What are the main points of difference between Joomla and Magento?

Magento and Joomla are popular open source solutions and widely used by most developers and designers. Both of them serve as excellent platforms as both come facilitated with a large number of features and extensions. However, there are numerous differences between both of them. If you are considering building a website and you need to decide upon the right open source for developing the site then it is best to first weigh the pros and cons of popular solutions available. Comparison and analysis of main points of difference between Magento and Joomla will help you find out which one is best suited for your website development purpose.

Usage
One of the critical differences between Magento and Joomla is that the former can be used only for designing e-commerce websites but the latter is a dynamic open source content management system that can be used to develop a range of websites and not just e-commerce ones.  With Magento, a developer can create a visually appealing e-commerce web application as it provides a variety of plug-ins and extensions. It comes with features that help one to make a business website look aesthetically attractive and user-friendly for the browsers.  Joomla is a better choice for developing a social website but Magento scores when it comes to developing an ecommerce web application.

Features
One of the major points of difference between Magento and Joomla is the features they offer. The former provides advanced shipping support, marketing tools, catalogue management, search engine optimization, analytics and reporting tools, and others. Joomla, on the other hand, serves as a user-friendly administrative interface facilitating excellent security, simple document management, mobile accessibility and file sharing features.

Requirement of Technical Expertise
Magento requires technical expertise for installation and initial web development, whereas Joomla is easy to install and use and one does not need to hire a technological expert for its deployment. It may require only a server supported by PHP and MySQL in the initial stages. Special technical skills have to be used for installing all the major features of Magento to their full extent in order to make navigability of an e-commerce website easier.
 
Customization
You might face problems in customizing Magento as it entails high level of technical knowledge to make use of all its features. However, customization of Joomla is pretty hassle free and is less time-consuming even when one has to use additional modules for deployment of advanced features that come with it.
 
Cost
Installation and deployment of Magento may fall a bit heavy on the wallet since the plug-ins and extensions come at a good cost. Moreover, it requires resources for installing all the features because of its requirement of technical skills. As a result, the maintenance and designing costs while using Magento are quite high. With Joomla, there is not much cost involved with maintenance, development and addition of extra features.

Before developing whether to use Magento or Joomla for developing your website, it is best to define the kind of website you wish to run your business on and determine the complexity of the website to help you make the choice.