March 24, 2014

Comparing Magento with SharePoint
Enterprise Portal

Author Victor Achilles

Category Blog | Magento |

As a highly feature rich, professional ecommerce platform solution, Magento brings in agility for retailers and controls over the user experience, content and functionality of their online channel. It provides the scalability, flexibility and features for business growth. Undoubtedly the best ecommerce solution with over 1900 themes and thousands of available modules, Magento helps in empowering customizability. It serves more than 110,000 merchants worldwide and is the world’s fastest growing ecommerce platform. Its in-built administration interface features powerful marketing tools, a catalog-management engine and is SEO optimized to give retailers the power to create rich unparalleled sites for customers tailored as per business needs. On the other hand, SharePoint Enterprise portal provides a comprehensive, enterprise ready information management solution. It comprises of a multipurpose set of web technologies backed by a common technical infrastructure. But then when we compare the two, we find lots of differences in how the two systems perform. On the basis of general ecommerce needs, the comparison is certainly worth to read. The differences undoubtedly speaks high about Magento and gives a fair ground for businesses to better decide upon what exactly they need based on the available features.

Web e-commerce Requirements
Website Management
Multiple Stores
Control Multiple Websites and Stores from one Administrative Panel
100% Customizable Design
Supports Multiple Languages and Currencies
Batch Import and Export
CMS for Informational and Landing Pages
Automatic Image Resizing and Watermarking
Advanced Search capabilities to find items with multiple parameters
Auto-fill type capabilities to help customers get to the right items
Customers can view product catalog publicly with login
Customers can view product catalog publicly without login
Catalog Management
Multi-level category in the Catalog
Customer Personalized Products
RSS Feed for Low Inventory Alerts
Batch Updates from Admin Panel
Webparts for Content Management
Product Browsing
Multiple Images per Product
Product Image Zoom-in Capability
Stock Availability
Social Media Integration
Product Customizer/ Swatch
Order management
Call center (phone) order creation
Order Tracking for Customers
Customers can view Sales Orders
Customized Order Status
Orders can be configured based on business rules
Customers can place basic orders with a login
Customers can place orders without a login (B2C customers)
New Customers can request a login and go through an approval process if required
Customers can request a return on an order
RMA number automatically provided based on whether the item qualifies for a return based on certain parameters
Customers can make online payments for an order at the time of submitting an order
Reorders from Admin Panel
RSS Feed for New Orders
Assisted Shopping
Marketing, Promotions and Conversion Tools
Polls
Persistent Shopping Cart
Newsletter Management
Ability to have coupons and promotions on orders that can be applied with a coupon or promotion code
Store Locator
Customer Accounts
Customers can have multiple logins for a single customer account
Customers can view and update their address book
Dashboard
Unlimited Addresses
Order History
Recently Ordered Items
Wish list
SEO
Search Engine Optimized Web site links and Page URLs
Search Engine Optimized Alternate Image descriptions
Meta Information for Products
Checkout, Payment and Shipping
One-page Checkout
Guest Checkout
SSL Security Support
Saved Shopping Cart
Accept gift messages per order and per item
Customers can view invoices and open balances
Customers can make payments for an open invoice
Price List/ Price Level based pricing
Advanced Price Rules
Saved Credit Card for Offline Payments
Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices
Multiple PayPal Gateways
Authorize .Net
VeriSign (Payflow Pro), PPI Paymover, Moneris, Sage
PayPal Pro
Checks
Credit Cards
Customers can request a credit line increase
Purchase Orders
Money Orders
Addional Payment Extensions
Shipping to Multiple Addresses in One Order
Shipping Integration with Label Printing
UPS
UPS XML
FedEx
USPS
DHL
Additional Shipping Extensions
Flat Rate Shipping
Free Shipping
Drop Shipping
Online Bill Pay (B2B Feature)
Split Fulfillment – One or Multiple Invoices, Shipping or Credit Memos per order
Print invoices, packing slips and shipping labels
International Support
Support for localization, multiple currencies and tax rates
Support for accented characters and right to left text
European Union VAT-ID validation facilitates
Enterprise Features
Customer Segmentation, Targeted Promotions and Merchandising
Dynamic Rule Based Product Relations
Persistent Shopping
Automated Email Reminder
Private Sales
Gift Registry
Gifting Options
Reward Points
Store Credits
Order Archiving
Full Page Caching
Configurable Order Tracking Widget
Support for Alternate Media Storage – CDN and Database
Customer information is stored in a PCI compliant manner
PA-DSS Certification/Payment Bridge
Analytics and Reporting
Google Analytics
Admin Dashboard for Report Overview
Reports (Sales Report, Tax Report, etc.)