Which Ecommerce System is Best for Your Business? Prestashop vs. Magento vs. OpenCart vs. VirtueMart

Which is the best CMS for Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solutions? The below mentioned detailed comparison of the four most popular Ecommerce systems helps you to find out the best one for your online store. Always keep your business goal in mind when selecting relevant CMS for your website development.

	Prestashop	Magento	OpenCart	VirtueMart
CMS Release Date	August 2007	March 2008	May 1999	September 2009
Started By	Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Leveque	Varien	Daniel Kerr	jenkinhill
Number of versions	7	15	28	27
Latest Version	1.5.4.1	1.8.0.0	1.5.6	2.0.24c
Number of Plugins and Extension	Around 25000	Around 1500	Around 9000	Around 3500
Number of Online Stores	Over 1,25,000+	Over 100,000+	NA	Over 269,000
Popular Websites Using this Platform	Vusion Glasses, eGolf-Balls, Archiduchesse	NorthFace, Behr, Nike AU & UK	Aight Shop, Anycart-Elegant, Alpha Shop	Shogren, Envirocon, Digital DJ
Number of Twitter Followers	11,268	33,776	421	937
Number of Facebook Likes	27,915	6939	2009	2493
Type of Software	Open Source	Open Source	Open Source	Open Source
Most Popular in which Countries	France, Spain, Indonesia, Czech Republic	India, Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine	Ukraine, Indonesia, Russia, Czech Republic	USA, Russia, Germany, Italy, India
Monthly Maintenance Cost(Average)	Low	Medium	Low	Low
Global Monthly Google Searches (Exact)	165,000	201,000	90,500	50,000
Total number of Searches on Google	16,700,000	43,100,000	10,800,000	3,20,000
SEO Friendly	4.5/5	5/5	4.5/5	3.7/5
Ease of Installation	Easy	Moderate	Easy	Difficult
Ease of Customization	Easy	Moderate	Easy	Difficult
Number of Features	Over 300	Over 350	Over 100	Over 500
Suitable Hosting Solution	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated
PCI Compliance Support	yes	yes	yes	No
Recommended For	Store owners, Developers, Designers	Store owners, Developers, Enterprises	Store owners, Developers, Designers	Store owners, Developers, Designers

WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal: Which CMS is best for a business website?

If you are looking at building a new website for your business, then you may be wondering that which content management system or CMS would be the best choice for your business ?

In this article, we are going to look at the following three most widely used content management systems that help you to build a robust website:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal

Here, we will just try to compare and figure out which content management system will show better compatibility with all your business requirements.All the three content management systems are open-source software and each one is developed by a community of thousands of developers. Also, all the three content management systems are continuously being improved to support new internet technologies.Even though, all the three tools perform the same action, they completely differ on the user-end. The difference between the three content management systems is only in the scalability and usability.However, choosing a best contentmanagement system is entirely depends on your goals, technical expertise, budget and what you need your website to do.

In case, if you want to create a blog or a brochure-type website, then WordPress would be the best choice. Or, if you want to build a complex and highly customized website that needs scalability and intricate content organization, then Drupal might be the perfect choice for your website. For something in between that has an easier learning curve, then you can go for Joomla to develop your website.

All the three content management systems have their own advantages and disadvantages. Let us compare them and find out which one will be the best for businesses.

WordPress – Advantages and Disadvantages:

WordPress is a best content management system that meets the requirements of a huge proportion of individuals and businesses. It is perfect for the majority of company websites, blogs, forums, job boards, portfolios, simple eCommerce websites, membership websites, etc.

As WordPress is a user-friendly and search engine friendly platform, it is mainly used to create blogs.

The main advantages of WordPress are

• Open Source (The core code is completely free)
• Easy to Use (Even non-technical people can use it)
• Search Engine Friendly (All search engines like it)
• Incredibly Flexible (Numerous add-ons and plug-ins available)
• Huge Community (You can always get help whenever you need it)

The following are the major reasons why WordPress is not preferred:

• WordPress is not suitable if you have unusual or complex business requirements
• Using WordPress, it is not possible to build more advanced eCommerce websites
• Some individuals feel that WordPress is not secure when compared to a custom system or Drupal

Joomla – Advantages and Disadvantages:

Joomla is another comprehensive content management system that meets the requirements of most individuals and organizations. It has lost its popularity as WordPress and Drupal have captured the hearts of many non-technical individuals.

The few great advantages of using Joomla are

• Open Source (The core code is completely free)
• Very Flexible (More than 10,000 free extensions available)
• Huge community (No shortage of developers to provide you help when you need)

The same reasons why people don’t prefer WordPress are also applying for Joomla. However, some factors are there that make people turn away from Joomla:

• Joomla doesn’t provide a clear logic about where information is generally stored or edited. Sometimes, the same information appears in different parts of the content management system. Hence, Joomla users get confused with using the interface.
• Joomla requires some extra effort to set up all the on-site SEO elements of a Joomla website.

Drupal – Advantages and Disadvantages:

Drupal is a great content management system that is used by a lot of people to build their websites. Similar to WordPress, Drupal also has a distinct fan club of website developers.

The advantages of using Drupal are

• Open Source (The core code is completely free)
• Open Architecture (Makes it a dream for website developers to expand it)
• Incredibly Flexible (Around 17,000 free modules are available)
•  Huge Community (You can always get help whenever you need it)

Some drawbacks of Drupal are

• Some people find Drupal as too technical and confusing when compared to WordPress
• As Drupal provides endless possibilities, people need to put some extra effort to expand their website’s functionality

So, which content management systemshould you use for a business website?

In summary, all the three content management systems are best for building a solid product. However, the need of using a perfect content management system differs based on some situations and requirements.

If you are looking for a best user-friendly and search engine friendly platform to build a business website or a personal website, then WordPress is the perfect choice. Suppose, if WordPress can’t meet all your requirements, then you can choose Drupal, which is a serious enterprise grade content management system.

However, if your developer knows Joomla and likes to use it to develop your website, then you can go for Joomla. Otherwise, it is better to avoid using Joomla to build your website because Joomla is not user-friendly as WordPress and not technically brilliant as Drupal.

Hope, the above given information will help you to take an informed decision about which content management system to use for your business.