When it comes to eCommerce project(s) with extraordinary needs, Sylius is the best answer. Most of the systems available on the market give you access to a huge number of advanced functionalities, but extending them by applying custom solutions is sometimes quite difficult. Sylius Plus allows for creating flexible solutions, adding new features so that every single part of your application’s code may be adjusted to your needs. 

Even if some features are not out-of-the-box, it’s easy to implement them with full freedom, excellent for setting your business apart from the competition. The helpful community has already made many of the plugins. Sylius is based on the framework – considered by many to be the best PHP framework. It appears in two versions: Sylius (free open-source) and Sylius Plus (the paid one – but well worth it).

In this blog post, we will take a look at some details of the paid version.

Since the internet is an inseparable part of life, the clients’ requirements are much higher than a few years ago. Coming up with tools that can leave the competition far behind is essential. To face critical problems businesses may have, Sylius is the best tool to create original solutions (if not on your own, then with a help of the community).

It may be questioned why to pay for something available as open-source. As you can guess, “plus” means “more”. It brings advanced features just out-of-the-box so that there’s no need to build them from scratch.

Enterprise-grade features included in Sylius Plus

Advanced multi-store management

For multi-stores such as corporate chains, franchises, or buying groups, unique management approaches is a key factor. Keeping smoothly running operations in different stores may be tricky, but there is a solution.

Want to have more than one store? In Sylius Plus multi-store management comes out of the box. Set up and manage all of the different units from one dashboard, without the need to access them with different credentials. With one dashboard you can deal with every little factor. What’s more, you are able to create a personalized user experience by setting up different storefronts for each store.

Develop superior client engagement and marketing approaches to improve your business using different storefronts. Through a single dashboard, your team can control all your stores from just one, central location and provide a completely quality-driven experience.

Create multiple channels available in your store with one click.

The most desirable enterprise-grade features regarding this module:

  • Manage multiple business units
  • Create different users permissions between units
  • Configure different invoicing details

A complete returns management module (RMA)

Sometimes the client may want to return an order. Returns are part of the sales. The number of returned items is increasing rapidly – especially in eCommerce. The fashion industry returns up to 50% and sometimes even exceeds it. People often order goods to see them – and then send them back. As an eCommerce owner, you should take care of this side of your eCommerce solution as well.

Let your customers request to return their purchases from their individual accounts. It makes the customer service process faster. Then manage requests from your administration panel – refund the whole order, or just part, choose the form or a price of the refund.

Also, when the possibility of returning goods is treated as an instrument to increase customer satisfaction, contribute to acquiring a regular customer and increase sales, you should be logistically prepared to accept returns and reduce their number as much as possible.

In well-thought-out distribution systems, the logistics of orders and returns are optimized, which increases the competitiveness of the online store. Such a store will meet today’s requirements in terms of flexibility, speed, and accuracy. However, you cannot completely avoid returns.

Instead of avoiding returns, try to get used to them and benefit from returns management.

Partial order fulfillment

You may want to fulfill the order partially. Sylius Plus gives you this possibility. Let’s say that a client ordered 5 hats, and, for some reason, you can send 2 of them today and the rest next week. If the client agrees, all you need to do is just a few clicks.

Sylius Plus: partial shipment
Sylius Plus: partial shipment

To coordinate order and data across all systems involved, including your platform, ERP, and/or accounting system, you need an in-depth understanding of your fulfillment processes.

Multi-source inventory management

Control single or multi-source inventory and sales channels. This functionality has supported stores manage their multiple sources and sales channels from the administration panel. Give yourself the ability to connect sources to the store to select a source depending on various conditions. It is a great way to optimize the efficiency of delivery.

Create inventories and assign them to the chosen channel(s).

Which elements does Sylius Plus support?

  • Managing product availability that is shown to the customers
  • Shipping from the most optimal source

Advanced permissions management

Assign your staff to specific roles in your admin panel and manage access to different sections of your application. The basic principle of managing permissions is to grant them only to the extent necessary. On the one hand, apart from low-level positions, employees often have quite broad scopes of responsibility. On the other hand, the need to regularly add and remove permissions due to users’ constantly changing needs motivates system owners to grant more permissions and save themselves bureaucracy in the future.

Unfortunately, granting too many permissions can easily take revenge on an organization.

Sylius Plus: roles
Sylius Plus: Roles

Admins per channel

You may assign administrators for each channel by creating them from your dashboard.

Loyalty system

in the online store is one of the elements of the online marketing strategy. Loyalty programs are used to build long-term relationships with clients and motivate them to place orders in the store on a regular basis. Companies should consider it in terms of marketing, accounting, logistics, and the platform when deciding to introduce it. Regarding the eCommerce solution, Sylius, as the comprehensive and highest quality open-source framework, comes with a module that lets set it up quickly.

By default, there are two main types of rules: “Points per product ratio” and “Items total to points ratio”.

The first one is configurable for chosen products in a specified channel. As you can see, you can set up several points by entering a value.

Sylius Plus: loyalty points - points per product
Sylius Plus: loyalty points – points per product

The second predefined value is for defining the points for spending a specific amount of money. For example, for every 5 spent on items, the customer gets 10 points.

Sylius Plus: loyalty points - points per money spent
Sylius Plus: loyalty points – points per money spent

However, nothing prevents you from creating other values. As previously mentioned, Sylius is a flexible solution that allows creating your own vision in projects. The minimum effort of the developers’ team is guaranteed. Source code is based on a high-quality framework – Symfony and uses good coding practices. As loyalty programs are becoming more and more popular every year, it is worth considering them in the eCommerce platform.

Clients-side view:

  • Checking loyalty points
  • Exchanging points for coupons (coupon will be delivered via e-mail)
  • Using a coupon code and see how many points does he have just before completing the order

What you can do to get more loyal customers:

  • Create rules of collecting points: how many points and for what actions the customer will get (example: spend 30$ to get 100 points)
  • Configure rules of exchanging points: how many points have to acquire the customer to get the ‘award’ (and also – what is that award)

Performance and advanced services

What makes the offer strong, apart from the benefits that come with new features? It’s the individual (developers) technical support for each of the projects. With the paid version of Sylius, you will get:

  • Customer Success Manager – Sylius assigns a Customer Success Manager to each project and optional Project Success Assistance to ensure its monitoring and evolution, in collaboration with the agency that develops the project
  • SLA-backed Technical Support – get a high-quality response in a short time directly from the team behind Sylius
  • Enhanced security and performance – you can read here about the comparison of Magento and Sylius performance

Sylius Plus – Pricing

The annual license price depends on the value of transactions going through the platform (Gross Merchandise Volume). Sylius Plus pricing starts at 14,900 EUR annually. It’s not just a charge for extra add-ons, but as it was mentioned above, it includes support from the Sylius technical team and a dedicated Success Manager.

The commercial license retains the possibility of modifying the solution and adapting it to the real needs of your project (as it is in an open-source version). After the purchase, you will get the source code available as a private repo on GitHub, and like the open-source license, it can be modified by the developer.

Should you consider Sylius as an eCommerce business solution for your project?

With Sylius Plus, you will get features that are not out-of-the-box in a free, available on GitHub version, which means faster implementation. However, it’s worth considering if you actually need this solution. You may get all the power, but will you actually use it?

Radosław Żurawski - CSO at BitBag
Check out if Sylius Plus is a fit for your eCommerce project during a quick, FREE consultation!

Remember that Sylius has lots of plugins you can add to your application to achieve your goals. Many of them were developed by the community and many new features are created all the time, so we encourage you to join the community. Sylius provides the necessary tools to face the growth of your store. You have total freedom to make your store look how you imagine using a templating system that enables easy integrations and unique design. No risks of disappointment when adding flexibility in the shopping process creates a distinctive look and improves the user experience.

To sum up: What can Sylius bring to your business?

  • Support for the most popular payment providers
  • Open-source and worldwide help (you may join the community)
  • Product management
  • Order management and customer service
  • A fast and accurate search of products with ElasticSearch 
  • Omnichannel support out of the box in a free, open-source version
  • High flexibility – it could be used for B2C, B2B, Multivendor-Marketplace, or as a headless microservice powering VOD, e-learning platforms, or SaaS. The sky is the limit.

Everything extra you get with the commercial license – access to new features:

(These are not only enterprise-grade features)

  • Advanced Multi-Store management
  • Returns Management
  • Loyalty System
  • Hierarchical Role-based Access Control management
  • Multi-Source Inventory Management
  • Customer Success Manager, (Optional) Project Success Assistance, and SLA-backed Technical Support 

If you consider Sylius or Sylius Plus as a solution for you or need advice if it suits your project, let us know. No matter if you need an open-source or commercial license, let’s talk about the opportunities. Let’s make it simple. No sales pitches or no more complications. You can send us a message using this section or schedule a FREE consultation and talk to us personally!