Sylius - can it be an option for your online shop?

Sylius?is a headless open-source eCommerce platform. Structured on top of the successful PHP Symfony framework, and built on strong BDD fundamentals (Behavior-Driven Development),?its creators claim that it offers some impressive features, at a fraction of the price needed for a Magento development. Sylius comes with a powerful REST API and can be customized to work well with the frontend of your choice or your architecture of microservices.

??eCommerce features

??For product management, features include creating simple and configurable products, supporting product options such as size and color, and handling virtual products that do not require shipping. Additionally, Sylius enables unlimited product attributes such as collection, brand, material, and physical features.

??To categorize and classify products effectively, Sylius offers a flexible taxonomy system with multiple category trees per channel. Sylius also provides the ability to moderate customer product reviews and set pricing per channel and multiple currencies with exchange rates.

??Sylius allows product managers to set tax rates based on the address and product type, both included and excluded from price. It provides the option to choose a variant selection method, either variant choice or options matching.

??Sylius also supports the management of associated types for products, such as similar products, and enables the preparation of product drafts and campaigns. Finally, catalogs batch import and export can be enabled as a separate but free plugin, to streamline product management.

??Various features for Order Management and Customer Service are available, like viewing, editing and fulfilling or cancelling customer orders from the admin panel. Users can also send, browse, store and print invoices and have the ability to refund orders with credit memos. The dashboard is comprehensive and user-friendly. Those who choose Sylius Plus can manage the requested returns from their My Account section. They can also define multiple roles and permissions to control access to admin sections.

??The platform offers an easy way to track the number of items available on hand and a flexible system for reserving the inventory at the cart, checkout or payment steps. With Sylius Plus users can also track the inventory from multiple warehouses, ship from the most optimal place and control the flow of returning goods to the inventories in Return Requests.

??The search function is based on ElasticSearch and the platform also features Layered Navigation. Products can be filtered in categories and search results by price, material, color, and other attributes. Stock availability can be shown on product and category pages.

??Sylius supports multiple currencies and exchange rates which can be synchronized from 3rd party sources. All content is translatable.

??The checkout process ticks all requirements of modern eCommerce: it is clear, it shows tax and shipping estimates, the order summary, and allows customers to create accounts. A mini cart preview is available on store pages to summarize products cost in the cart.

??Sylius enables modern marketing tactics, offering flexible cart and catalog promotions with customizable rules and coupons, including fixed or percentage discounts, prioritization, exclusivity, and channel/customer group targeting. It also provides crucial but basic SEO functionalities with media preview plus integration for Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

??Security

??Sylius releases updates regularly to address any vulnerabilities. The platform is PCI compliant, and can be integrated with multiple payment gateways, including Mollie, PayPlug, PayPal, Stripe, Adyen, or with your custom payment gateway. It also accepts bank transfer payments and cash on delivery.

??Extensions and plugins

??Presently, the Marketplace offers over 3500 extensions categorized into groups like Accounting & Finance, Content & Customization, Marketing, Payments & Security, among others.

???Our thoughts

Sylius is young, stable, user-friendly, and might score high with small and mid-market brands that need custom solutions. Its plugins cover anything a normal eCommerce business might need, anything out of the box requires development efforts. Also, the Sylius community is limited and although they pride themselves with a short learning curve for experienced Symfony developers, many merchants will find this a pressing problem.

??????Please note: Merchants will have to bear in mind that they cannot modify or implement new features on their own but they can propose their preferred solutions to the owners of the platform.

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