Open Source

What are the (dis)advantages of Pimcore?

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 03:45:47 +0000

What are the (dis)advantages of Pimcore? admin Thu, 09/29/2022 - 10:45

Pimcore rocks as an advanced enterprise CMS, AMS, PIMS, what have you. We have been using it in a corporate environment as our asset management system since v1.2 and are using v1.4.1 right now and loving it.

Disadvantages

General Disadvantages (when compared to the run of the mill popular CMS's like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress etc):

Steeper development learning curve, need to know Zend framework and Extjs if you want to modify the admin area or add plugins (although i consider most of the older CMS's to be a nightmare to develop on).
Advanced admin UI, Not end user friendly for standard cms tasks like adding a page. Not immediately clear how to add a page, add to custom navigations, etc.
Coder required to get it setup and really use it to its potential.
Backend plugin work requires both front-end/Extjs/ajax knowledge and backend/PHP/Zend framework/Mysql knowledge.
Runs best on a dedicated machine, needs lots of processing and power for the Zend framework to be fast and putting on shared hosting requires some tweaking to get working.
Still early product so some things like branding the admin and other minor stuff is not that flexible yet. Not everything is completely easily modifiable without touching the core yet.
Not a ton of themes or add-ons yet.
A little tough to contribute, can't just fork it on github etc.
No front end login/registration/members area module, you need to code it yourself if you need front end user authentication as of present.

Advantages:

From an architectural standpoint it is super powerful and extensible and can do anything with it since it is completely based on an object/asset/document model with an API to use those objects and a plugin architecture to customize the admin. This is a great model for a catalog of items, which most CMS's revolve around but not limiting in any way.
Coding is pleasant using the Pimcore API and Zend Framework/ExtJS and fairly bug free for major features.
Lots of built in features out of the box that enterprise systems need like users/groups/permissions, versions, scheduling, cacheing, cdn, and i18n internationalization.
Lots of wow factor user interface stuff in the admin using ExtJS framework like drag and drop, grids, editing objects.
Modern website editing features/flexibility with in place editing, drag and drop/reorder content, content blocks, snippets and so on.
Not very many roadblocks or limiting factors, basically it's open to anything you want to do and rarely do you run into something that is a complete road block requiring editing core files.
Most use cases are covered and flexible enough to allow improvements and customization without being a nightmare.
Built in upgrading mechanism.
Plugin architecture.
PHP Unit testing plugin.
Built in admin UI for creating extensible classes and objects.
Admin UI for laying out the screens that allow editing object data using many preconfigured ui controls like textboxes, sliders, checkboxes, etc.

Even though in early phases it is an excellent enterprise cms framework and will handle any task but be prepared to dive into code figure out stuff as you go. I'm sure this will change as it matures and they make it easier for people to contribute code and open up a marketplace for addons. Currently I wouldn't say it's a replacement for regular websites using Wordpress or Drupal with tons of themes and addons and end user UI fanciness for normal website CMS operations. But since you are a coder and don't mind writing your addons using Extjs and Zend then it's well worth the flexibility in my mind. My recommendation right now is to go with concrete5 if you want a modern Zend MVC CMS website replacement that is easy to use but still pleasant to develop on. Over time Pimcore will give all CMS a run for their money though due to it's awesome architecture.

10 Open-Source Application Performance Monitoring Software for Better Visibility

admin — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 17:38:16 +0000

10 Open-Source Application Performance Monitoring Software for Better Visibility admin Sat, 12/18/2021 - 00:38

As a result, the demand for producing high-performing applications is also increasing. And to produce a successful app that users can’t get over with, you need to ensure it performs efficiently without giving a hard time to users.

But how would you know that?

Is there a way to determine whether or not the users are happy with your app?

Yes, there is a way – by using Application Performance Monitoring (APM) software.

APM software plays a significant role in making sure the app performance is solid and meets user expectations. It can identify issues and notify you so you can make quick fixes and improve its performance.

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into what APM software is all about, its benefits, and the top open-source APM software to help you monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize your apps.

Let’s jump in!

What is APM Software?

Application performance monitoring (APM) software is a tool that can monitor and track an application’s performance to identify performance issues quickly and solve them.

An APM solution shows app performance metrics with insights such as the volume of transactions it processed, response times, request rates, error rates, application availability, and more.

The software displays all the metrics in different types of data visualizations in a clear dashboard to detect issues quickly before the users do. APM solutions are used mainly by app administrators and developers to manage applications, find out possible reasons for errors, and troubleshoot them to optimize the user experience.

Why Do You Need Application Monitoring Software?

If you deal with application development and deployment, APM software is a must-have for your organization regardless of its scale or type of project. It executes intensive monitoring, collects logs, and converts them into valuable insights to improve your app performance.

Here are some of the benefits of using APM software:

Clearer visibility into applications: If you use a powerful APM tool and implement it well, it will provide clear visibility into the applications existing in your complete tech stack. It will highlight how they perform, where they are located, and what devices users use to access them. In this way, you can learn the bottlenecks and map user satisfaction to improve its performance.
Meet customer expectations: Using APM software makes your organization more customer-centric and indicates that you care about the end-users. With high visibility, the more issues you can catch, the more improvements you can make to meet the user expectations and elevate your brand reputation.
Better security: By identifying issues and improving them sooner, you are making your application stronger. In this way, your applications won’t be vulnerable enough to let hackers exploit them. As a result, you will make your app more secure and compliant with regulations while maintaining the end-user trust.
Accelerate innovation: If you can reduce the time required to solve issues by monitoring apps using APM solutions, your team will get more time to spend on innovation. They can research and experiment with adding new functionalities rather than just fixing bugs or investigating the cause all the time.
Manage IT costs: APM software helps manage your IT costs better as you can leverage its powerful insights to make informed decisions. It can predict how application usage varies and helps you manage your resources, including your IT infrastructure, tools, and employees. As a result of automation, you can also optimize your team’s efficiency and operating cost and boost ROI.

Apart from all these, APM software can also help enhance app development lifecycle, understand dependencies, audit code execution, monitor network performance, and more.

Now, when you search for APM software, you will get plenty of them, both free and paid. You may find many cloud APM; however, some open-source APM solutions are also fantastic and in no way lesser.

So, let’s look at some of the best open-source application performance monitoring (APM) tools to help you monitor your apps, find issues, and fix them to deliver the best possible user experience.

SigNoz

Understand the issues in the deployed applications and solve them promptly with an open-source platform – SigNoz. Don’t worry about the GDPR and other regulatory laws for data protection, as every monitoring and tracing data remains within your boundary.

SigNoz gives you access to transparent usage data to save you from unexpected bills. Extend Signoz’s features to fulfill your needs without spending long hours getting a single element from vendor slack. Get your full metrics in a single window and trace the issue faster without shifting to another system.

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The cost for data storage depends on application load and doesn’t depend upon the factors like the number of nodes, etc. You do not even need any compliance to use the service or face many rounds with security teams.

The tool integrates with OpenTelemetry, an emerging industry standard for the instrumentation process. You can set your sample rate and retention period as per your needs and monitor your usage accordingly. Plus, you will get industry-trusted Druid and Kafka, which helps you in handling enterprise scale.

SigNoz is built on Goland and React-Typescript, which many developers love. You can get the benefit of filtering the data based on what you want to review. Get a complete guide to set it up on your system for FREE. Also, there is an enterprise edition with more advanced features like RBAC, SSO, etc., for bigger teams.

Apache SkyWalking

If you are a distributed team looking for a tool for monitoring your application performance, try Apache SkyWalking. It is an application performance management system and observability analysis platform designed for cloud-native, microservices, and cloud-based (Mesos, Kubernetes, Docker) architectures.

SkyWalking provides tracing, logging, metrics, and browser monitoring under one solution. It supports multiple languages like Golang, .Net Core, Python, Java, C++, PHP, Lua, and NodeJS. SkyWalking provides an adapting scale with no big data stack. It also offers modular features like cluster coordinator pluggable, storage pluggable, and push/pull transportation.

Get notified with Slack notification, alarm HTTP/gRPC forwarder, WeChat notification, Dingding notification, and data exporter for raw metrics. Access every data in a single window with a fancy visualization like topology map, CLI dashboard, IntelliJ IDE plugin, side by side metrics with codes, customizable dashboard option, and profile and trace explorer.

Metrics

Measure the performance of critical components with a powerful monitoring toolkit by Metrics in the production environment. It offers you full-stack visibility with the modules for libraries like Logback, Log4j, Jetty, Apache HttpClient, JDBI, Ehcache, Jersey, and backends like Graphite.

Metrics provides different measuring instruments to help you monitor every piece of data. Metrics-core library is a must that you need to determine the behavior of your critical components. You will also get Metrics version 4.2.0 property that is declared in the POM. Besides, Meters play a vital role as it measures the rate of events over time like requests per second.

Metrics also tracks 1, 5, and 15-minute moving averages. Console Reporter lets you access reports which you will receive every second. The MetricRegistry class is the centerpiece used to store each application’s metrics, while Gauges are used to measure the value instantly. It helps in running the number of works in the queue.

Furthermore, Counters are also in the list that is similar to Gauge but used to increment and decrement the value. Metrics presents data in histograms that show the statistical distribution of the data and maximum, mean, minimum, etc. With the timer, you can measure the time needed to process a request.

The Metrics-health checks module is used to centralize service health, while the Metrics-JMX module is used as a dependency. Once started, you can see the registry via VisualVM and JConsole.

Hypertrace

Hypertrace is a platform for observability and distributed tracing built to help SREs and Devs. You can trace distributed transactions, monitor microservices and native applications, identify critical dependencies for applications, perform root cause analysis, and optimize service and application performance.

Hypertrace helps you visualize the application architecture. It includes service, backend, and global dashboards that allow the teams to look into the objectives to respond faster. It stores, prepares, and aggregates data for analysis and visualization.

You will get actionable insights to improve application performance using charts, reports, customizable dashboards, and flow maps. Hypertrace is engineered by the Traceable team and is backed by community support.

AppPerf

AppPerf helps you to monitor the app performance, which is easy to use and set up. It supports various languages like JavaScript, HTML, Dockerfile, HTML, Ruby, PLpgSQL, and CSS.

Before setting up AppPerf, make sure you have Node, Yarn, PostgreSQL, Mailcatcher, etc., installed well and functioning correctly. AppPerf has a sample account that will allow you to check the application effectively. It will automatically detect the latest applications that are showing data and display them on the Applications page.

You can visit each page to visualize the metrics. Add Ruby Agent gem to Gemfile for monitoring the application. You can also get a license key by visiting the applications tab and add metrics to AppPerf more straightforwardly, just like posting data to endpoints.

Pinpoint

Pinpoint is an APM tool suitable for large-scale distributed systems. It supports languages such as TypeScript, CSS, HTML, SCSS, Java, and more.

Pinpoint supports applications written on Python and PHP. It provides a way inspired by Dapper to help in the analysis of the overall structure and how components are interconnected within them through tracing each transaction across diverse applications.

Pinpoint helps you understand application topology, monitor the application in real-time, gain visibility in each transaction, and have minimal impact. ServerMap helps you view transaction count and current status by clicking on the node to reveal the details.

You will get an active thread chart in real-time for monitoring it inside applications. Also, visualize response patterns and request count over time for identifying potential problems. Furthermore, you can view additional details like CPU usage, TPS, JVM arguments, and Garbage/Memory collection.

Stagemonitor

If you are looking for an open-source application performance monitoring solution that works great for java server applications, Stagemonitor is a good option. You can establish it on your data center and turn on the private mode. It uses Open Tracing API to correlate requests on a distributed system.

Stagemonitor is built for development, production, and QA by bringing Ops and Devs together. You can manage it to alert channels and subscriptions and define thresholds for metrics. It is also reliable in providing necessary insights constantly for improvements.

Stagemonitor allows you to extend its functionalities; you can use standard plugins or third-party plugins, track your metrics, and customize or create dashboards. The widget, which is a small Stagemonitor icon, is injected automatically in the monitored webpage if activated.

It helps developers give instant feedback regarding the poor performance of an application. You do not need any visualization tools or databases to check graphs and tables in real-time, as Stagemonitor has got you covered. The call tree view tab displays the current requests, including statements from the SQL, to identify the line of the recommendations.

Similarly, the Request trace tab helps you get detailed information on the server processing, page rendering time, DOM processing, and breakdown of the page’s load time into the network. Stagemonitor gives you a Kibana dashboard, so you don’t need to configure logstash and parse any logs.

Now, you can also filter your requests by choosing charts and queries that you want to see. It integrates with Graphite, InfluxDB, and Elasticsearch to gather a long history of the data points and store them. You will also find the Grafana dashboard, which is preconfigured and fully customizable.

Analyze AJAX requests, JDBC queries, page load time, and more in addition to the statistics for the HTTP requests. With the JVM dashboard, get all the information, including garbage collection behavior, CPU utilization, and heap utilization.

Furthermore, EhCache metrics give you information about cache size, hit rate, expiries, performance, and throughput. Apart from that, you can access server metrics like Thread Pool usage, concurrent sessions, tuning servers, and the server load.

Elastic APM

Find out where your app spends more time and fix the issue quickly with Elastic APM’s FREE application performance monitoring solution. Investigate critical metrics, summarize the service transactions and dependencies from the service overview page to understand the issue better.

Elastic APM’s UI uses the power of search to catch the bottlenecks on the changes once you start digging deeper. Get a clear-cut picture of how all the services are connected, visualize their performance with highlighted KPIs, and identify potential issues with health indicators.

In addition, you can zoom in on each service to check blockers, learn the outage impacts, and take proper action to maximize the performance of your application. String transactions altogether with the distributed trace are excellent for getting a clear-cut view of interacting services.

Check the utilization of the messaging frameworks and visualize the service calls to find the latency issues arising in the path and point to the components that need optimization. Test the code locally using multistep synthetic monitoring capabilities, and monitor the experience of the users live.

Enable machine learning from the APM application in Kibana to find unexpected behavior and problematic pieces. With the alerting features, always stay updated with the data and see how it is performing. Receive the notifications via Slack, PagerDuty, email, and more so that you will never miss anything important.

Elastic APM supports Python, JavaScript, PHP, Java, Ruby, .NET, Go, and Node.js applications. Additionally, it supports open standards like OpenTelemetry and Jaeger to make data sending from an existing application to Elastic APM easy.

Elastic APM is also available as SaaS.

Scouter

Scouter is like appdynamics and New relic. It helps you understand the context, i.e., “users use the application services, and services use the resources” to manage and monitor the application performance efficiently.

Scouter shows metrics about users like the recent user, active user, recent visitor, etc.; services like active service, response time, application profiles, etc.; and resources like memory, CPU, Heap, network usage, connection pools, etc.

Agents like Java Agent, Host Agent, and MariaDB Agent gather information on JVM performance and profiles metrics, Linux, OSX, etc. Plus, servers keep the performance metrics safe from agents or telegraf.

Scouter Web API helps get XLogs, counters, profiles, and other performance metrics through HTTP protocol. You will find many plugins for sample, alert, counter, and agent. Moreover, you’ll get a third-party agent like a pulse-type agent to gather performance metrics of RDS, EC2, ELB in AWS.

Glowroot

Glowroot is a Java APM that is very easy to install. Just download and unzip the zip file, add the path to the application’s JVM Argos, and point the browser to the link and see the result.

Here, you will get low overhead which depends on different factors. Low overhead means low microseconds because of the extensive tuning and micro benchmarking of Glowroot. Glowroot helps you gather all the root causes related to app performance and fix the issues in real-time.

Glowroot has many features like continuous profiling, trace capture for errors and slow requests, breakdown and percentile chart for response time, SQL capture, MBean attribute charts and capture, configurable alerting, and many more.

You will also get data on historical rollup with configurable retention, responsive UI, and complete support for async requests. Glowroot is tested on many application servers like TomEE, JBoss EAP, Jetty, Payara, WebLogic, WebSphere, Glassfish, Tomcat, etc.

Conclusion

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) software is an efficient solution to monitor what’s going on with your applications, how the users feel using it, and detect the issues it may have. Using these insights from the software helps you improve your application’s performance, which directly enhances the user experience.

Hence, try the open-source APM software we discussed above to meet user expectations while boosting your brand reputation and ROI.

The Best 7 Free and Open Source Catalog Management Software

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 14:31:49 +0000

The Best 7 Free and Open Source Catalog Management Software admin Tue, 11/30/2021 - 21:31

In the modern ecommerce business world, websites list millions of products in various segments and categories. These products are listed in structured catalogs. Catalogs are assorted and flexible databases about products and services in the ecommerce business environment. Catalogs define, store, organize, manage, and retrieve the stockpiling and inventory information. Customer experience and sales conversion are largely dependent on the efficiency of the catalogs. Therefore, catalog management becomes a fundamental entity in the e-business environment. Efficient catalog management is essential for running the ecommerce business smoothly.

However, the ecommerce environment is itself so diverse that no single standard can be used for modeling, standardizing, publishing, and indexing the catalog of products. Thus, catalog management becomes a challenging process. Things get more complicated when sellers have their online ecommerce business on multiple ecommerce sites.

Management of catalog for various product sections requires a robust solution capable of accommodating and managing the complex diversity. Therefore, ecommerce owners and retailers use technology to configure and manage their product series. A catalog management software assists businesses in planning, designing, implementing, and executing product catalogs. Catalog software has a broad and flexible framework that can manage the intricate e-marketplace issues.

What is a Catalog?

A catalog, also termed as catalogue includes a list of items categorized as per the group by sellers to buyers. Catalogs can consist of anything like clothing, books, groceries, electronics, etc., listed in an easy to navigate groupings.

A catalog is a listing of products with particular data attached to it. Data such as the title of the product, features of the product, prices, expiry date, date of manufacturing, etc. are included in listing a product in a catalog. A catalog is designed to provide comprehensive and accurate product information.

What is Catalog Management?

Catalog management ensures that the relevant products are available to buyers in an organized way. It involves categorizing, listing, and organizing the product content descriptions which are hosted on ecommerce websites of the sellers or third-party ecommerce platforms. Catalog management is a strategic process to provide quality product lists with appropriate descriptions that are aligned to match the required keywords. Efficient catalog management helps the sellers in building a trusted name for their website store visitors.

What is Catalog Management Software?

A catalog management software is a set of applications that helps ecommerce business owners to create, manage, and streamline their product information. Huge product volumes, heavy traffic on ecommerce sites, increasing order numbers, and a competitive business environment have made catalog management software an indispensable entity for achieving automation. It has features to mass update databases, see the version history of the product description, set attributes and tags to products, filter and label products, make advanced catalogs, administer and authorize control levels to users, and many more.

What are the challenges faced by e-retailers in Catalog Management?

Catalog management is a challenging process. When sellers have their online ecommerce business on multiple ecommerce sites, things get more complicated. The challenges faced by online retailers in managing their product catalogs are:

Multiple platform selling:

When e-retailers sell on multiple ecommerce platforms, they have to make sure that similar products are listed with the same specifications. However, issues arise when the terms and conditions of listing on different ecommerce websites are different. This will require the retailer to modify every product's description to match the specific requirement of the ecommerce website where it is listed.

Keeping the product information updated

In the dynamic consumer environment, consumer tastes change every year, month, or sometimes even in weeks. Updating product information and adding new products or deleting the old ones on a regular basis becomes crucial to keep running the online store.

Digital marketing of the listed products

Only listing the products is not a guarantee that your products will be visible on the first few pages of the ecommerce websites. It is difficult to gain visibility on standard websites that list millions of products on their platform. Even if you have your own website, then also the chances of your website topping the results when a particular product is being searched are not very high. The products must be listed with an SEO-friendly product description.

Cater to both B2B and B2C buyers

Ecommerce sellers have both B2B and B2C buyers visiting their websites looking for a well-managed and easily accessible product catalog. A detailed product list with relevant and consistent information is necessary for staying competitive in the market. It is a challenge to maintain a clear and well-structured catalog for 24/7 buyers.

Maintaining Units of Measure

Many e-retailers sell their products globally. The units of measure are different in different geographic locations. Maintaining such a complex product list with multiple units of measurement can take a toll on the sellers.

Scaling the catalog

As your ecommerce business grows, you add more products to your portfolio. The existing catalog structure may not be compatible with listing the new product categories. Scaling the catalog with business becomes a challenging operation.

What are the benefits of Catalog Management Software?

Streamline the Catalog Management Process

There is a difference between the database of products and the streamlined digital shelf. While even unorganized product information is valuable data, it cannot be shared on the digital shelf where customers will access it.

Increase average sale value

Catalog management software has capabilities to suggest related products from the list based on the buying queries. For instance, if you are searching for a mobile phone, the catalog software will also suggest and display other related products such as the battery, earphones, memory cards, mobile cases, selfie stands, power banks, etc. This feature can increase the average sale value. A catalog management solution enhances team productivity by equipping them with consistent product information. High-quality and accurate data leads to increased sales conversion rates and better revenue.

Reduction in Errors

Without a centralized data repository for products, the chances of error increases when products have a multi-channel listing.

Reduced time-to-market

Catalog automation features reduce the time to list new products on various ecommerce channels, and this leads to a reduced time-to-market.

Consistent information on all platforms

Retailers can set protocols, preferences, priorities, parameters, and rules and regulations of listing their products. These will be replicated and followed on all platforms where the products of the particular retailer are listed. Products with incomplete information will automatically be eliminated or flagged. This will help in delivering consistent customer experience across all channels.

Easy to manage SKUs

Stock Keeping Units are important elements in the ecommerce business. A catalog management software makes it easy to manage SKUs.

What are the features of Catalog Management Software?

Admin Features: What Admins can do?

Admins can import and export catalogs and catalog data using CSV file format
Browse, Create and edit catalogs
Create and Edit catalog entries
Edit products and SKU variants
Edit packages and bundles
Manage product categorization, pricing, and batch updates
Determine user roles, access permissions, and control over data
Define metaclasses and meta fields
Variant-level attributes
Can do Product bulk editing
Set and personalize Dashboard widgets
Personalize library of products
Multi-user task management
Set validation rules

Search option

It may look as a very simple function for an ecommerce website, but it is a crucial function that decides if the customer will stay on the site or not. As soon as the customers type something, the related product categories should be visible to them to ensure that they see 'what they are looking for' immediately.

Product variance:

In some product categories, size, weight, and features are variables that decide prices for the same product. A Shirt of size 'XL' can be costlier than size 'Small.' The product variance feature allows retailers to add different price denominations for different sizes. The e-retailer doesn't have to make a separate listing for products that vary only in size or weight parameters.

Multiple information databases

Sometimes product listing information also depends on who your customer is? In some cases, you have to keep one set of catalog for retailers, and one completely different set for wholesalers. For example, if you sell your products to both retailers and wholesalers, then you cannot have the same specifications for both types of buyers. There may be limitations of quantity on retail platforms, but while you sell to wholesalers, it can be in a bulk quantity. Free and open source Catalog management software has features to handle this dual database of information.

Accommodating requested information

Sometimes your retail partners, wholesale clients, ecommerce platforms, suppliers, regular customers, or regulatory bodies may ask you for new information about products or may ask you to put a previously uploaded catalog in a new format. Catalog management software can make this easy for you with its flexible and comprehensive capabilities.

The list of 7 best free and open source catalog management software

TreoPIM
Pimcore
Akeneo
Plytix
Bluestone
Questudio
Sales layer

Comparison Chart of 7 Best Free and Open Source Catalog Management Software

TreoPIM

TreoPIM is a free and open source catalog management software under the GPLv3 license. It is a feature-rich catalog management solution for retailers, producers, and brands. With TreoPIM, you get full control over catalogs and customer experience. Retailers can add new products or change existing ones, update catalogs, deliver product information across all channels, and many more using TreoPIM. It helps in automating the business processes, increasing productivity, and improving the quality of the work results. TreoPIM assists businesses to systematize and structure the exchange of information.

Features:

Manual data import for all entities is available, and the Import process can be reversed
Manual data export for all entities is available
Manage an unlimited number of product catalogs
Possible to create sub-catalogs to represent a subgroup of products
Classification, Categorization, and Segmentation of products
Create several categories by defining the parent category and the child category
A category can include several related products, and one product can be assigned to multiple categories
Assign tags to the product
Create product attributes to describe product properties
Over 20 predefined attribute types
Monolingual or multilingual attribute values
Enter prices in different currencies
A product can have many product images

Pimcore

Pimcore is an open source catalog management software and product information management system that centralizes and synchronizes all technical, marketing, and sales information related to products. It easily integrates into IT frameworks and has the capability to acquire and manage all types of digital data. It is multi-vector compatible, and a multi-domain PIM solution that seamlessly connects to third-party ERP, CRM, or BI software. Pimcore provides outstanding customer and product experience from a single source based on its consistent and up-to-date data.

Features:

Flexible data modeling to create a new product data model within minutes.
Data Management with user-friendly aggregation, organization, translation, and classification, of product information
Data Integration & Delivery feature enables easy import and export of data
It provides enterprise-class data quality
Synchronization: Omni-channel enablement
Digitalization: Decrease time-to-market
API-driven, service-oriented architecture
Enabled drop-down selections

Akeneo

Akeneo is an open source catalog management software with a flexible, adaptable, and powerful Product Information Management system. Akeneo provides an enterprise-level set of features and capabilities for displaying and marketing your products on ecommerce channels.

Features:

Import product data from CSV files and Excel
Centralize your product data
Structure your product information
Define your catalog structure with families, attributes, categories, and more
Take control of your product data
Craft compelling product descriptions
Enrich content, assign images and media files
Make product changes in bulk
Organize, enrich, link, and transform multimedia assets
Control product processes by ensuring contributors only access the field values they need.
Improve productivity with a validation workflow
Control, review, and approve changes in the product information.
Automatically reduce errors and manual efforts by enriching data
Track product data completeness and publish no product data before it's ready.
Measure product data quality quickly
Maintain multiple versions of products
Restore products to a previous version

Plytix

Plytix is a free catalog management software that is a perfect solution for managing product information across various channels and teams. In its free version, it allows up to 1000 SKUs and 10 GB file storage space. It has features to list products, Digital asset management, unlimited users, and free analytics. If you need more space, features, and listings, then you can upgrade to its Pro version. It has features to list products, Digital asset management, unlimited users, and free analytics.

Features:

Get product data in one centralized place from where it is accessible to admins and teams
Teams can collaborate in real-time
Manage videos, images, graphics, and files in one place
Unlimited users at no extra cost
Keep all multimedia files and content secure and up-to-date
Manage images, graphics, videos, and files in one place
Integrate any existing tools seamlessly
Easily create and assign custom roles to your users
Easily filter on multiple attributes
Save product filters ease workflow
Directly edit your product description from the product overview
Edit attributes, and provide a new value
Link unlimited variations to your products
Establish relationships between products
Easily import data into the database from multiple data sources
Receive the data in CSV, XLSX or PDF file format

Bluestone

Bluestone PIM is a 360-degree catalog management software. Be ready for the future of commerce. It's a well-implemented system that puts product information at the center of your business. It is a SaaS-based solution that runs on AWS and has stringent data security standards.

Features:

Update services without taking the solution offline
Databases run across multiple data centers to avoid interruption in services
Monitors network and services for abnormal activity
Speed up time-to-market for your products
Transfer product data into the system from various file formats
Build a tree structure for product categories and subcategories
Set default parameters for products
See category-level attributes to ensure no information is missing
Flexible filtering options
Set roles and permissions
Invite partners and suppliers to collaborate
Define roles and permissions
Enrich product information by forming, grouping, and editing product attributes
Set validation rules and create compound attributes
Manage digital asset
Keep track of videos, documents, images, and other attributes and
Connect them to product categories
Keep historical versions of all products and
Set up multiple versions for product information
Update product attributes in bulk
Implement product-to-product relations
Set up variant-level attributes

CatalogStudio

CatalogStudio, by Questudio's Digital commerce solution, is a robust catalog management system that includes catalog automation, ERP, CRM, and product information management. It is online software to manage product marketing content. Businesses can manage catalog taxonomy, product descriptions, product specifications, customer data, etc. CatalogStudio has a central database, and information is served through multiple channels. It provides the industry's most flexible catalog management solutions for rich product content management. CatalogStudio system provides all types of product information solution tools to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.

Features:

Managing product information, customer information, images, prices,
Publish database to multiple platforms using a central repository database.
Make product catalog with unlimited groups and categories
Search and filter products, text, and images
Customer-specific product pricing
Unlimited product attributes, videos, and charts, images, attachments,
Compatible with multiple languages, capture
Flexible product filters and sorting
Quickly generate price list,
Generate PDF catalogs using pre-built templates
Drag and drop support for product assignment
Setup product export & import templates
Easily update product price or any product content
Publish product information to Web, Print, CD and PDF catalogs
Security, Workflow & Integration with ERP Systems
Security for product data maintenance
Open architecture and API for ERP and CRM systems integration

Sales Layer

Sales Layer is a catalog management software that offers product information management features and a complete solution for catalog management. It allows the import of files in all formats and can work with all data sources. It keeps the content saved in cloud servers and allows multiple users to access it for work collaboration. It maps all attributes, categories, and product types automatically.

Features:

Create Instant catalog and product information
Make customized online catalogs in real-time
It sends links to suppliers and retailers for sharing product information.
Secure, personalized instant catalogs
Share only the required information by selecting the categories and tags for your products
Create a public catalog for open access
Create password-protected private catalogs to share information with sales teams, distributors, and customers.
Activate online orders for products in the catalog
Organize, analyze & connect your products
Create as many catalogs as you need

You can choose from the above listed 7 best free and open source catalog management software for your product catalog and save your time. If you still need more robust software with better features to list your products, then you can check Salsify, one of the most popular and enterprise-class catalog management software. Let us see its features in detail:

Salsify

Salsify is a popular catalog management software that can be used to optimize the product information management processes. Salsify is a high-speed catalog management solution that comprises a set of micro-services to manage the digital shelf on multiple ecommerce platforms. It is a secure, cloud-based, multi-tenant system that combines elements such as digital catalogs, PIM, DAM, digital shelf analytics, and many more capabilities. It engages shoppers across multiple channels with enhanced validation capabilities.

Features:

Channel-specific requirements and one central view for your data,
Visualize and connect to the entire ecommerce system through a single platform
Integrated direct selling on social channels by activating product content on social media platforms
Catalog Management, Catalog Creation, Content Library and Channel Management
Comprehensive and configurable workflows
Campaign Management and Analytics
Digital Asset Management and product asset categorization
Enterprise-class architecture and security
Channel-specific versions of product content
Agile self-service for business users

Conclusion:

Your digital shelf can provide an enhanced product experience only if the content is managed efficiently with consistently updated and relevant product information. Your customers' experience with your ecommerce website is enriched the moment they interact with a content-rich, flexible, agile, and user-friendly product platform.

A catalog management software makes it easy for the ecommerce businesses to ensure product data consistency across all ecommerce channels and smooth transition of information across sellers, vendors, and customers. With the help of a catalog management system, your team can deliver a compelling customer experience that today's tech-savvy customers desire and appreciate.

Apart from the free and open source catalog management software discussed in this article, you can also check the features of Catbase, Zycus, Contolog, and Flipsnack. If you have utilized any of the free and open source catalog management software mentioned above, then do share your feedback with us. If you wish to see the features of any other software or any other software category other than the Catalog software, then do look at our software directory.

Source: goodfirms

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