Interview: Roy Rubin About Magento Open Source eCommerce
Magento eCommerce Solution Overview & Introduction:
Many eCommerce developers, along with merchant sellers, have been eagerly anticipating the upcoming release of Varien’s new Open Source eCommerce Solution named Magento (like the color magenta, not magneto of x-men). Varien is currently one of the most renowned osCommerce development companies in existence and continues to set industry trends, build better strategies and help their customers improve the way they do business Online.
Magento is the open-source eCommerce platform that promises to revolutionize the industry. It’s modular architecture and unprecedented flexibility means your business is no longer constrained by your eCommerce platform. Magento is total control.
With the many changes in eCommerce over the years, developers and merchants have seen a huge need to build on a more flexible, robust, scalable eCommerce platform. Varien is hoping to fill that need by releasing the mother of all open source eCommerce solutions. Will Magento live up to all the hype? Definitely! I can tell you from what I’ve seen of their platform, that it is no joke. These guys have put in tons of man hours, have dedicated years of industry experience, provided unique insights and received mass amounts of feedback from the ones who matter most, users. One thing is for sure, they really understand the needs of the merchants, search engines, customers and many of the other aspects that make up the world of eCommerce. Varien has great customers, who make money. Plus, they have built some of the nicest osCommerce powered sites and WordPress powered eCommerce sites I have seen. I can’t imagine what they can accomplish without limits – let’s see a glimpse!
New Magento Admin & Customer Area Screenshots:
Roy Rubin, Varien CEO, Answers 10 Important Questions About Magento:
How long has Magento been in delevopment? What’s the expected launch date?
Magento has been in development since January 2007 and a beta is expected to launch in August.
What are the main differences between Magento and oScommerce?
There will be many differences, I’ve listed a few highlights below:
- Architecture – one of the biggest issues with osCommerce has been upgrades. Once custom modifications are done, there is no way to upgrade. With Magento customizations to existing functionality simply extend the base, making upgrade a possibility.
- Plug-in/modules/packages – osCommerce has no real good way to install new features. You have to go through the code and add/edit lines, making this an almost impossible task if any changes have been done to the code. With Magento, you’ll be able to install new modules relatively easily without getting into the code much.
- Templating – a true 100% template system making any design and functionality requirements possible. No limitation whatsoever.
- Enterprise level code and scaling – performance has been a huge issue we wanted to address.
- A truly flexible system.
- Since Magento will be backed by Varien there will be a clear roadmap and transparency to the project. Companies can count on the continuation of the project and enterprise level support and services.
eCommerce platform providers are popping up all over. What are some of the things that make Megento different from other shopping carts.
See some of the highlights above.
How easy will Magento be to use? Should merchants know programming, theming or have other technical experience?
Magento can be used out-of-the-box as is in many cases. We’ll provide a number of themes/templates to use so that merchants can apply a look-a-feel they prefer. We also expect the community to contribute layouts as soon as the project is launched. In order to benefit from the true power and flexibility of Magento, technical knowledge will be required. If you are looking to change the layout/design – HTML knowledge should be sufficient.
What impact do you think Magento will have on the industry and especially Open Source delevopment?
It is our hope that Magento will lead the open source eCommerce space. Based on the feedback and response we have received so far, we feel confident in making this happen. We have a long road ahead of us, but with the community’s help and our teams dedication we feel Magento will make a huge impact in the eCommerce world.
What do you mean by Magento gives “total control”?
Total Control is 100% flexibility. Many eCommerce solutions have inherent constraints and business owners have traditionally tailored their business to the eCommerce platform of their choosing. With Magento it will work the other way around , putting the merchants back in control. No more constraints and no more limitations. That is our goal.
Do you plan on running a Magento powered store yourself?
Absolutely. We’ll have a store at some point in the next few months to illustrate just that (selling Magento gear). We feel confident in our solution and so do the hundreds of merchants that have contacted us so far.
How did you get into eCommerce and what’s your favorite thing about this industry?
Varien started as a web development and design firm and we stumbled across eCommerce back in 2003. We’ve been providing industry leading solutions ever since. The industry is very dynamic and we’ve been fortunate to work with very large clients that have incredible insight and drive in this industry. We have become passionate advocates.
What do you think the future of eCommerce will look like and where will Magento be in 5 years?
Well – it will certainly continue to grow. Demand for eCommerce services will certainly grow as the industry matures. In 5 years, Magento will be the standard of open source eCommerce and have thousands of sites across the web.
What rough percentage of merchants will be able to use Magento and have it meet ALL their needs?
“ALL” is a tricky word. I don’t feel there is one eCommerce system that meets every single need of every single merchant. Magento will be very close (and certainly closer than others) – the difference is that with Magento, the merchant has the control and possibility to complete anything they see as missing. With other platforms it’s simply not possible.
Check Out The “Inside Magento” Series & Their Blog:
The Magento blog is where you want to be if you are interested in keeping up on all the happenings and special releases. The Varien staff help author the blog. Shannon is great, she authors on both Varien and Magento blogs and writes frequently on industry trends. Roy has been on the blog answering questions like crazy (some twice or three times even) from all kinds of users interested in the new technology. You may have noticed the short answer to question three (the see highlights above one) and wondered the answer still. Well, the blog and links below should be enough to provide that answer, so have a look. They are taking feedback and suggestions from the blog and have an email subscription so you never miss a post.
- Inside Magento #1 – Scheduled Design Updates
- Inside Magento #2 – Complete Design Flexibility
- Inside Magento #3 – Guided Navigation
- Inside Magento #4 – Product Comparisons
- Inside Magento #5 – Product Tagging
- Inside Magento #6 – Ship to Multiple Addresses
- Inside Magento #7 – Product Search
- Inside Magento #8 – Marketing Features
Here’s the link to Magento’s “First Preview” Video – Magento is Coming, First Preview is Here
Conclusion & Final Thoughts:
In case you couldn’t tell, I’m extremely excited for the release of Magento sometime in August. It looks really promising and is certainly worth checking out, especially if you already use an open source eCommerce solution to sell. Many of the standard features included in the core of Magento are state-of-the-art and would be considered advanced by many eCommerce developers.
I will continue to post updates on Magento as they roll out and plan on reviewing the platform thoroughly when I have time to play with it a bit. I appreciate Roy taking his time to address my questions and for providing such good answers. Keep up the good work Roy. Let your staff know their work doesn’t go unnoticed.
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26 Reader Comments & Links
Add a new comment...Comment posted by oli
July 13, 2007 @ 7:47 am
i hope Magento fits to the european market/rights/needs.
Comment posted by eCopt
July 15, 2007 @ 3:23 am
@ oli – It looks like they are taking all the international needs into consideration. I have seen them recruiting translators and putting in place other systems that lead me to believe it will be as robust and scalable for international users as it will be for US users. If you really want to know whether an option will be available for you or not, see their roadmap or submit feedback through the form on magentocommerce.com and ask anything you like. They are really good at getting you answers fast.
Comment posted by Nick
July 15, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Thanks for doing this interview. I used some of the information in my new blog about Magento: http://www.selltothem.com/blog/ I’m looking forward to Magento’s beta release in August!
Comment posted by Mario
July 16, 2007 @ 6:33 am
@oli, I also hope that Magento will fit to the german and european e-commerce laws/right/needs. They’re more restrictive than any others in the world. The Magento Team would be well advised to orientate the System on German rights, because in some years other countries will follow.
examples:
http://www.legalershop.de
http://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/?id=dl_Abmahnsicher:_Ihr_Online-Shop
Comment posted by lopsta
July 23, 2007 @ 12:37 am
Magento has a european developer team based in Kiev, Ukrania. So i’m quite sure it will fit to german laws.
Comment posted by willky
March 12, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
I just found this article and must admit that one part of the interview is very interesting, especially now – some month later. Concerning the question about the future of Magento said Roy: “It is our hope that Magento will lead the open source eCommerce space. Based on the feedback and response we have received so far, we feel confident in making this happen.” In my opinion Magento has now – only 8 month later – almost reached this goal. Within this short time, there are more than 200,000 Magento-Downloads and the demand is still rising. And I know that there are a lot of people waiting for the final release. Congrats in advance!
Comment posted by michael
April 7, 2008 @ 5:47 pm
I think magento LOOKS great, but one quote from this article made me laugh out loud, namely:
Enterprise level code and scaling – performance has been a huge issue we wanted to address.
Magento, at this point, is ridiculously resource intensive, especially as compared to other open source e-commerce products like zen cart and oscommerce. It may be more “enterprise” in other ways, but I think the ‘performance’ issue still needs ‘addressing.’
Comment posted by eCopt
April 8, 2008 @ 7:51 am
@ michael – I would have to agree with you 100%. From what I have looked at and heard from some MGO users I know it is not the case currently as stated in the article quote.
However, I do believe that it will eventually get better as far as lightness, and more efficient code. eCommerce programs are extremely large and complex and sometimes, especially with many programmers working on the different sections of the code, it can get messy.
This has been one major underlying issue with all open source programs, but the guys backing MGO (Rubin and Varien) are some of the best and I think, once more established, that they certainly will make good on the statement above (or at least attempt to).
Great eye, thanks for pointing it out in your comment for others to be aware of. Maybe it’s time for that follow-up analysis of the actual program, rather than the aesthetic side of things?
Comment posted by michael
April 8, 2008 @ 8:13 am
I think that a follow up evaluating of what a marketer can expect in terms of installation, configuration, and usage would be hugely valuable.
Comment posted by Mark.Jones
May 23, 2008 @ 9:29 am
That is an interesting article. In our experience website owners find it difficult to understand visitor behaviour even with good systems such as Google Analytics.
We have recently come across an excellent piece of software that not only allows them to monitor individual user behaviour in real time, but also facilitates direct engagement between visitor and user. This has been increasing conversions by an average of 15% in the websites we have implemented it in.
It seems that the individualized data gives a more enlightening perspective.
Comment posted by matousek
June 15, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Looks great, i’m wondering how much web 2.0 they’ve incorporated. Looking for an alternative to OsCommerce as upgrading, installing new features, and theming are becoming an issue for our women’s belt site, beltzilla.
Comment posted by eCopt
June 23, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
@ Mark.Jones – Thanks for chiming in Mark. You didn’t mention the name of the software, but I suspect you’re talking about Woopra. I’ve tested it pretty well and the data and interface looks great. Thanks for sharing the bit of info about conversion increases, it makes sense that real-time tracking could help to improve in those areas.
Woopra is available at… http://www.woopra.com
Comment posted by eCopt
June 23, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
@ matousek – It’s one of the best!! You should definitely consider upgrading your osCommerce copy to Magento, you won’t be disappointed. It’s more flexible, better community, more features, support, new stuff is released often and the folks behind it are reliable and know their stuff. Within reason, what more could you ask for?
Comment posted by Templates Master
August 30, 2008 @ 9:41 am
We have used Magento for several stores. What we can say… We 100% agree with Michael that Magent is hungry on resources. Store with a lot of products and attributes powered with Magento needs at least virtual private server to run smoothly. So many small store owners that use shared hosting packages can’t use it. Good news that stores 100-200 products still can be hosted on shared hostings. Also we were not able to test it under heavy user load yet. I think main reason is that Varien team was mostly developing stores for medium sized business. So they have not considered this 100K small store owners. From all other points it’s the best open source software for now. I think open source ecommerce world will become much healthier now.
Comment posted by Templates Master
October 30, 2008 @ 2:23 am
After 1.1.6 release Magento become much faster and many bugs were fixed. So it’s right time now to migrate. Designing and developing new stores and templates now much easier and faster. Also we really love architecture of Magento based on xml files.
Comment posted by magento man
November 5, 2008 @ 10:10 am
just found your article.
I’d agree with previous poster that Magento become much faster nowadays and would stay the number one solution for ecommerce since we haven’t seen updates for OSC for years and zen cart is not that flexible for developers. As a reason of strength you could see that templatemonster released their new templates product like – Magento Templates.
Comment posted by Reverendo
January 16, 2009 @ 2:29 am
Magento is a great software with no doubt but now, with version 1.2.0.1 on the market and all the hype passed some critics could be made.
Community support on Magento is weak, as is a very complex software and it has a complete lack of documentation.
Support on the forums is very very poor. There are hundreds of questions without answer and the core members only participate in a very very rare occasions.
Magento is not that flexible. You need in depth knowledge of PHP, XHTML and XML to do accomplish very simple tasks as, for instance, put the navigation on the left or modify the logo.
The templating system is a nightmare, as it’s not well documented and to make a very simple customisation you need a developer.
It has a very very poor CMS which today is considered as a must have. Making a standalone eCommerce software very difficult to integrate with standard CMS as Joomla or Drupal and with no built-in CMS functionalities is a thing of the past. Merchants want to build communities to facilitate the selling of their products. To have only a shop is not enough. You need content on the site.
So, at the time I’m writing this lines, Magento seems far from becoming the “de facto” standard. Don’t forget that most of the open source eCommerce stores are a one man or family business with not much resources.
There are other options, not that powerful, but much more easy to operate and customise.
Comment posted by Air Purifiers
January 21, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
We use magento and are very happy with it.
Comment posted by webshopnews
January 21, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
It is true that Magento is complex. But this is natural for an enterprise shop-solution. Nobody said, that Magento – with all the features and this architecture – will be an super-easy software tool for everybody.
In my opininion, the problem lies in the fact that a lot of ecommerce-newbies read about Magento and believe using the software is just installation and getting rich.
To sum it up: Magento is one of the best eCommerce-Solutions, but also complex and this is one of the reasons why Magento is not suitable for newbies or very simple shops.
Comment posted by Jay Bharat
April 23, 2009 @ 6:27 am
Hi all,
Thanks for magento.
Because I m using magento for ajax architectiure.
When I am initial stage for developing my application I very worried because not understand coding, but after 6-7 days I feel very happy, no issue or worry about magento.
Jay Bharat
Comment posted by Dallas Magento Developer
September 6, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
I’m a huge supporter of magento and have been offering it to my clients since it’s release. There is nothing that comes close to the features and rapid development that are possible with magento. My clients save money and get a higher quality site, and Roy Rubin is the MAN.
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