How to Reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of Your Magento Website
An eCommerce website is crucial for your business’s success. However, eCommerce businesses constantly change, digital technologies evolve over time, new cyber threats emerge, regulations change, and customer behavior and needs change. While you can’t future-proof your website development, you must select the right eCommerce platform and the right eCommerce development company to reduce the risk of unforeseen technical issues and excessive development costs. You must also balance your eCommerce vision with the realities of the total cost of ownership (TCO). Magento is one of the trusted eCommerce platforms by many online retailers. In this article, you will explore ways to reduce the total cost of ownership of your Magento website. Keep reading!
What is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) refers to the estimation of the total cost of implementing and maintaining an eCommerce solution throughout its useful lifecycle. Accurate estimation varies from business to business. However, these costs are usually made up of website design, development, deployment, and maintenance of your selected solution.
What is the Cost of the Magento Ecommerce Solution?
Acquired by Adobe, Magento comes in three versions, each with its own set of TCO impacts.
Magento Open Source
If you need a simple eCommerce store, then this version helps you enter the eCommerce market with the lowest cost. However, customizing design and functionality can increase the total cost of ownership based on the extent of your requirements.
Adobe Commerce
The starting license fee of the edition is $2K per month and increases based on yearly sales. This involves additional functionality such as a page builder, content staging, and B2B functionalities. If you go for this option, you would need to hire Magento developers?who can customize and maintain your customized platform.
Adobe Commerce Cloud
It is an Adobe-hosted version of Magento Commerce that removes the burden of hosting away from your business and your selected hosting provider to Adobe. The base pricing of this version is $3,500 per month and increases according to your annual sales.
The package provides you with advanced administration capabilities and access to reliable technical support as well as a customer success manager. With this option also, you need to hire developers from a Magento development company?for the customization and maintenance of your customized platform.
No matter which version of Magento you choose, the total cost of ownership will vary according to the level of customization you need.
Magento Hosting Solutions
There are 3 main scenarios from hosting when it comes to Magento
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Self-hosted Magento
This is a rare case where a company, equipped with plenty of resources and/or highly specialized requirements hosts the website on its servers on its premises. This option involves the highest total cost of ownership, however, if managed properly gives greater flexibility in environment management and optimization.
Unmanaged, Third-party Hosting
This is a common situation where a company uses a third-party hosting provider that provides support for the server hardware and uptime, however, does not provide support for the apps running on that server. In this scenario, the website owner may have a team of in-house developers with server management experience or work with a company that is managing the administration of the Magento eCommerce solution. However, the main problem, in this case, is the speed of support. Since there are two teams involved in coordinating communications and access to valuable resources, resolving an issue on time is a major challenge.
Managed, Third-party Hosting
This third option is suitable for a company that understands the significance of investing in the management and optimization of the Magento eCommerce solution. In this case, a team manages both your applications and the server hardware. This method provides the greatest efficiency in resolving an issue.
In some scenarios, options 2 and 3 have the same impact on the total cost of ownership of your Magento website. However, option 3 has a lower TCO due to higher efficiency in issue identification and response.
Magento Themes and Extensions
The Magento developer community creates and sells a wide range of Magento themes and extensions that add to the cost of Magento implementation. Store owners need to choose a responsive and well-written theme to reduce unnecessary costs. This will give you more flexibility and stability in making future changes.
Likewise, a well-designed Magento extension will deliver more value than poorly-developed and inexpensive extensions.
If you need custom Magento extensions, you can hire Magento developers?who follow Magento development best practices and methodologies. Well-coded Magento extensions will be more compatible with future website upgrades and patches.
Magento Support and Maintenance
Technology evolves over time. A well-managed implementation of the Magento eCommerce solution?needs regular support and maintenance to keep your business running. Magento support and maintenance includes Magento upgrades, bug fixes, security patches, and ongoing functional development to help you survive the market changes. These ongoing costs arise over time; however, you need to consider them in calculating the total cost of ownership of your Magento website.
Hire a Professional Magento Ecommerce Development Company
You may think that hiring freelancers for your Magento website development?is an affordable option, but it is a costlier option in the long run. There are several problems associated with hiring a freelancer developer, such as the developer may not follow the best coding practices, may not respond on time, may not develop patches or updates, or may not provide support on time.
Therefore, it is wise to hire a professional and reputed Magento eCommerce development company to ensure that your Magento website is well-coded and optimized. Moreover, you get reliable Magento support and maintenance services as a part of their complete suite of Magento development services?and solutions.
While it may be costly to hire a company, in the long run, you can avoid unnecessary expenses and reduce the total cost of ownership of your Magento website.