Write product data once, publish it everywhere.

A product information management system (PIM) is where product descriptions, attributes, images and translations are written once and sent to every channel: your store, Amazon, Google Shopping and the trade catalogue. I connect Akeneo, Pimcore, Salsify, Plytix and Odoo to Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce, or build a bespoke PIM where none of them fits, so the store stops being the place product data is edited by hand. (Not Microsoft’s Privileged Identity Management, which shares the initials.)

Where PIM integrations are won or lost

The attribute mapping

mapping/akeneo-to-magento−1 +4 · one product family, mapped

family: 'basins'  sku       -> sku  name      -> name−  description -> description   # one field for every channel+  description_web    -> description+  width_mm  -> width (unit: mm, filterable)+  finish    -> finish (option, filterable)+  assets.hero -> media_gallery[0] (role: image, small_image)

The integration is mostly decisions, written down. Which PIM attribute feeds which store field, in what unit, whether it is filterable, which image is the main one, and what happens to a product that is incomplete. Getting these right is what makes the store’s filters and search work.

Illustrative mapping. Field names depend on your PIM and your store.

The systems, by name

Akeneo, Pimcore, Salsify, Odoo, Plytix, or built for you

Name the product when you search: “PIM” on its own brings up Microsoft’s security tool. Here is how each of these connects to a store.

Jump to a section

Akeneo with Magento 2 or Shopify
Pimcore
Salsify
Odoo as a PIM
Plytix
A bespoke PIM, built to your requirements

Open source and enterprise PIM

Akeneo with Magento 2 or Shopify

Akeneo is the PIM most mid-sized retailers meet first, with a free community edition and a paid cloud version. Product data is organised in families and attributes, enriched per channel and locale, and completeness is scored before anything is published.

Akeneo has connectors for Magento 2 and Shopify. The work is usually in the mapping: attribute types that don’t exist on the store, units and option lists, category trees that differ between channels, and assets that must arrive as the right image roles. Where a connector can’t express the rules, the connection is built on Akeneo’s REST API.

Open source PIM and MDM

Pimcore

Pimcore is an open-source platform for product information, master data and digital assets. It is flexible enough to model almost any product, which also means every Pimcore install is different, and the integration is written against how yours has been modelled.

Product experience platform

Salsify

Salsify is a SaaS product experience platform, common with brands that sell through retailers and marketplaces as well as their own store. It publishes to many channels out of the box; connecting it to a custom or Magento store is about receiving its exports or API cleanly and mapping them to the store’s model.

Odoo PIM

Odoo as a PIM

Businesses that run Odoo often keep product data there too, with Odoo’s product and variant model, or a PIM module added to it. Publishing that data to Shopify or Magento, with attributes, images and translations mapped properly, is the integration work, and where Odoo’s model gets stretched, Pimcore has an Odoo connector.

PIM for smaller teams

Plytix

Plytix is a lighter PIM aimed at smaller teams, with channel feeds and a straightforward API. It is often the first PIM a store adopts when spreadsheets stop coping, and connecting it well early saves a migration later.

Built to requirement

A bespoke PIM, built to your requirements

Sometimes no PIM fits: product data with rules the off-the-shelf systems can’t express, a catalogue that is really a configurator, or a team that needs three screens rather than three hundred features. A small product information system built in Laravel or Django, with exactly the model, workflow and approval steps the business uses, can be cheaper to run than licensing and bending a large PIM.

It is built like any bespoke application, with the same design-first approach, and publishes to the store, the marketplaces and Google Shopping through the same integrations.

AI-generated

What a PIM integration keeps in step

Written once in the PIM, published to the store and every channel it feeds, with the store no longer the place product data is edited.

where each fact is written: Once
channel fed from it: Every

Attributes and filtersSizes, finishes and materials in the units and options the store’s filters need.
Images and filesThe main image, the gallery, spec sheets and manuals, in the right roles.
CategoriesOne product placed in different category trees for different channels.
TranslationsPer locale, with nothing published until it is complete.
Marketplace contentAmazon and Google Shopping fields filled from the same source.

PIM integration questions

Do we need a PIM, or is the store enough?Behind it · We’re worried about buying software we don’t need.

If one person edits product data in one store, the store is enough. A PIM earns its place when several channels, languages or suppliers feed the same catalogue, and edits made in one place don’t reach the others.

Can you connect Akeneo to Magento 2 or Shopify?Behind it · Our agency says the connector does everything.

Yes. The connector covers the standard cases; I check your families and attributes against it first, and build or extend only where it falls short.

What happens to data already in the store?Behind it · We have years of product copy in Magento.

It is exported, cleaned and imported into the PIM first, so the PIM starts as the master rather than overwriting good content with blanks.

Will our filters and search still work?Behind it · Last time the filters broke.

That is what the mapping is for: attribute types, units and option lists are agreed so filterable fields arrive in the form the store needs.