What is Magento?
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform launched in 2008 that has since evolved into one of the most widely used e-commerce solutions worldwide. In 2018, Magento was acquired by Adobe, leading to further development and integration into the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem.
Magento is available in two versions:
- Magento Open Source (free)
- Adobe Commerce (paid enterprise version, including cloud hosting and extra features)
What is the difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce?
| Feature | Magento Open Source | Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Commerce) |
|---|
| Cost | Free | License-based (price depends on revenue) |
| Hosting | Self-managed | Included (Cloud edition available) |
| Features | Basic functionality | Extensive enterprise-grade features |
| B2B Capabilities | Limited / via extensions | Integrated by default |
| Page Builder | Included | Included |
| Customer Segmentation | Not included | Included |
| Advanced Reporting | Basic | Advanced Reporting & BI |
| Product Recommendations (AI) | Not included | Yes, via Adobe Sensei |
| Support | Community support | SLA + official Adobe support |
| Omnichannel & POS integrations |
What Magento Features Are Available? (Overview)
Magento is packed with powerful features to support your entire e-commerce operation.
Product Management
A powerful product management system is the backbone of any successful online store – and Magento excels in this area. The platform offers unmatched flexibility in managing products, variants, and attributes. You can easily add and manage an unlimited number of products, including complex types such as configurable, bundled, grouped, and virtual products.
With attribute sets, you define product properties like color, size, or weight tailored to your catalog. Magento supports multilingual product data, with customizable descriptions, metadata, and URLs per language. This ensures a consistent brand experience across global markets. SEO-friendly options like per-product metadata and search-friendly URLs improve your visibility in search engines, while features like product tags and reviews boost engagement.
Magento gives you all the tools to build a professional, scalable, and commercially strong catalog.
Key Product Management Features
- Unlimited products
- Configurable, bundled, grouped, and virtual products
- Attribute sets for flexible product definitions
- Manage product attributes (color, size, weight, etc.)
- Multilingual product content
- SEO-friendly URLs and metadata per product
- Product tags and customer reviews
- Catalog Management
Magento offers advanced catalog management that gives you full control over the presentation, structure, and inventory of your products – even across multiple stores and markets. From a single backend, you can manage several storefronts, each with its own catalog, branding, and pricing.
Inventory management is flexible and scalable, with support for multiple warehouses or locations. Whether you work with one central warehouse or a distributed logistics network, Magento keeps everything organized and up-to-date. Powerful bulk import/export tools via CSV, XML, or API save time when managing large data sets.
A clear category hierarchy ensures good navigation – crucial for usability and SEO. Magento also supports product promotions through cross-sells, up-sells, and related items. You can highlight offers with custom labels and promotional badges, boosting conversions and marketing effectiveness.
Key Catalog Management Features
- Manage multiple storefronts from one backend
- Inventory control per warehouse/location
- Bulk import/export via CSV, XML, or API
- Logical category hierarchy
- Cross-sells, up-sells, related products
- Custom labels and promotional badges
Customer Management
Magento includes robust customer management features that enable a personalized and efficient shopping experience – essential in a competitive market. Use customer groups to segment between B2C, wholesale, and VIP clients, each with tailored pricing, content, and offers.
Customers can create personal accounts to track orders, manage returns, and save preferences. Features like password recovery, address books, wish lists, and reorder options enhance usability and customer loyalty. Magento integrates with newsletter tools for subscription management and marketing campaigns.
Customer reports provide valuable insights into behavior, purchase history, and segment performance. Loyalty tools and discount structures help build long-term relationships. Magento’s customer management is not just functional – it’s strategic.
Key Customer Management Features
- Customer groups (e.g. wholesale, B2C, VIP)
- Customer accounts with order history
- Password recovery and newsletter subscription
- Address book, wish lists, and reorders
- Reporting tools and loyalty features
Order Processing
A smooth and reliable checkout process is vital for conversions and customer satisfaction – and Magento delivers both flexibility and ease of use. The one-page checkout simplifies the buying experience and reduces drop-offs. Customers can check out as guests or create an account for future purchases.
Magento supports a wide range of payment methods, including iDeal, Klarna, credit cards, Bancontact, PayPal, and more – customizable by country or customer group. Shipping options are highly flexible, with native or extended integrations for PostNL, DHL, FedEx, UPS, and local carriers.
Orders are manageable via the backend or connected systems via API, crucial for fulfillment automation. Customers receive automated email updates for confirmations, shipping, and returns – enhancing transparency and trust.
Whether you use dropshipping, in-house logistics, or third-party fulfillment, Magento supports a professional and customer-centric order flow.
Key Order Processing Features
- One-page checkout
- Guest and registered checkout
- Multiple payment methods (iDeal, Klarna, credit card, PayPal, etc.)
- Multiple shipping options (PostNL, DHL, FedEx, etc.)
- Order management via backend or API
- Automated emails (order confirmation, shipping updates, returns)
Discounts and Promotions
Magento provides powerful and flexible promotional tools to help you respond to customer behavior, seasonal trends, and pricing strategies. Its advanced rule system allows you to set up discounts based on customer groups (e.g. VIP or wholesale clients), specific products, or minimum order values.
Time-based promotions like flash sales or holiday campaigns can easily be scheduled with start and end dates. Coupon codes are fully configurable and can be applied to a wide range of conditions – from “buy one, get one free” to “free shipping above a certain threshold.”
Magento also supports automatically applied cart rules, surprising customers with relevant discounts without additional input – ideal for boosting conversion rates. You can combine discount structures such as tier pricing, bundle deals, and loyalty bonuses.
These tools help you increase conversion rates, grow average order values, and build lasting customer relationships. The promotion dashboard lets you track and adjust all active campaigns with ease.
Key Discount and Promotion Features
- Rules based on customer group, product, quantity
- Time-bound promotions and coupon codes
- Free shipping above a certain amount
- Buy one, get one free
- Automatically applied cart price rules
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Magento was designed with SEO in mind and provides a robust framework to improve your store’s visibility in Google and other search engines. The platform architecture enables both automatic and manual metadata management for products, categories, and CMS pages — giving you full control over page titles, descriptions, and keywords.
Canonical URLs help prevent duplicate content issues, while auto-generated XML sitemaps guide search engines through your site structure. Magento supports modern SEO features like rich snippets, allowing product details such as prices, reviews, and availability to appear directly in search results — increasing click-through rates.
Page speed is a major SEO factor, and Magento excels here through integrations with optimization technologies such as Hyvä, Varnish caching, and Redis. These tools significantly improve loading times, enhancing both SEO and user experience.
By combining technical SEO capabilities with content-level control, Magento offers an all-in-one solution for e-commerce businesses aiming to grow their organic traffic in a competitive market.
Key SEO Features in Magento
- Automatic and manual metadata management
- Canonical URLs
- XML sitemaps
- Page speed optimization (Hyvä / Varnish / Redis)
- Rich snippets support
Marketing Tools
Magento includes a wide range of built-in marketing tools that help you attract, engage, and convert more customers. Integrated newsletter and email campaign features allow you to target customer groups with personalized messaging — either natively or via powerful integrations like Klaviyo or Mailchimp.
Adobe Commerce users benefit from advanced customer segmentation based on behavior, location, or purchase history, allowing for highly targeted content and promotions.
Real-time product recommendations help increase conversion rates on key pages like the homepage, product listings, and shopping cart. Social proof tools such as product reviews, star ratings, and testimonials further build trust among new visitors.
Magento also supports A/B testing (via external integrations), enabling you to test different content or layouts to determine what performs best.
Whether you’re focused on loyalty, conversions, or brand engagement, Magento provides scalable and flexible marketing capabilities to support your strategy.
Key Marketing Features
- Newsletters and email campaigns
- A/B testing (via third-party tools)
- Customer segmentation (Adobe Commerce only)
- Behavior-based product recommendations
- Reviews, ratings, and testimonials
Analytics & Reporting
Magento provides powerful analytics tools that give you ongoing insight into your store’s performance. The platform’s built-in reporting modules offer clear overviews of sales data, customer behavior, popular products, and average order values — all accessible from the backend.
These insights help you make strategic decisions, fine-tune your marketing, and optimize inventory management. Magento can also be seamlessly connected to Google Analytics for deeper insights into traffic sources, conversion rates, and customer journeys.
Adobe Commerce users gain access to Advanced Reporting capabilities, including interactive dashboards and real-time data visualizations. These can be extended further with Adobe’s Business Intelligence tools, allowing you to combine and segment data from multiple sources for multi-layered analysis — such as customer lifetime value, churn rates, stock rotation, and marketing ROI.
Whether you need simple reports or complex KPI tracking and forecasting models, Magento supports scalable and professional data management to fuel your e-commerce growth.
Key Analytics & Reporting Features
- Built-in reports (sales, customers, products)
- Google Analytics integration
- Advanced Reporting (Adobe Commerce)
- Business Intelligence dashboards
- Multilingual and Multi-store
Magento is built for international expansion. Its powerful multi-store architecture lets you manage multiple stores from a single backend — each with its own domain, language, currency, and branding.
This enables you to run separate shops for the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, for example — fully tailored to each local market, without additional management overhead. Magento supports dozens of languages and lets you translate product descriptions, navigation menus, promotional texts, and system messages for each locale.
Currency switching is automatic, with support for real-time exchange rate updates. Tax rules can be configured per country, region, or customer group to ensure full compliance with local laws.
Pricing can also vary by country, customer type, or storefront — ideal for businesses that combine B2B and B2C or need to respond to regional price differences.
Magento’s flexibility makes it the platform of choice for brands with international ambitions — or for those who want to serve different audiences locally with unique propositions.
Key Multi-store Features
- Multiple storefronts with separate domains/branding
- Support for dozens of languages
- Currency switching and tax rules by country
- Variable pricing by region or customer group
Security and Updates
Security is critical in e-commerce — not only for compliance with regulations like GDPR and PCI DSS, but also to maintain customer trust. Magento provides a strong security foundation, regularly releasing official security patches to address vulnerabilities and keep your store protected against emerging threats.
The platform supports two-factor authentication (2FA) to prevent unauthorized backend access, and CAPTCHA validation for login and registration forms to stop bots and brute-force attacks. Admin roles and permissions can be configured in detail, ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive data and system functions.
Magento is fully PCI DSS compliant, supporting secure handling of credit card data. Through proper use of security options, regular updates, and strict access control, Magento delivers a secure and stable foundation for your e-commerce operations — essential for sustainable growth.
Key Magento Security Features
- Regular security patches
- Two-factor authentication (2FA)
- CAPTCHA for login and registration
- Granular admin roles and permissions
- PCI DSS compliance
Extensions and Customization
One of Magento’s greatest strengths is its unparalleled flexibility, thanks to a modular system and a rich ecosystem of extensions. No other platform offers as much freedom to add or customize functionality as Magento.
Whether you need complex business workflows, industry-specific solutions, or unique customer experiences — nearly anything is possible through custom modules or ready-made extensions from the Magento Marketplace.
Common use cases include ERP integrations with systems like Exact, SAP, or Microsoft Dynamics, which allow real-time synchronization of orders, invoices, and inventory. For advanced product management, you can connect a PIM solution like Akeneo. Marketing automation is easy to set up with tools like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign.
Search capabilities can be dramatically improved using Algolia or Elasticsearch, critical for conversion in large catalogs. Selling via marketplaces? Magento supports robust integrations with Bol.com, Amazon, or Shopify POS for a true omnichannel strategy.
For support and customer service, Magento integrates seamlessly with platforms like Zendesk or Tawk.to.
Magento enables you to build an e-commerce environment that does exactly what your business needs — scalable, customizable, and fully aligned with your processes.
Popular Magento Extensions and Integrations
- ERP integrations (Exact, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics)
- PIM tools (Akeneo, Pimcore)
- Marketing automation (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign)
- Search enhancements (Algolia, Elasticsearch)
- Marketplace integrations (Bol.com, Amazon, Shopify POS)
- Customer service tools (Zendesk, Tawk.to)
Magento as a Platform for Growth
Magento isn’t just an e-commerce solution — it’s a growth platform:
- Easy expansion to new markets thanks to multi-store support
- Scalable architecture: from 1,000 to 1 million products
- Headless-ready via GraphQL and APIs
- Fully responsive, with Hyvä themes for optimal performance
- Mobile-optimized and future-proof
Whether you’re starting small or scaling globally, Magento gives you the infrastructure and flexibility to support long-term success.
Interoperability and Integration Capabilities in Magento
One of Magento’s most powerful features is its unparalleled interoperability. Thanks to its open-source nature and modular architecture, Magento is exceptionally well-suited for integration with a wide range of external systems, tools, and platforms.
This flexibility makes Magento ideal for businesses looking to connect their e-commerce operations with a broader digital ecosystem — without being locked into vendor-specific environments or limited APIs.
Magento is designed as an open and extendable ecosystem where every component — from product management to orders and marketing — can be connected to mission-critical business software. This allows for streamlined workflows, automation, and higher efficiency.
Open Architecture and Advanced APIs
Magento’s technical strength lies in its architecture. Out of the box, it supports REST and GraphQL APIs, making almost all data — including customer info, orders, product details, inventory, and payment statuses — accessible to external systems.
Common Systems That Developers Connect Magento APIs To:
- ERP systems
- POS (Point of Sale) software
- Fulfillment & warehouse systems
- Marketing automation platforms
- PIM (Product Information Management) solutions
- CRM systems
- Payment providers
- Marketplace platforms
- Analytics & reporting tools
Because of Magento’s modular structure, custom integrations can be implemented safely and flexibly — without altering the core system. This ensures future-proof development and maintainability.
Native and Third-Party Integrations
Magento’s marketplace features thousands of extensions, including ready-made integrations for many popular software platforms.
Examples of Prebuilt Magento Modules:
- Exact Online
- Microsoft Dynamics
- SAP
- AFAS
- Klaviyo
- Mailchimp
- Sendcloud
- Monta
- Akeneo
- Channable
- Bol.com, Amazon, VidaXL
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
These integrations are often supported by certified Magento Technology Partners or niche software vendors, ensuring rapid, stable, and maintainable implementation.
ERP Integrations: From Sales to Accounting
For companies connecting Magento to an ERP system, the platform offers exceptional capabilities. A well-integrated ERP ensures real-time synchronization of orders, customer data, inventory levels, invoices, and returns — creating a single source of truth. This improves reporting accuracy, logistics efficiency, and financial reliability.
Popular ERP Integrations with Magento
- Exact Globe / Online
- SAP Business One
- Microsoft Dynamics NAV / 365
- AFAS Profit
- NetSuite
POS Integrations for Omnichannel Retail
Magento is ideal for retailers with brick-and-mortar stores pursuing an omnichannel strategy. Connecting your webshop with POS software enables real-time inventory sync, unified customer profiles, and cross-channel promotions.
Frequently Used POS Integrations
- Lightspeed Retail
- Vend POS
- unTill
- Booq POS
- StoreContrl
These integrations make it possible for customers to buy online and pick up in-store or process returns across channels — without data silos or manual work.
Fulfillment and Warehouse Management (WMS)
For online stores outsourcing fulfillment or managing multiple warehouses, a strong connection between Magento and WMS or fulfillment software is vital. Magento supports this via direct API integrations or middleware platforms.
Popular Fulfillment Providers and Tools Linked to Magento
- Monta
- Sendcloud
- Hexspoor
- Active Ants
- Paazl
- Picqer
- Transsmart
These integrations offer automated label creation, shipment tracking, returns portals, and real-time inventory syncing by location.
PIM (Product Information Management) Systems
For businesses with large, multilingual, or complex catalogs, a PIM system centralizes product information.
Popular PIM Integrations for Magento
- Akeneo
- Pimcore
- Plytix
- Sales Layer
PIM integration ensures consistent and accurate product data — from specifications to SEO content — across all channels.
Marketing Automation & Personalization
Magento supports numerous marketing and automation platforms that help personalize customer journeys, trigger behavior-based actions, and automate communication.
Common Marketing Tools Connected to Magento
- Klaviyo (flows, segmentation, cart abandonment)
- Mailchimp
- ActiveCampaign
- Dotdigital
- HubSpot
These platforms integrate seamlessly with Magento, leveraging real-time customer behavior, order history, and shopping activity to power automated campaigns — from cart recovery to post-purchase messaging.
Marketplace Integrations
Many Magento stores adopt a multichannel strategy, listing products on external platforms.
Frequently Connected Marketplaces
- Bol.com
- Amazon
- eBay
- VidaXL
- Zalando
Magento connects to these channels via Channable, ChannelEngine, or EffectConnect, enabling centralized product feeds, pricing, stock management, and order handling.
Advanced Search Technologies
While Magento supports Elasticsearch by default, many stores upgrade to even more powerful search engines.
External Search Solutions for Magento
These tools enhance search accuracy, speed, and usability — with AI-driven suggestions, filters, and merchandising rules that significantly boost conversions, especially for large catalogs.
Analytics & Tag Management
Magento integrates easily with all major analytics tools. Beyond Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, additional tools provide even deeper insight.
Analytics Tools Commonly Used with Magento
- Adobe Analytics
- Hotjar / Microsoft Clarity
- Matomo
- Heap Analytics
These platforms offer powerful insights into customer behavior, funnels, and marketing efficiency — essential for data-driven optimization.
Why Choose Magento?
Full Control
Magento gives you complete control over your store’s structure, content, and functionality. Nothing is “locked in” — everything is customizable.
Extremely Scalable
Magento is suitable for both small shops and global brands handling millions of visitors.
Built for Complex Requirements
Whether you need B2B pricing structures, product configurators, multiple languages, or advanced integrations — Magento can handle it all.
Active Community & Ecosystem
Thousands of developers, extensions, and solution partners are available — support is always within reach.
Innovative & Future-Ready
With support for headless architecture, AI integrations (via Adobe Sensei), PWA capabilities, and Hyvä front-ends, Magento is built to evolve with your business.
Conclusion: Who Is Magento For?
Magento is the ideal solution for:
- SMBs looking to scale
- Wholesale and B2B platforms
- Retailers with both online and physical stores
- Brands aiming to deliver a unique digital experience
- Companies that demand control, customization, and growth
Whether you choose Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce, Magento provides a powerful foundation for success in a dynamic and competitive e-commerce environment.
Want to Make a Real Impact With Your Webshop? Magento Is Your Platform.
Let Shopcommerce Help You Get the Most Out of Magento
Magento is an extraordinarily powerful platform — but to truly unlock its potential, you need an experienced and specialized partner. Shopcommerce has been active as a full-service e-commerce agency since 2008, with a strong focus on Magento (both Open Source and Adobe Commerce).
We help you with:
- E-commerce strategy and platform architecture
- Technical implementation and integration with external systems
- Conversion-focused design and Hyvä front-ends
- Ongoing optimization, SEO, and performance improvements
- Support, maintenance, and continuous development
Whether you’re starting a new webshop, migrating from another platform, or need complex integrations — we provide a solid technical foundation and commercial success.
