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What is Magento?

Basically, Magento is an advanced e-commerce platform used by a wide range of retailers around the world.  Backed by Adobe, it has some excellent features for the serious business and, through a wide range of free and commercial addons, can connect to a variety of back-end systems.  Even Magento itself is available as an open source (free to use, supported by the community) and a commercial version.

This article focuses on the open source version.

How easy is Magento to set up and use?

Magento is a complex, feature-rich platform - not an entry-level e-commerce system.  As such, installation is more technical than some other platforms you might have heard of.

The preferred setup method is:

• Composer-based installation.  This uses a command line / terminal interface, where you enter a series of commands into a text-based connection window, to define which components you need, install them and keep them up to date.  It needs a degree of knowledge and confidence but once you're familiar with the process it becomes easier to manage on an ongoing basis.

Magento makes use of a MySQL database within your hosting account to store content and settings.

Once set up, day to day management of content and settings is user-friendly with an advanced administrative system built in.

There is plenty of guidance on the official Magento (Adobe Commerce) website to help you on your way.

Does Enbecom web hosting support Magento?

Yes!  In fact, Enbecom has worked on and supported Magento websites for many years.  We recommend a minimum of Business Platinum for bundled hosting or Enbecom Unbundled if for example you don't need email accounts hosted here.

The latest supported PHP versions are available on your hosting account (7.3 to 8.0 at the time of writing) as well as all of the minimum required PHP modules and some of the more advanced ones.  If you need a specific PHP module, you can make a special request via your Enbecom Account and we will see what we can do.

Each new release of Magento brings with it an updated list of system requirements.  Some newer versions require a connection to an Elasticsearch server, which is not part of our bundled and unbundled hosting plans but we can supply a VPS (virtual server) onto which you can install Elasticsearch.

Older versions of Magento 2.x and all versions of Magento 1.x are no longer supported and should be considered insecure.

Some Magento versions require Composer version 2 for installation and management.  We provide Composer 1 on our servers by default but you can install Composer 2 within your hosting plan.

Can I move an existing Magento website to Enbecom?

Yes - and in some cases we will do all the transfer work for you, for free.  In any case it needs to be up to date, malware free and able to run on a modern, supported version of PHP.  See our transfers page for more details.

Any other tips?

As with all website platforms, security vulnerabilities are found from time to time.  Occasionally they can be very serious and risk total destruction of your site and theft of personal data.  To help prevent your site being compromised (hacked), it's vital that you keep Magento itself plus any add-on modules up to date with new versions when they are released - and take regular full backups of your site.  We offer a Managed Updates service for Magento websites but with time and the necessary skills, you can keep a site updated by yourself.

How do I get started?

Take a look at Business Platinum and Enbecom Unbundled web hosting.  Once your hosting account is set up, visit the Magento website to start planning and building your new website and get in touch with us if you need any support.

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