.

The lost city of Atlantis.

Myths fascinate and captivate us.

Partly because they’re so far-fetched.

Which brings us to myths surrounding Magento.

As Magento developers, we come across many eCommerce entrepreneurs who are misled by common Magento myths.

So in this article, we’re going to debunk 5 of the biggest, baddest Magento myths to give you an accurate picture of the world’s premier eCommerce platform.

Magento Stores are Slow

It’s true.

Magento is a resource-heavy platform.

But that doesn’t mean it’s slow.

With proper caching, image optimization, and a good hosting environment and Content Delivery Network (CDN), your Magento store can become blazing fast.

This is particularly true in Magento 2 installations. Magento 2 has been shown to be up to 50% faster than Magento 1 thanks to full-page caching and other advanced features.

The myth that Magento is slow is likely thanks to inexperienced developers and users who load up their platforms with extensions, fancy themes, and unnecessary spaghetti code.

Just like any other eCommerce platform or CMS like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla, your website’s performance depends on a lot of different factors – and if you skimp on hosting and overuse plugins and extensions, your speeds will suffer for it.

It’s safe to say that, when properly implemented, Magento offers great page loading speeds and performance. Magento is used by more than 25% of all online stores, including top companies like Nike, Missguided, Adidas, and Coca-Cola. If the platform was innately slower than comparable eCommerce platforms, such internet giants would look elsewhere.

Magento is Not as Good as Shopify for Small Businesses

Balogne!

Shopify may be easy to use for small businesses, but it’s proprietary – and you’ll never be able to migrate away from its platform easily as your business grows.

While it is true that Magento takes a bit more effort to set up and requires more technical skill, compared to Shopify, the basic Magento platform is free to use and can scale easily. Best of all, it does not store your data in a proprietary format, so you’re able to easily migrate to a new eCommerce platform in the future.

Related to this myth is the idea that Magento is only worth using if you pay for the Enterprise Edition. While the Enterprise Edition is great for larger businesses, it’s not necessary for smaller companies. Many of the features offered by Enterprise Edition can be replicated with Magento extensions that have been built for Magento’s free Community Edition.

Magento Doesn’t Have Good Product Support

The level of support you get with Magento depends on the plan you choose. If you want 24/7 product support, you can get it through Magento Enterprise Edition – though you’ll pay a fee.

However, even the free Community Edition of Magento has plenty of product support.

As an open-source product, there are thousands of developers and experts working to improve the product at all times. And as part of the Magento community, you can get help from Magento experts on the community forums and learn about bug fixes, Magento errors, security patches and more.

Not only that, but there are plenty of companies that offer pay-as-you-go support and maintenance plans with no monthly minimums, no retainers and no contracts. 

If you’re finding yourself to be out of your comfort zone, it may time to bring in an outside agency.

You Can’t Run Magento On A Shared Hosting Plan

This is false – but with a catch.

Most Magento agencies recommend hosting your Magento store on a dedicated server, and this is the best solution for large stores which receive a lot of traffic. 

However, if you’re just starting out, it’s entirely possible to use a shared hosting plan – with an important caveat. You need a shared hosting plan that is optimized for Magento. If you try to run a Magento store on a cheap, “jack-of-all-trades” server, you’ll definitely start experiencing issues.

However, there are some hosting companies like Siteground that offer shared hosting that is specifically meant for Magento servers. This can be a good way to lower your startup costs when building your first Magento site.

All of Your Plug-Ins Will Work Together Seamlessly

One of the best things about Magento is its extensibility.

You can get an add-on or extension that does just about anything from the Magento Store. That’s great, right? Time to go wild – and add tons of features to your store, right?

Not really.

You can’t expect all of your plugins and extensions to work together out-of-the-box. It will take some work to integrate them into your site properly, and ensure they work together correctly, without major errors.

Understand These Common Magento Myths – And Why They’re False.

While you’re likely never to see Loch Ness or Bigfoot, you’re likely to come across these (and other) Magento myths.

Armed with the facts in this article, you can accurately paint a picture of Magento of what it does and what it does not.

If you have other questions about Magento, please feel free to contact the 121eCommerce team. We’ll be happy to dismiss any other myths you’ve heard. And if you want to learn more about eCommerce and the Magento platform in general, please explore our blog.