Several business owners may be uninformed that the platform used for their eCommerce may not have the adequate features required for making their online shop user-friendly. The functionality of an online shop depends on the platform used for its development. There are several choices when it comes to eCommerce platforms, but they can be broadly categorized into Open Source and Commercial eCommerce platforms.
Now let’s compare open source versus commercial eCommerce platforms:
Commercial eCommerce Platforms:
Commercial eCommerce platforms are more customized for big online vendors with a large number of transactions, stringent security requirements, sufficient space for scalability, and lots of bells and whistles.
Some of the most basic advantages of a commercial eCommerce platform include the support, warranty, and version release description. Almost all commercial eCommerce platforms do offer plan and brand name flexibility. Additionally, some of the commercial eCommerce platforms present effortlessness maintenance and support for customized features. The cost for commercial eCommerce platforms varies, but is significantly higher than Open Source platforms that we will discuss next.
Open Source eCommerce Platforms:
Open-source eCommerce platforms can propose many benefits for small size businesses. It can be enlarged to suit the requirements of the vendor, but scalability is limited compared to a commercial eCommerce platform. They offer a reasonable set of features at a nominal price. And, although the support options might be somewhat limited compared to commercial platforms, open-source solutions frequently have a huge community of developers and associates to help new vendors.
This platform is more customized for small online vendors who wish to start a basic shopping cart. Retailers who don’t need customizations and even don’t expect future growth should go for the open source platform.
Some of the disadvantages of Open source platforms are a lack of serious scalability and support, complexity to modify, and security concerns. However, these are cost-effective because there is no licensing cost required. If the vendor wants to have a license then the cost can vary depending on the service provider company. Usually one time licensing cost ranges from $50 to $500.
Selecting between a Commercial and an Open Source eCommerce platform needs you to have a clear vision on what your store would need to offer. While considering your storefront needs, you should also envision how those requirements might change in the future as you develop your store. If you are a budget constrained, small business, there are several Open Source Platforms that you can choose from, however if scalability, security and feature richness are important and you want to establish an enterprise class store (and have the deep pockets to pay for it), you can choose between various Commercial Platforms like SAP Hybris, IBM WebSphere or Oracle Commerce (all leading name eCommerce Platforms).
