When you are choosing Magento 2 extensions, the right choices can make (or literally break) your site. Extensions are needed to add custom features and to make connections to other services. For example, you might be using Dotmailer‘s email automation or TaxJar‘s sale tax filing. They sometimes need to be custom-written to meet specific business or integration requirements, like adapting eCommerce to your proprietary business model or grabbing the inventory data from that AS400 you’re still running.
Finding Magento 2 Extensions – The Good:
Finding modules used to be a process of “googling it,” reading reviews, asking around, and hoping for the best. In Magento 2 (M2), the process has become a little more curated. The new Magento Marketplace features a stronger process for vetting and testing, but Magento 2 is new enough that reviews are still a little sparse.
Magento 2 extensions for solid services like Dotmailer, TaxJar, and many others will generally be fine, as they’re backed by reputable companies that only make money on their services when they work well with your site. However, there can still be conflicts when you’ve got other extensions on your site, as there is no way for them to test every possible combination and configuration.
The Bad (and the Ugly):
Fellow Magento partners Fooman wrote a great blog post about some limitations to relying on reviews. They point out that reviews are not always trustworthy. Sometimes they’re written by competitors (or the developers themselves) Surprise! They give some tips to stack the odds in your favor when relying on those reviews.
The Solution:
Jamersan has been developing in Magento for about a decade. We also have access to Magento resources as a Professional Solutions Partner. Our Magento 2 knowledge can help take the worry out of adding functionality to your site. We can help you choose well-written extensions, code review your extension selection for quality, or write custom extensions when quality options don’t exist. Contact us for a proposal on your site!
