Wordpress vs. Magento for wholesale/dropshipping site?

I'm about to start a new local business with a partner, and we're in the process of signing up with a wholesale supplier. In the meantime, I'm going to start developing the framework for a site.

I have a lot of experience with Wordpress and have been heavily into it for years, but I don't know if that's the right solution here vs. something like Magento. I have never used Magento in my life and know close to nothing about it, beyond what I see on their website. If anyone here has extensive experience with both platforms, can you please let me know the pros and cons that each have against each other?

Things I'm most concerned with:

- The site must be easy to update (unlike Joomla), notably, the site should not have to be taken down before upgrading... I already know and love Wordpress for this.

- The site must have the ability to have an advanced email system that supports all scenarios (i.e., a product was placed in the cart but not bought = an auto-email is triggered X-amount of days later reminding the customer about it, etc).

-Absolutely must have search friendly URLs...none of that domain.com/01/category/shoes.php crap. I already know Wordpress' capability, but I know nothing about how Magento handles URLs.

Thanks in advance!

 

Magento would be my pick on this. I wouldn't even consider wordpress for something with such extensive ecommerce and operations features. I will say that there will most likely need to be customizing done if you can't find existing addons for magento. If you do not have experience with the Zend framework, this can be a daunting task. Anyway, wordpress is not a good candidate for ecommerce unless the requirements are basic.

As far as url's and other features like this, Magento can do just about anything you can think up. It is incomparably more flexible than wordpress. The caveat is that it's not easy to customize if you don't know Zend or at least have a good grasp on MVC frameworks.

 

Thanks! I don't even know what Zend is, but have a lot of experience in PHP and CSS. How much can Magento do out of the box? It's pretty much going to be a cut-and-dry storefront with all of the typical features. I found a few good premium Magento themes, as well.

Also, how is Magento in regard to upgrades? If you need to upgrade, will it have to be done on a staging server, or can you just upgrade on the fly at midnight?

 

Definitely Magento. Not only you'll have it easier with the coupons and pricing rules, you'll have much more control over the layout, design and content.

Another alternative is to combine Magento and Wordpress - this way you get the best out of both worlds.

 

if you want something quick and fast, then go with wordpress. i personally would rather invest a little more time and money into a magento site and use a dropshipping extension though. you have far more flexibility with magento than with a wordpress ecommerce solution. good luck.

 

I'm in love with wordpress, definitely best CMS. But in this scenario go with Magento.

I used Magento for one of my clients and it worked perfectly. It takes time to configure but it's definitely a great solution for it.

 

I tried Wordpress for one of my online stores. The theme that I used was ShoppingPress and man, trust me, you would never want to use it again. What a waste of money.

 

I use wordpress.. suits my needs.. just have to find the right plugins and do a bit of coding

 

The above forum is so good and it is very helpful for everyone.

 

I like word press. I use those templates for my sites also. they arte user friendly. we can customize the buttons and all

 

magento is designed for everything you want to do in ecommerce and is pretty easy to use, the only issue I have with it is the size of the script lol

 

Worldpress easy to used.