Magento vs Shopify is one of the most common questions asked by businesses looking for a platform for their eCommerce website. There are many factors that can influence the decision of where to build an eCommerce website, and these two platforms are among them.
Magento Vs Shopify – Which One Is Suitable For eCommerce Development?
When it comes to eCommerce Development, there are two popular choices – Magento and Shopify. These two platforms have gained popularity in recent years due to their features and functionalities.
Magento is the best-known open-source eCommerce solution that is widely used by small and large businesses alike. Shopify, on the other hand, is lesser-known but has gained a lot of popularity in recent years.
However, the decision on which platform is better depends on the requirement of your business – whether you need a modern design or a rapid growth in sales volumes.
Magento V/s Shopify – Pros and Cons:
Magento is a free and open-source eCommerce platform that is used by many companies and organizations around the world. On the other hand, Shopify has a higher cost of entry but offers more in-depth features like multi-channel support.
If you want to establish your online presence quickly, Magento is a good option for you. If you need more power and extensive marketing tools, Shopify will suit you well.
Both platforms have their pros and cons when it comes to development in eCommerce platforms. For example, Magento will give you more control over how your website looks, while Shopify is an easier platform to develop on.
Magento Pros
- Excellent community support available for users.
- Flexibility is there along with several customisation options.
- Several amazing themes available to choose from.
- Mobile support available.
- No need for coding knowledge.
- Open source platform and free to use.
- Magento 2 extensions are also there.
Magento Cons
- Comes with a bit of a learning curve.
- Beginners may find it difficult.
- Takes a lot of time to set up properly.
- For setting up your store, you need to invest lots of costs.
Shopify Pros
- Several amazing responsive store themes available.
- Comprehensive e-commerce builder.
- Proves to be a great app store because of extending the website functionality.
- Customer support is quite good.
- Ease of use.
- Different payment and checkout options available.
- Large community available.
Shopify Cons
- For most things, you need to pay the price.
- The complex procedure of integrating apps to your restore.
- For every transaction, there are additional fees (unless you are using the Shopify payments option).
Magento or Shopify: Which to Choose?
Magento is a widely used eCommerce platform with over 70% market share. It is known to provide the best flexibility and customization options for any business. It also has a large developer community and a rich ecosystem of extensions and plugins. Shopify, on the other hand, has become more popular in recent times for its ease of use and mobile-friendly design.
Both Magento and Shopify have their own strengths that make them suitable for different development requirements. Here are some factors that define which one should be chosen:
Online Store Functionality
Both the Magento and Shopify platforms offer basic store functionalities to use and maintain continuously. As compared to Magento, Shopify is quite easy to set up and use.
Both the platforms offer a few basic features, including the product page, check out modules, and shopping carts. As compared to Shopify, the intermediate and advanced features are far more in the Magento system. On the other hand, with Shopify, you often need to get an application for extended functionality.
Inventory Management
Both Shopify and Magento plans provide you with the facility of creating and selling an unlimited number of products in your store. However, Shopify has direct integration to dropshipping inventory apps.
In Magento, if you add too many products to your store, then you may find issues with the site loading speed and performance of your server. And with Shopify, you do not need to worry about the same because it is a fully managed and hosted solution.
Shipping Charge Calculation
On both of the platforms, you get flexible and powerful options for calculating the shipping charge. In case you are willing to be as accurate as possible for your customers, then Shopify proves to be helpful as it integrates with some dropshipping tools and more exact shipping calculators.
Discount Codes and Coupon Provisions
If you have the Shopify Lite plan, then you will not get the coupon and discount code provision. However, this is available on all other Shopify plans. On the other hand, Magento allows the discount code creation and calculation functions from the initial stages.
Payment Gateway Options
Here, Shopify is on the advantageous side as it has the support for more than 70 payment gateways while Magento has a lower number of Gateway support. However, you can easily add more gateways with the help of third-party addons.
The major problem here with Shopify is that it somehow forces the user to choose the built-in gateways. The transaction fee is 0% at Shopify Gateway, while it makes you pay additional fees for third party gateways.
Themes and Templates
On both platforms, you get a large collection of themes and templates for your online store. You can choose anyone according to the taste and requirement of the products. Compared to Magento, the number of free themes available at Shopify is less. Also, it is important to note that the free Shopify themes are usually more contemporary as compared to the Magento open source themes.
On both of the platforms, you will get paid as well as premium themes. Here the major disadvantage is with Shopify as the starting price of the payment themes is $80 while the Magento paid themes starts at around $1. Both Shopify and Magento platforms offer a large number of responsive templates required for a responsive web design. The templates are both free as well as paid.
Apps and Addons
There are more than 100 apps and add ons available for Shopify. The Shopify app store is growing continuously with the apps for different factors like email marketing, accounting or loyalty programs. Also, the moderation of the Shopify App Store is quite good so that you do not download or install some apps that can damage your site. On the other hand, at Magento, there are more than 5000 apps and add ons. This is also because of the large open-source community-driven nature of the platform.
Multilingual Capabilities
At Shopify, you do not get direct multilingual capabilities. If you want to create a multilingual Store at Shopify, then you need to get third party or paid apps. Also, you can customize the code of your theme. For this, you need to find an expert Shopify developer. However, on the other hand, Magento comes with more built-in multi-lingual support.
SEO Capabilities
For helping you drive more organic traffic to your store through the search engines, both platforms provide extensive SEO features and benefits.
Customization Capabilities
On both of the platforms, you will get several customisation capabilities with the help of an advanced interface that allows you to edit the codes directly and provides you with total control over the design of your store.
Shopify provides a simple menu-driven method for changing the attributes of your store easily. On the other hand, Magento provides more benefits as all its code is open source so that you can easily modify it according to your requirement. However, this unrestricted freedom to customize the codes can only give an advantage to those who have coding knowledge.
At Shopify, you also get a theme editor so that you can easily customize your theme according to your requirement. Also it comes with the ability to hide the section so that you can easily work on the update without any duplicate key issues. Also, as compared to Magento, Shopify provides the drag and drop section facility to organise the content on the website and makes the design interface easier.
Blogging Functionality
At Shopify, you get the easy blogging functionality. You can also get this feature at Magento if you have a developer or have developing knowledge.
Pricing
Both Magento and Shopify platforms do not have any setup fees. At Shopify, you get an offer of 14 days free trial in which you can test and evaluate the functions and features of the eCommerce hosting platform. On the other hand, Magento is totally free to use.
The monthly fees at Shopify have been categorised into four different plans:
- Shopify Lite Plan: $9
- Basic Shopify Plan: $29
- Shopify Plan: $79
- Advanced Shopify Plan: $299
With Magento, you need to get your own hosting plan which usually costs around $5 to $100.
There are no bandwidth usage charges on Shopify plans. With Magento open-source, it depends upon the hosting provider you choose.
Shopify has no additional transaction fees if you use the Shopify Gateway. In case you use other Gateway methods, then the transaction fees will be applied as:
- Shopify Lite Plan ($9/mo.): 2%
- Basic Shopify Plan ($29/mo.): 2%
- Shopify Plan ($79/mo.): 1%
- Advanced Shopify Plan ($299/mo.): 0.5%
With Magento, other than the gateways providers fees, no additional transaction fees are charged.
On both the platforms, you get several different fees as well as paid themes starting at:
- Magento: $1
- Shopify: $80
Finally
Both Magento and Shopify are fairly powerful eCommerce platforms. Magento and Shopify are two eCommerce platforms used by over 3 million online stores. Shopify is often associated with white labels, while Magento is a full-fledged eCommerce platform with tons of features.
Both Magento and Shopify were created to provide an easy-to-use shop that would help online businesses grow and thrive. But they do differ in some ways, which makes the decision between these two platforms challenging – especially for beginners.
The above-given article has outlined the factors that you should consider before making your decision.
