Magento or Shopify, which one to choose for the new online store? You are not alone who is struggling with this question. These days, it is difficult to select the right platform to kick off your new business idea, with great eCommerce and website builder options available.
Both Shopify and Magento are best for mid to large-size businesses. Shopify is an easy-to-use platform for building online stores, while Magento, an open-source system, is free to install on your devices.
An argument between the two platforms is expected as both are leading e-commerce platforms. You might be considering your option if you are thinking of creating an online store or want to migrate the current one to another platform. We will help you to simplify your problem through this article that covers a detailed comparison between these two platforms.
But first, let us identify what Shopify
and Magento are and what makes them different from each other. So let’s get
started!
What is Shopify?
Introduced in 2006 by Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake, Shopify is a popular online e-commerce platform that small businesses can use to build an online store to sell products on websites or through social media. The company also sells point of sales (POS) software that small businesses can use in brick-and-mortar stores.
What Can I Sell on Shopify?
●
Products that you ship yourself.
●
Goods and services which are sold in a
retail store.
●
Services sold and managed by online
booking.
●
Dropship items that ship to customers
directly from your vendors.
●
Services and products sold in-person by
mobile locations.
●
Rental sports equipment, cameras,
formal wear, etc.
What is Magento?
Introduced in 2008 by Varien, Magento is an e-commerce platform built on open-source technology that provides online merchants with flexible shopping cart systems and controls the look, content, and functionality of the online store.
It is written in PHP over ZEND framework. To set up and maintain a Magento e-commerce store, you need to hire a dedicated PHP developer to help you through the development process.
Adobe purchased Magento Commerce in 2018 and integrated the software into the Adobe Experience Cloud. Under the new setup, Adobe is offering two versions of Magento services:
Magento Open Source
It is a free, open-source platform with limited features. It is great on the budget but requires some technical skills to run.
Adobe Commerce
It is a fully-featured product that includes PCI compliance, advanced marketing capabilities, technical support, and more. As Magento offers several products now everything is rolled into one product known as Adobe Commerce.
Adobe commerce doesn’t provide details on any pricing plans. You have to provide your contact details and wait for sales representatives to reach out and offer you a customized quote.
Difference Between Shopify and Magento
|
Parameter |
Shopify |
Magento |
|
Define |
A cloud-based
eCommerce platform that allows businesses to create an online store. |
An open-source
eCommerce platform that allows businesses to build and manage online stores
easily. |
|
Release Date |
June 2004 |
31 March 2008 |
|
Invented by |
Tobias Lütke &
Scott Lake |
Roy Rubin |
|
Open-source |
No |
Yes |
|
Hosted |
Yes |
No |
|
Used Programming Language |
Ruby |
PHP |
|
Userbase
(As of October 2022) |
Shopify has over 4 million eCommerce sites. |
Magento 1 has over
167,000 active user sites, while
Magento 2 has 100,000 active
sites. |
|
Apps using the technology |
Netflix, Tesla,
Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics, and more. |
Ford, Landrover,
Nestlé Nespresso, Olympus, and more. |
|
Features |
● Shopify Payments: Shopify
has its payment processor included with its platform; if you use Shopify
Payments, there are no additional transaction fees. ● Abandoned checkout recovery: Automatically
email users with a link to their abandoned card, encouraging them to
complete their purchase.
● Mobile App: Shopify’s
customizable mobile app lets you manage your products, orders, staff, and
customers while you’re on the go.
● Blogging platform: Not
only you will have a store website, but also a blog to publish articles and
encourage reviews from customers.
● Marketing: The
platform has advanced marketing capabilities like loyalty programs, SEO,
cards, loyalty programs, discounts, social media integration, and more. ● Shopify App Store: The
Shopify App Store has more than 7000 apps that you can download to extend
the store’s functionality.
● Customer Support: Shopify
offers its users 24/7 support, and access to its help center, e-commerce
university, and discussion forums. |
● Payment Processing: It
works with common payment gateways like Braintree and PayPal and has
integrations with more than 300 international gateways.
● Instant checkout: In
addition to your general shopping capabilities, Magento offers an instant
checkout that allows users to quickly and easily checkout on one page.
● Site management: Magento
has advanced site-management abilities that allow you to control multiple
websites & stores from one admin and create previews, and schedule
content updates.
● International commerce: Along
with working with international payment gateways, Magento allows you to
manage multiple country sites from the same store or environment. You can
also support tax rates, multiple currencies, and languages.
● Reporting: Magento
includes 100 predefined reports, 9 reporting dashboards, and the ability to
create and edit your reports.
● Customer development: Magento
gives various ways to engage and support your customers like login checkout,
Coupons, email marketing campaigns, product wishlists, promotions, and
gift-wrapping options.
● Add-ons: The
platform marketplace offers more than 4200 different add-ons and extensions
that you can download to improve the store’s functionality. |
|
Advantages |
● Lots
of beautiful responsive store themes to select from. ● Great
app store to extend the website’s functionality. ● A
comprehensive eCommerce builder ● Many
checkout and payment options. ● A
large community of dedicated fans. ● Good
customer support. ● Easy
to use. |
● Flexible
platform with multiple customization options. ● Excellent
community with massive support for users. ● Tons
of themes to choose from. ● Open
source and free to use. ● Contact
support is available.
|
|
Disadvantages |
● Some
themes have a price attached to them. ● Integrating
apps into your store complicates it more. ● Charges
a fee for every transaction (if you don't use Shopify payments) |
● A
bit of a learning curve ● Requires
time to set up ● Quite difficult for beginners. ● Higher
costs are associated with setting up your score. |
|
Performance |
Shopify comes with stable and
reliable performance. As it has a hosted solution, the company guarantees
for Shopify website’s speed.
|
In Magento, the website’s speed
depends on the hosting service you selected. |
|
Versions |
Magento Community Edition (CE) 2.4.5 |
Shopify 2.18 |
|
Pricing
|
All your hosting costs are included
in the subscription (monthly or yearly), no need to pay extra.
|
Magento is free to install, but you
need to pay for your domain, web hosting, security, and extension.
|
|
Number of Apps and Add-ons |
3600+ |
4200+ |
Final Thoughts
Going through all these modes of comparison, we can say Magento and Shopify both are powerful platforms with their pros and cons.
Since Shopify is a hosted and managed service, it provides greater ease of use, and in Magento, everything you have to do by yourself (tech-savvy people can do it alone) from hosting purchase to software setup and installation.
Magento's websites are more functional than Shopify websites as you design everything from scratch, you can give the desired look and feel to your website.
At last, what we conclude from the above comparison is:
Shopify is best for -
●
Small stores and start-ups with few
products.
●
If you want easy to operate eCommerce
platform with all the required features.
●
Drop shipping and syncing with multiple
online stores channels
Magento is best for -
●
Large stores with many orders and
million-dollar earnings.
●
Businesses with a dedicated web
developers team to support.
●
Enterprises that want to design and
customize their website from scratch.
● Selling various products in different countries and languages.
We hope this article helped you to get out of the confusion of “Magento vs Shopify – which one is best for an eCommerce platform?” Start your online store by choosing the best eCommerce platform according to your business requirements.
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