E-commerce is one of the fastest growing industries across the globe. Thousands and millions of businesses are making the use of different online platforms to build a highly interactive and professional-looking eCommerce store. When it comes to the most innovative and contemporary eCommerce software, LemonStand is the first name that strikes to my mind. Although, it is a brand-new eCommerce solution, its advanced features, and highly flexible functions allow webmasters and site owners to create a fully-customizable e-store in a matter of few minutes.
LemonStand is a feature-rich platform that allows you to build an engaging and intriguing online store the way you want. It lets you customize the design of your store without constraints and heavy lifting. You can even customize your own checkout, without redirects to another website.
However, most of the business owners, especially those who are new in the web development industry don’t know much about this platform. To help you understand more about this software, we will compare the LemonStand with one of the most popular and flexible eCommerce software – Magento. It is a widely-used CMS platform that lets you build beautiful and functional online store with ease. It comes in two editions: Magento Community Edition (CE) and Magento Enterprise Edition (EE)
Magento Community Edition is an open source platform, which is free to download, install, use and modify. On the other side, Magento Enterprise Edition is a licensed software, designed especially for large scale businesses that need extra features and functions. In this comparison, we cover both the editions to help you make the decision quickly and efficiently.
Through this blog post, we will try to explore more about the LemonStand eCommerce software and help you make the best possible decision for your business.
Easy to Deploy
The first step with any eCommerce platform is to install and start up an online store. If you want to get an instance of Magento (both the CE and EE) up, you need an assistance of professional IT person.
Since, it includes installing and configuring one or multiple servers such as operating systems, database servers, web servers, and other system elements before running up a store, so you may need to hire a reliable hosting provider who can do all these stuff for you. But still, you need to manually set up your database server, upload Magento installation scripts, upload sample databases through FTP. But for large scale businesses, it becomes crucial and complicated to manage all these things effectively and efficiently.
On the other side, LemonStand is a Software as a service platform, so you don’t need to manage operating systems, set up databases and even don’t need to install software. All you need to do is to enter some basic information regarding your business on your site, and the LemonStand store automatically deployed in a matter of few minutes.
Winner: LemonStand
Apps and extensions
Magento is a great solution for those who wants to create a custom eCommerce store, without any coding skills. It offers thousands of beautiful and powerful apps and extensions to let you build anything. Since Magento Community Extension is open source platforms, you can get plenty of free or open-source extensions that can be used to extend the functionality of the store with ease.
LemonStand is a brand-new tool and site owners can already integrate with loads of apps through API and dropping code into a theme template to run their online business. In simple words, LemonStand doesn’t offer too many options to extend the functionality of the store.
Usability
Running a Magento site is quite challenging when it comes to usability. Since Magento is one of the most primitive eCommerce platforms, the user experience also looks obsolete and outdated. In fact, most of the users find it difficult to run a Magento store (particularly novice users) due to the complicated user interface.
While, LemonStand is a newer platform, so they focused on providing the world-best user experience to their potential customers. In fact, some of the LemonStand users are finding it a simple and intuitive platform, allowing them to complete their task quickly and efficiently.
Flexibility in developing eCommerce stores
Magento is a developer-friendly eCommerce platform, so you will get complete access to all of its code and database. Experienced web developers can easily customize the Magento store, without any hassle. And for large scale businesses, Magento is an ideal solution. But for effective results, you need to hire an experienced and professional development team that can help you develop your Magento store, without any pitfalls.
At LemonStand, you will get complete flexibility to develop your store, without any complexity. It includes a flexible theme engine that lets you customize each and every aspect of your store. Even, you can customize the checkout process, which is commonly locked down on SaaS platforms.
Plus, its powerful REST API and Webhooks support allow web developers to extend, integrate and even customize the functionality of the store with ease.
Implementation Costs
The cost involved in developing Magento store can vary from business to business. At Magento, you can create a simple and user-friendly website at an affordable price. But if you want more advanced functions and features, you need to invest a lot of money.
Since developing a Magento store is a complex; implementation cost for developing custom store could go beyond the 5 or even 6 figures and take many months to complete the project.
LemonStand is a cloud-based eCommerce solution; so it takes less time and effort to developing a custom store. This means you don’t need to spend a big implementation cost for developing a LemonStand store.
Technical Support
Technical support is one of the most crucial factors that can help you create an interactive store with ease. Magento Enterprise Edition is a licensed platform, so it offers robust technical support to their clients. Magento Community Edition is a free and open source platform, so there is no technical support for their potential customers.
Since, LemonStand is a modern eCommerce platform, so it tends to provide the quick and effective technical support to their customers. They try to provide the best technical and customer support that can help their customers to accomplish their tasks on time.
Security Risk
Security is also a crucial factor, especially for eCommerce websites where web customers to process payments online after buying a product for a particular e-store. Business owners who use Magento store are responsible for verifying whether their infrastructure is safe and secure or not. They also need to keep their customer data secure. However, due to some regulations, such as PCI, it is quite difficult for site owners to keep their store safe and secure.
LemonStand takes care the security of your site because it a hosted within PCI DSS compliant infrastructure, which is audited by an independent Qualified Security Assessor. In fact, the platform never saves customer’s data and use SSL encryption on all web pages.
Conclusion
So, there is a huge difference between the LemonStand, Magento CE, and Magento EE eCommerce platforms.
If you are running a large scale business and selling a ton of products, you should use the Magento Enterprise Edition. If you want a flexible and user-friendly platform, I would recommend you to use LemonStand. It is a great platform for building a custom designed online store with ease.
