Actinic vs. Magento4

March 11th, 2010 by Jon Newman posted in Development, E-commerce, Technology

As a quick overview, Actinic and Magento are both e-commerce website engines.  With either of them you can have a fully-functioning e-commerce website in no time at all.  They both come with an inbuilt template (Magento has 1, Actinic has loads but none of them are very good as they have simply been inherited from past generations of the software).  All that needs doing is the tweaking of certain information and you’re away.

The great advantage with going for one of these software is that you get great functionality (best-sellers, new-products, related-items, customers-also-bought, fully checkout integration, etc) straight out of the box, whereas with a bespoke website these extra features can take up a lot of time (and therefore cost) to build.

At Globalgraphics, for years now we have been working with Actinic, taking a completely bespoke design and inserting it into the Actinic software to take advantage of their great functionality. We have noticed a recent uptake of the open-source solution Magento and thought it prudent to investigate.

While both offer a great product, below are (what I see) the advantages and disadvantages to both solutions:

Actinic:

Advantages	Disadvantages
Easy to integrate website-designs into Lots of payment gateway’s integrated Simple for basic users to use Very thorough delivery-charges	You have to buy the software Websites are not W3C compliant (not great for search-engines) Add-ons need to be purchased No good templates included (although there are many to choose from)

Magento:

Advantages	Disadvantages
Free software More “extras” than Actinic (e.g. Polling questions, framework “boxes”, Compare Products and many more) Manage multi-websites, stores and languages from one administration area. Free add-ons Order History Wish-lists Tiered design template hierarchy	Difficult to integrate website-designs into (compared to Actinic) * Complicated administration area Only 1 template pre-installed (although this is a very good design and quality)

As you can see from the list Magento has more advantages and less disadvantages than Actinic however before you make your decision on these list alone you need to consider the following:

1. Are you good with computers?
2. Are search engines a priority?
3. Is cost an issue?

If you are not good with computers then the best solution would probably be Actinic as it offers an easy-to-use administration area.  If search engines are a priority then Magento would be best as it is W3C compliant (although the “points” you lose for not being W3C compliant can be regained else where if needed, but W3C definitely helps). If cost is an issue then Actinic would be the best as (although you have to buy the software) it is the easiest to install a new design into.

Conclusion:
Magento offers the best user experience, best administration-area control and best website “extras”.  Actinic offers an easy-to-use administration-area and a quick design integration.

* Magento does offer a very quick bespoke design integration however this must have the exact same layout as the inbuilt template so that any changes can simply be made to the CSS to effect the design.