Starting an online selling website is a lot of hard work.
Agree, don’t you?
And you want the BEST ecommerce platform to support your business. Right!
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But how do you define the BEST platform?
Generally speaking, BEST translates into a feature-rich, popular and comprehensive ecommerce solution. These qualities draw many first-time etailers towards Adobe Commerce, which has been in the market for over a decade now.
However, despite its popularity and a rich set of features, it can become difficult to manage the platform due to its limitations. While some of these limitations are pretty evident, there are several others that are not known until you start developing your website. Also, you might encounter these throughout your online journey depending on your new business requirements as your business scales up.
Let us check out some of these and how StoreHippo offers a solution for these;
1. Heavy Dependence on PHP
To begin with, Adobe Commerce is an open source ecommerce platform with PHP at its core. This means that the platform is difficult to use for beginners or people who do not have coding skills.
Also, the coding is heavily layered and needs a fair understanding of the platform to make any changes. This complexity necessitates that you hire an experienced team of ecommerce solution providers who have already worked on the platform, else you will have to allow them time to gain knowledge about understanding and using the Adobe Commerce platform.
On the other hand, StoreHippo offers a DIY(Do-It-Yourself) ecommerce platform that does not require any coding skills. The intuitive platform can be used by anyone who knows how to operate a computer. It is effortless to tweak the StoreHippo platform inside out by making changes to its existing entities or by creating new entities. Also, StoreHippo uses MEAN stack which makes the stores powered by StoreHippo faster and more scalable than websites built using old technologies like PHP.
2. Slow Sites On Smaller Servers
Adobe Commerce gives you the freedom to chose your servers. This might initially feel like an advantage as you can opt for any server of your choice. However, if you choose smaller, single servers it can greatly compromise your site speed. To make your site fast you will need to have high speed dedicated servers. This not only adds to the expenses but also means that you need to take hosting services from particular third third-party providers that meet the specifications.
Unlike Adobe Commerce, StoreHippo frees you from the hassle of finding a hosting service. All the online websites built on StoreHippo are hosted on leading cloud infrastructure making them auto scalable and providing 99.99% uptime. Also, the subsecond performance (Average API response time for StoreHippo is <50ms) makes all the sites built on Storehippo super fast.
3. Frequent Upgrade = Frequent Chaos
Adobe Commerce keeps releasing minor and major upgrades to improve its features and functionalities. However, changing your website and implementing these major upgrades or patches can be pretty cumbersome, time-consuming and tedious.
Also, whenever a major change is implemented like Version 1.0 to Version 2.0, the support for the older version is bound to stop after some months or years. There is still no clarity on how long will the older version be supported. This has created inevitable “end-date anxiety” for users who are still using the older version.
While Adobe Commerce 2.0 has reduced many of the common issues faced in the earlier version by improving caching and scalability, it is still bothersome to migrate. After all, migration takes time, money, effort and also means some downtime. Additionally, no change is permanent and in future, new patches and updates will be released which will continue the iterative cycle.
StoreHippo, on the other hand, offers a well-rounded solution to build online selling websites. By iterative development cycles, the platform has been well rounded and thus provides a stay-on platform for every type and size of ecommerce business. Also, any updates to the platform are automatically applied to all its stores. This means that the store-owners need not go through the headache of migrating to the upgraded version and can instead focus on their business.
4. Costly Ecommerce Solution
While Adobe Commerce offers different versions for different business sizes, it is still a costlier platform when compared to StoreHippo. The cost also goes up as one has to pay additionally for server hosting and to collaborate with solution providers who have expertise in handling the platform.
Also, the store setup requires lots of additional efforts. Your software solution provider will not only have to build a site but will have to set up the CDN and create primary as well as a standby server for data backup during disaster recovery. Also, caching servers, image processing servers and firewall has to be set up by the client or his Adobe Commerce solution provider. This makes the overall setup a costly and time-consuming affair.
StoreHippo meanwhile adds no hidden or additional cost to your package. Also, you get affordable subscription plans designed for various sizes and levels of business. You can easily upgrade to the next plan by upgrading your subscription. This does not require any kind of migration or additional plugins making the transition very smooth.
5. Lack Of Technical Support
Although Adobe Commerce offers strong community support, it is really tough to find enough technical documentation to understand the platform. In emergency scenarios when the site is down or there are other technical glitches, it becomes challenging to get timely support unless you contact some third-party providers that offer support for the platform.
Alternatively, StoreHippo offers a multi-channel pre as well as post sales support. Apart from mail and call support, StoreHippo also has a rich help centre that discusses all the features and functionalities of the platform in detail.
6. Complexity and Errors
Well, Adobe Commerce is a complex platform with lots of extensions and plugins. While these are essential to provide flexibility to the platform oftentimes they create complexity while gelling them together to achieve a functionality or flow. This leaves the system prone to errors.
StoreHippo is built grounds up to accommodate various levels of business growth. Also, it has been designed to incorporate multiple elaborate as well as complex set-ups of ecommerce right in the platform sans any extensions or plugins. This makes the platform easy to understand and use and also reduces the scope for errors in the flow
7. Security Issues
Irrespective of the platform you are using security is one of the most important concerns for any business. If your website has security vulnerabilities, it can lead to serious damage to your brand’s reputation. Recently Adobe Commerce has released 37 security issues out of which four are critical. These are affecting both the commercial and open source versions.
Of these, the SQL injection flaw is most critical as it can be used to make widespread unauthenticated attacks on vulnerable sites. What is even more serious is the fact that these attacks can be automated, making it even easier for hackers to exploit the vulnerability of your site. Although patches are released to check these flaws with Adobe Commerce being such a massive platform, this kind of security issue is bound to happen.
StoreHippo offers a robust and secure platform. The no No-SQL database MongoDB used by StoreHippo does away with this common and nasty problem faced by SQL based RDBMS systems like Adobe Commerce. StoreHippo takes a host of measures to enhance security like, offering free SSL, strong one-way encryption to protect user information, PCI-DSS compliant Payment Gateways, authentication and authorization module, DDoS mitigation technology etc. It also provides security against cross-site forgery with built-in features of latest AngularJS.
8. Complex PWA Setup
PWAs are known to improve site performance and engagement regardless of the fact whether they are used on a desktop or a mobile. However, if you create PWAs for your Adobe Commerce website you will have to take the pain of creating a duplicate site that can be used on mobile.
Wondering why? Well, since PHP is a server-side language all the programming happens in the backend. This means templating happens in the backend. The PWA will have a different set up than the desktop site and will need a different coding making it complex to run and maintain two different versions of your Adobe Commerce website.
StoreHippo, on the other hand, is based on the mobile-first approach. So, all stores powered by StoreHippo are PWAs by default. This means that the stores are built for mobile but also work seamlessly on the desktop.
9. Cumbersome Integrations
Working on integrations in Adobe Commerce is literally a challenge. It is simpler for small businesses that work with fewer integrations but for B2B and enterprise businesses that have complex integrations. Also, integrating third-party services like email software, SMS providers etc. needs setting up a separate account. This makes the process of integration time taking and complex.
On the other hand, StoreHippo comes pre-integrated with a host of third-party services that help in business promotion and effective client-communication. This does not mean you are forced to use only the options that are integrated. StoreHippo gives you enough flexibility to integrate any custom software of your choice.
Conclusion
If you plan to create your online selling website with Adobe Commerce, you will need many more third-party services to get your website up and running. This might take up a lot of your time and resources and also cost you additionally.
However, with StoreHippo ecommerce platform you can do away with all these and focus on your business growth. Now that you know the differences explore StoreHippo by starting your 14-day free trial today.
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