08/07/2019
Moving from Magento to Kooomo – why this IS an option?
The issue with Magento being slowly shut down and moving their customers to Magento 2 is more than a serious problem. For years people were relying on this platform as the backbone of their eCommerce operations, and now all of a sudden the support will be slowly shut down, and the retailers that are using it in their operations will eventually have to move on and switch to another option.
The only problem is – many of them will look for an alternative solution to the Magento 2, as the market in this sector becomes more and more competitive and now there are players that could answer their needs in a cheaper or more comfortable way.
One of such options is Kooomo – a SaaS eCommerce platform that has been featured in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the past two years. It is a very dynamic off the shelf solution that is easy to manage and that provides full omnichannel capabilities to the retailers. Besides that, it also provides flexible payment terms and some incredibly handy features that were not available under Magento, and will not be available under Magento 2 either. So, let’s take a look at why the move from, Magento to Kooomo is not a bad idea:
Reliability
As we already mentioned, Magento support will slowly shut down in 2020 as they are moving completely off of it and switching their focus to Magento 2 which is an entirely new platform that is much better suited for the modern online business.
This will eventually cause some reliability issues. Although it is an open source platform and it is possible to make fixes and custom developments, it will require far more effort and investments to do it. For now, every new version brings new features and those developments are provided by the Magento itself, and that will become unavailable once the support has been shut down.
There are no such issues with Kooomo. Since it is a SaaS platform, it does not rely on versioning, and all the new features that are being added every 3 weeks are instantly available to all of their users. It means that the issues with bugs, faulty software, or security breaches are dealt with in a single place! The best part about it is that you don’t have to worry about it at all, let alone hire your own developers to fix the back end issues with the platform. Kooomo is not an open source platform, so all of the problems are being covered by them directly!
Scalability
Scalability of the operations is a really important issue that every retailer needs to pay attention to. The sudden burst of sales are great and they are the ultimate goal of every company in this sector, but they could create a lot of issues in regards to the software you are using to maintain your online presence.
Namely, the problems with huge spikes in traffic and sales with Magento are pretty much a normal thing. Since you have to buy hosting and provide the actual place where your store will be on the server that is online non-stop, you will hit the wall with your package and will be unable to continue in that way. Of course, this is an issue that is not hard to fix, as you only need to expand your bandwidth and storage, but it will still require additional investment and some hassle to fix it.
With Kooomo these problems are non-existent. Everything is hosted in the cloud and everything is always online, regardless of the amount of traffic you have. With the historical record of 99.98% of uptime, Kooomo is at the place where you want to be with your online store. Outages are extremely rare and extremely short-lived.
This means you won’t have to pay any attention to the scalability of your solution. The packages are not limited by the bandwidth and the storage, and you can actually use both in an unlimited mode which gives you a lot of freedom to operate any way you want and also completely minimizes the hassle you might have with any stand-alone solution.
The tools
Kooomo has a unique and quite powerful suite of tools that allow you to control all the channels from a single spot. It includes social media channels, the in-store, online, marketplace, and Google shopping resources – all in a single place. This greatly reduces the workload and simplifies the operations to the maximum thus allowing you to save on work hours and avoid overlaps and mistakes.
These tools are constantly upgraded and fine-tuned, so every 3 weeks there is something new that you could use in order to improve your business. The best part of it is that there is no need for any additional development. Everything is available as soon as the new feature has been released.
Technology
Recent additions in the technology department made Kooomo quite competitive on the market. They are able to provide pretty much everything you might possibly need for your operations. The platform supports B2B, B2C, marketplaces, and a full omnichannel approach that integrates all the channels there are.
Connecting all those channels together is seamless as everything can be controlled from a single spot. It also includes unified warehouse management so you can really do pretty much anything you wish with Kooomo. It certainly can do pretty much everything Magento can, but with less hassle and lower overall costs.
Pricing
While Magento Community edition is free, the Enterprise edition comes at a hefty price. This puts Kooomo into an advantage that can be easily noticed. While you would need some 80k pounds just to sign up for Magento Enterprise, you will need only 30k for Kooomo.
On top of that, the later pricing that covers all the support, maintenance, hosting, and connectivity is based on a flexible revenue share model. The company is inclined to help you sell more as they are making more revenue in that way! Depending on the volume of your sales, it is possible to negotiate the pricing model that will suit you the best.
Integrations
Integrations can be a real headache when you need something specific. It does require always some additional time for development and includes additional expenses for those purposes. At least that is the case with Magento and many other platforms.
With Kooomo these issues don’t really exist! They have an ever-growing ecosystem of partners whose services are available via one-click integrations. All you need to do is to choose the provider, click on a single button and you have their services at your disposal. This covers all aspects of the eCommerce you will ever need, from personalisation, payment gateways, shipping options, ratings and reviews platforms, and many more!
The benefits of this approach are more visible the more external providers you need, so the larger your operations are, the more significant these benefits become. Even for the smaller retailers, this could save thousands of pounds on the initial development alone!
Migration
Kooomo has developed a unique migration tool to make the transition to their platform easy and smooth. With a single click, it is possible to transfer the entire catalog to your new Kooomo based store, and it requires minimal effort and minimal hassle.
Since most retailers have thousands of SKUs it would be an extremely costly issue to move all of those to the new platform in a manual mode. Migration is so easy and seamless makes the entire endeavour much more lucrative and will save you a lot of money.
Support
One of the key issues with Magento, as we already mentioned will be the support. Even today the Community edition has practically no support at all, while the customers using Enterprise edition will be left without it in 2020 unless they migrate to Magento 2.
With Kooomo, you will never be left alone! Not only that there is a well-developed ticketing system that is in place, but also each and every customer gets its own dedicated eCommerce manager to help them out with any issues they might have and to share some of the best practices they know of.
Heritage
While Magento is a US-based and built platform, Kooomo is of a pure European origin, as it has headquarters in the UK and Ireland. This is a rather significant data to all those who are selling on multiple markets.
By being developed in Europe, Kooomo had to face the cross-border trade issues from the very beginning, so it has been devised in a way that answers those needs completely.
Downsides
Kooomo has some downsides, like any other platform out there, but the most serious one is the fact that it is not an open source platform. It means that your developers can not access the back end if there are some extremely custom solutions to be made.
However, this is not a problem that is impossible to fix, as it is possible to incorporate the custom modules you need in cooperation with the Kooomo team themselves. Good communication and the fact that they have more than a capable team of developers for such cases ensures that your needs will be met even in the most peculiar cases.
Conclusion
Given the fact that Magento is slowly but steadily going to history, there will be a need for every retailer using it to move to something else. Magento 2 is an obvious choice for many, but there are also many who will try to look at their options before making a decision.
Kooomo is one of those alternative options that definitely deserves your attention as it has all the capabilities most of the retailers would require. It is a fast-growing company that has been recognised by the leading authorities in eCommerce as a platform that has a bright future.
All of the aforementioned suggests that it is a worthy alternative to Magento and that you should consider moving your operations in that direction.