Posted by What is Magento? How was Magento developed? This article will provide useful information about Magento and how Magento became one of the best Ecommerce solutions.
What is Magento?
Magento is one of the most popular platforms for Ecommerce websites with more than 20000 users. It is known as an open-source Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP for Ecommerce websites. This platform was developed by Varien Inc., an Ecommerce software development and consulting firm headquartered in California, USA.
According to a report of Aheadworks.com – Ecommerce Market Share Report April 2015, Magento retains 26% of the e-commerce market share in the Alexa Top 1 Million. In the world, many famous brands use Magento as the platform for their websites such as Samsung, Louboutin, Nestle, Nike, Lenovo, Bazzar, etc.
Through an in-depth look at Magento feature list, we can know the reason why Magento is the ultimate e-commerce solution.
The History of Magento
When recognizing the limitations of the platform called OSCommerce, Varien decided to create a better Ecommerce platform and Magento existed with stability, flexibility and innovative features.
In 2007, the first beta community version of Magento was developed under the name Bento to provide a basic Ecommerce platform. However, Bento was the trademark of another company so they have used the name Magento along with its fame up until now.
In March 31, 2008, the version 1.0 of Magento Community Edition was released. After that, Magento became popular in 2009 and even more famous than e-commerce itself. In 2009, Magento Enterprise Edition was also officially published.
In the following year, 2010, Magento reached 1.5 million downloads. Moreover, the appearance of Magento version for mobile made users feel more convenient to approach and use.
In February 2011, eBay invested in Magento and owned 49% of the total share of the company. At the end of 2011, eBay bought 100% of Magento with the plan to merge it with new X.Commerce initiative of the company.
In 2015, Magento 2.0 was released with the aim to provide new ways to enhance user engagement, smooth navigation, improve conversion rates and overall revenue generation for store owners. Comparing with Magento 1, Magento 2 has many new and improved features. Magento 2’s tools and structure are more advanced than any previous versions to meet user demand that can’t be solved with Magento 1.
There are two editions of Magento known as Magento Community Edition and Magento Enterprise Edition. Community Editon (CE) is the free edition that provides fundamental functions for everyone who wants to build and develop websites based on Magento platform. The lastest actively version of Community Edition are CE 1.9.3 and 2.1.6.
Enterprise Edition (EE) is derived from Community Edition but it requires annual maintenance fees. Magento Enterprise Edition has more features and special functions designed for large companies that requires technical support with professional features. The lastest version of Enterprise Edition are EE 1.14.2.4 and 2.1.7.
Conclusion
Nowadays, it is quite easy for companies to build and develop their own websites with the existence of Magento platform. Developers continues to improve features and diversify Magento extensions to bring the best Magento version to users all over the world.