As crowds cheer and cannons boom, a champagne bottle explodes against its bow and the good ship "Magento Go" slips into the harbor to begin its journey.
With the launch of this affordable, cloud-based, hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) Ecommerce platform, Magento Go rounds the corner on ease-of-use by addressing the needs of novice users and breaking down barriers to entry for many small-to-medium sized businesses.
Magento has long been a best-kept secret for those with the chops to take it on. This open source, mega-commerce platform has a reputation for being powerful and remarkably flexible, but also difficult to learn. Because it is the platform of choice for a worldwide community of developers, designers, and Ecommerce professionals, it was not a complete surprise when eBay (with PayPal in tow) made a major investment in the company. The only question was, what's next?
I got my hands on Magento Go for a first look and was surprised to discover that it is, by no means, a dumbed-down version of Magento. All of the core functionality is there, but with a much improved interface. Most importantly, first-time users are relieved of the burden of hosting and can get up-and-running with quite a decent site in about an hour.
The new look is bright and snappy, and in keeping with the Magento brand. After a quick account setup, you can check out the frontend of your new site and then complete the configuration using the backend Admin panel, where a wizard will walk you through key configuration topics such as Language Preference, Contact Information, Store Design, Subscription Plan, Products, Payment Processing, and Shipping. There's also a "Get Going" launch pad, that you can use when you're ready to go live with your new site.
Magento Go has some nice features that would impress even more experienced Magento users, including integration with social media, a Theme Editor, CSS Editor, and drag and drop blocks which make it possible to move chunks of content without code changes.
I received a note from a Magento user who is in the process of migrating his store over to Magento Go. He received a nice email from his "personal Magento Go support representative," and was impressed by their commitment to support. He said, "They really seem to be following through on this program!"
Because Magento Go is a more structured environment than other editions of Magento, it is easier to use and certainly more manageable from a hosting standpoint. However, it might seem overly restrictive for experienced users who like to do their own thing. For example, there is no FTP capability because all file operations are managed through the backend Admin panel. I imagine that hosting a large quantity of Magento Community Edition sites with its free-for-all, assortment of independent creative types would be like trying to herd cats. So the company has tightened the reigns a bit for Magento Go, but the benefits seem to outweigh whatever might have been sacrificed in the process.
Magento runs on the Linux operating system, which normally can present quite a challenge for the average person who wants to open an online store. For example, you can't even get started with the Community Edition of Magento unless you have access to a Linux server and know enough to unpack and install the software, create a mySQL database and set the required permissions. And that's not counting the more mundane hosting issues such as installing a security certificate and dealing with PCI compliance. And then there are the ongoing issues of maintenance, server optimization and periodic upgrades. Personally, I would be happy to pay a little something every month just to have someone else take care of all that.
You can try Magento Go for thirty days at no charge. After that, the pricing structure is quite reasonable, with monthly plans starting at $15, and going up to $25, $65, and $125 depending on the number of items in the database, storage and bandwidth.