Magento Website Cost

CMS Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce engines. Users can create huge online stores with many different additional functionality on it. CMS Magento is made in PHP and MySQL and has open source code, which means that it can be modified at any time and adapted to its own needs.

Having been released in 2008, Magento became one of the most famous and reliable content management systems in online area. It is used by such known companies as Olympus, 20th Century Fox, Time Out and many others. Nowadays, about 250k sites from all over the world are based on this platform.

Magento development evoke a great interest among business owners of middle-sized companies and large enterprises. Why should you choose Magento platform for your business and how much does it cost? Keep on reading to get the answers!

1. Pros and Cons of Magento platform

Pros

• It’s open source

Magento platform is really flexible: you can shape the open source code and get customized templates and wanted functionalities.

• It has uncommon features

Magento has a great number of features that other platforms lack, e.g. multiple store management, multiple pricing or multiple locations. 

• It’s developing

Because of hundreds thousands of users Magento regularly improve its support, build new plugins and extensions. So you don’t need to worry about being confused.

• It’s responsive

Internet is taken over by mobile users so Magento mobile-friendliness defines your project success.

• It’s expandable

Magento can handle unexpectable growth of users or transactions which can be caused by your business expandance.

• 24/7 online support

Having Magento store, you are welcome to ask for help using 24/7 online chat. The answers come quite fast and are given by professional Magento consultants.

Cons

• It cost pretty money

Not all the Magento versions can enable you use a wide range of features. Also you should pay for extensions and plugins additionally.

• You can’t build a Magento site if you’re not a developer

Magento is a really difficult-to-work-on platform. A store or site can’t be developed or customized without help of specialists.

• A lack of skilled Magento developers

Magento is a huge e-commerce platform with many databases and files. It’s complicated to find experienced developer who will bring high-quality solution because a specialist should work a lot and struggle to become a professional in it.

• It has a slow-loading time

Using community version of Magento, it’s not always easy to import data or to migrate from another platform because of its slow rate. The reason is that Magento is really flexible platform which causes its complexity and time-consuming aspects. Fortunately, this problem doesn’t occur in enterprise version.

2. Understanding Magento Editions

Magento 2 is current available update which came to change Magento 1 (will be closed in 2019). In Magento 2, you can choose between two Magento editions for building a website or store on it: Community or Enterprise. Magento Community is free, open-source and appropriate for small ar middle businesses. Enterprise version is paid and has a wider range of features available for using. Let’s see them in comparison.

Store owners analyze the features and choose the version according to their financial plan. Most startups choose Magento Community not taking into account the case of their business growth. The data migration from Community to Enterprise version is not so easy, the help of experienced developers is crucial here. That’s why it’s considerable to evaluate all the perspectives. 

Additional Cost of Magento Development Store

Entrepreneurs and business owners choose the edition according to their business ideas and purposes. Also it’s important to remember that extensions, hosting isn’t included to the cost of Magento store categories.

Extensions

Both Magento editions contain enough features to build a basic or advanced Magento website. Though e-commerce retailers need to add specific options for their businesses which lack in an edition features list. Magento developers create various extensions to increase store effectiveness and  customize website pages. About 5k Magento extensions are available and free for usage. But if you need a paid one, the cost rate starts from $50.

Themes

There are lots of free themes for Magento stores and websites. You can choose one of them if you’re not afraid of seeing somebody using it too. To make your project unique and customized store owners usually take a paid Magento template. The price varies from $29,99 to $499,99.

Hosting

In Magento Community,  the price of hosting depends on the hosting type you are to choose. Unmanaged hosting cost ranges from $10,99 till $250 in a month while managed one costs about from $190 till $350 monthly.

In Enterprise Edition, the website with all the data and extensions needs only dedicated servers. The cost for hosting can start at $2k.

License

Magento Enterprise Edition needs a license which cost depends on store annual revenue. $22k is a start price which must be paid annually even if you don’t have any income. For example, $10 million revenue will cost you $50k license in a year. If the license is out-of-date, your store will still work and be seen but without any updates. You will need a team of developers for it or do it yourself.

In-house vs. Freelance vs. Outsourcing Development

Website development is also an additional cost which should be added to the financial plan. There are three ways for business owners to go: hire freelancers, in-house or outsourcing company. All these options have its benefits and drawbacks; let’s move on to learn them.

In-House Development

This way means hiring or having a development team and leading it as a project manager.

Benefits

• You can control every task or activity in your project at any working time.
• You learn a lot about your project and know it inside out.
• You won’t have any language or cultural boundaries with the team.

Drawbacks

• Usually it costs a lot. For example, a lack of deliberate management can cause such problem or the initial rate of the team you chose.
• If a member of your team decides to quit, you won’t return your investments in him and will need more time another employee to adapt.
• Hiring new necessary staff is your responsibility. In case the project expanding, you will have to find a new candidate yourself.

Freelance development

Hiring freelancers from some job site and make a team is the main idea of this approach.

Benefits

• You can save your money, especially if you hire outsourcing staff.
• You choose every specialist yourself and can check their skills, portfolios, etc.

Drawbacks

• Some of the members can disappear or ignore your project in the middle of working process, so you need to find new one and give time to learn the existing information.
• Looking for specialists separately and build a team is not so easy, project managing is a challenge here.
• If you hired many workers from different countries, time zone difference will be a problem for everybody.
• Nobody guarantees high quality. A specialist can vanish in case of you asking him for fixing.
•  There is a lack of support period. Freelancers finish the project and come up with another one. You should hire a new developer or/and designer to fix or update the Magento site.

Outsourcing development

In this case you hire an outsourcing company to build your site or store.

Benefits

• The cost of such service can be less than in-house development one but with the same or better quality.

*Hourly rates for outsourcing Magento website development*

• Usually outsourcing companies have much experience in different fields of IT area so they are more flexible and ready to face problems or difficulties which are common in creating any product.
•  You avoid all the hiring stuff by just adding specific requirements and features you need to be implemented. The company takes this responsibility itself.
• You can rely on streamlined management and development processes and don’t need to control every step.

Drawbacks

• You can face a language barrier or misunderstanding but it will depend on the proficiency of the company you hired: most outsourcing agencies have English-speaking staff.
• The lack of presentence and control can cause the lack of trust but it also depends on your choice of the company. Trusted and legal outsourcing agencies prepare legal contracts, have direct communication with project managers and developers, send regular reports with detailed descriptions of workflow, offer support services for your business.
• There is a risk of receiving unsupported code. If you trust the software development to an outsourcing company, it can turn up that you can’t understand or do anything in code without their help. It also depends on the way the company write the code. The most reliable approach here is self-documenting code with comments. 

To sum up

There is no constant cost for Magento development because every website or store is unique and has specific features and purposes. Many factors define the appropriate development solutions and costs, ranging from the version of Magento till its additional expenses such as certifications, extensions, themes, etc. Also the project requires regular fixes, updates of features and design and so on. Project cost varies a lot depending on such factors but it worth trying every way to find the most suitable solution and business strategy for you. Choosing a development team is up to store owners, taking into account all the benefits and drawbacks you learnt from this article. Fortunately, there are hordes of development companies and agencies which are quite competitive and professional.

Multi-Programming Solutions can prepare a free estimation of your Magento project and offer a set of possible reasonable solutions for the client to choose.

Contact us to get the first free consultation!