Born out of Symfony, Sylius is an e-commerce-oriented PHP framework that ships with bundles intended for online selling.
Why choose Sylius? What are its strengths compared with Magento and PrestaShop? We tell you everything 😉
An e-commerce layer on top of the Symfony framework
A quick reminder of what Symfony is
To understand what Sylius is, you need to know the PHP framework Symfony. If you have never heard of it, we invite you to read our article introducing it. As a reminder, Symfony is an open-source solution made in France, launched in 2005 by SensioLabs, and the direct competitor of the American PHP framework Laravel. Symfony works with a system of bundles; these bundles are akin to packages of additional software features. They make it possible to save time by offering “turnkey” functions in your projects, without having to develop them from scratch. That way, you can focus on other features without having to develop the initial steps that recur in every project yourself.
An e-commerce solution with nothing to envy in the others
Sylius, for its part, is a full-stack Symfony layer that natively includes e-commerce bundles. It is therefore an e-commerce foundation intended for building merchant sites, which inherits Symfony’s PHP best practices. Because of its philosophy, Sylius has a responsive community of developers. Indeed, the development GitHub repository currently includes more than 500 contributors, 1,670 users, 842 translators and 4,560 GitHub stars. What’s more, the PHP framework’s documentation is well stocked! What is even more welcome is that the road map is regularly updated and that new versions of the solution are published regularly. Yes, the young e-commerce framework appears to be appreciated! Compared with Magento and even PrestaShop by SensioLabs, Sylius has risen to the same level as the other e-commerce solutions. In addition, the company behind Symfony gives weight to Sylius by offering an introductory training course for it directly from its website. Sylius aims to be recognised as an e-commerce-oriented PHP framework in its own right, and not as an e-commerce platform. And yet the tool natively offers a management back office that is very easy to get to grips with, as well as a responsive, multi-device front office.
Scalability and lightness, the secret of the PHP e-commerce framework
If you know Symfony’s architecture, the tool will be easy for you to get to grips with and you won’t need to climb the sometimes very steep learning curves of PHP frameworks. It will then be very easy for you to add an e-commerce part to an existing Symfony project. Unlike e-commerce platforms, which impose a heavy structure that is sometimes too big for certain projects, Sylius stands out by leaving you the option of customising almost everything! Another strong point: Sylius gives you access to the whole galaxy of Symfony bundles. You can find the official list of Symfony bundles on the official site, along with others from the community, such as those produced by Friends of Symfony, for example. These bundles offer Sylius a huge amount of flexibility and customisation capability; the key is to understand that you customise your Sylius according to your needs. If the management back office is simple and easy to get to grips with, it is because it is in fact only a foundation! After that, you are free to play Minecraft and slot in the features you need. You should install only the bundles corresponding to the features your e-commerce site requires! The aim is to have software suited to your needs, which will therefore be lighter, less difficult to grasp and faster! This simplicity is what makes Sylius’s real strength — no more of Magento 2’s indigestible database!
A REST API for connecting your external applications
Thanks to its REST API, Sylius allows you to integrate your front end easily, whether it is developed in Angular, React or even another JavaScript framework. You are therefore not obliged to limit yourself to the classic Twig template engine in order to interface your front end with your back end. So whatever your environment and your habits, you can customise your administration panel to your own taste! In addition, as with other e-commerce solutions, it is possible to connect your ERP, CRM, mailing software and much more.
In terms of adaptability, Sylius is compatible with many online payment interfaces, namely: PayPal, QuadPay, Adyen, Stripe, Mercanet, Mollie, Braintree and PayU. The online payment bundle used natively by the PHP framework is Payum, a tool that seems to do the job but whose documentation is not yet sufficient.
A PHP e-commerce framework offering a marketplace?
On its website, Sylius has announced the release of a future marketplace bundle that would offer the possibility of running a multi-vendor system, a little in the manner of Amazon, Fnac or Cdiscount. From a marketing point of view, adding this very fashionable feature would make it possible to showcase sellers while offering them visibility. That way, you could offer more products on your website without managing stock (since it belongs to third-party sellers). The advantage for you is that you can charge a commission on purchases made from your e-commerce site. Although Sylius has not yet said anything about the features on offer for its marketplace bundle, we can imagine that, like its competitors, it will offer third-party sellers:
- a dedicated profile page
- a customised management interface for administering their products, orders and profile
- statistics relating to their sales
- after-sales service management (the ability to handle customer messages received)
- management of the billing method, pricing and delivery methods
What about the technical side — will the possibilities be as rich as those offered by Magento, or even by the PrestaShop add-on?
Watch this space… It would appear that Sylius is prioritising its enterprise offering, Sylius Plus. What is that? Sylius is venturing onto Magento’s territory by offering a paid enterprise plan, which includes technical support, advanced features and improvements to performance and security. To find out more, you can read our article: Sylius Plus, the e-commerce framework’s enterprise offering and a marketplace bundle.
