Magento

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP that provides online merchants with a flexible system for managing product catalogs, shopping carts, checkout, and order processing. It was created by Varien and first released in 2008. The product gained prominence in the e-commerce community and was later acquired by eBay in 2010, with further development under eBay and, in 2018, Adobe acquiring Magento for about $1.68 billion to integrate it into the Adobe Experience Cloud.

Magento is available in two editions: Magento Open Source (formerly Community Edition) and Magento Commerce (formerly Enterprise Edition). Open Source is free to use and customizable, while Commerce adds additional features, official support, and more advanced B2B capabilities.

Technically, Magento is built with PHP and uses MySQL or MariaDB for data storage. It employs a modular architecture and, in Magento 2, emphasizes a modern, service-oriented structure designed for performance, security, and developer productivity. It uses an Entity-Attribute-Value data model for certain product data and supports theming, multi-store setups, and extensive API access (REST and SOAP) for integrations.

Key features include catalog management with multiple product types, pricing and promotions, customer accounts, order management, and marketing tools. It supports various payment gateways, shipping methods, tax rules, and can be extended through modules and themes from the Magento Marketplace. The platform serves a wide range of users—from small shops to large enterprises—and maintains a large ecosystem of developers, partners, and service providers.