Magento Product Types

Magento CE offers a variety of product types

1. Simple Products
2. Grouped Product
3. Configurable Product
4. Virtual Product
5. Bundle Product
6. Downloadable Product

Simple Product -As the name suggests,It is the most basic product type and it is suitable for all kinds of products for instance toys,DVDs etc

Grouped Product – This product type is used for creating a new product based on one or more existing products, for example, if you have a (say white)T-shirt and (say black)shorts as separate products, you can group them together and sell them as a grouped product

Configurable Product – This type will allow your clients to customize a product by having several options to choose from. we can take the example as apparel ,since clothes comes in different color and sizes users would like to select appropriate size and color before purchasing the right one.
If you want to sell a T-shirt available in two colors and three sizes, for this you will create six individual product and then add this to configurable product

Virtual Product -This type is used for those product that doesnot require shipping and inventory.for example if you want to offer services such as newsletter subscriptions or phone support, you would add them as virtual products.So it is basically used for warranties and services.

Bundle Product -This product is composed of components it will allow your clients to customize a product based on a number of configurable options. for example, if you want to sell Notebook with configurable options such as CPU model,RAM, HDD size etc, then add them as bundle products.

Downloadable Product – This type is suitable if you want to sell software, music or movies, you would add them as downloadable products.these products are sell by providing a downloadable link to your customer.

Akash Sethi
akash@intelligrape.com