Magento 2 Commerce vs Shopify Plus

Electronic commerce, popularly known as eCommerce, is flourishing to achieve new heights with the development of numerous platforms providing the former services. There are a large number of online eCommerce mediums that simplifies the day-to-day selling aspects and data exchange. 

Selection becomes quite tricky with more choices. But, choosing the best online store platform is quite necessary. So, this sets the stage for a successful, or unstoppable, eCommerce business.

There are many choices for new businesses or existing ones not satisfied with their current platform. Two of the biggest names are Magento and Shopify; other than these, we have VTEX, Shopware, Elastic Path, CommerceLayer, etc.

But, these two platforms often compete for head to head in the race for the outstanding eCommerce platform, although they are entirely different. These two are the mainstream channels that have a significant B2B business audience and thus beat all the others in providing top-class facilities.

Although both platforms provide a wide range of features and functionalities that enhance the store performance and increase your sales, there are essential differences among these platforms. RavStack’s experts are highly skilled and trained to provide you with the detailed differences between Magento and Shopify.

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Magento 2 Commerce vs. Shopify Plus – An overview

Magento has reached up to be one of the biggest and the most robust platforms for the eCommerce website. Magento has also put a foot forward in the retail enterprise, and from big traders to small shopkeepers, all are striving to have their website made with Magento as the platform. 

Some researches show that Magento has increased the turnover of the businesses by an average of 35%, which is considered a big fortune to the companies.

If, on one side, Magento is hovering over the market as the conquering eagle, Shopify, on the other hand, is strengthening its base to give a sweet competition to the mighty Magento. 

Many big business success stories have related themselves with Shopify plus and have expressed its gratitude for the increase in their businesses. Many mid-market B2C companies have moved forward with the help of Shopify Plus.

If we talk about why people are likely to leave Magento behind for Shopify, there could be many reasons for the same. Shopify provides a fully hosted SaaS platform with an extensive global system and unchallenged agility when it comes to new functionality. 

The proposition of Shopify is more relatable to small and straightforward retailers. This helps them connect to Shopify better and choose that instead of Magento. 

It has a general merchant-first approach and low-cost services that attract all the lookers. Although the functionality of offers is limited to an absolute scale, by the way it connects with B2C retailers is taking it forward in a long game.

Shopify is doing wonders if it comes to customer retaining. It has only been a couple of years since its launch, and it has taken a lot of business from Magento. 

It attracts customers with various deals and never disappoints them. It has been observed that whoever people have moved to Shopify has nothing to complain about. 

Hence, we can say that in these few months, Shopify has understood the market and has also created a loyalty pool for future fortunes.

In recent times, Shopify has been ascending the market with the Headless Shopify trend. And with such projects, it has earned the cheques from the companies like Clare and Victoria Beckham Beauty. 

Using the headless tool of Shopify is filled with both roses and thorns. But yes, it does provide you freedom around URL structure, better page load speed, and even the right amount of control over front-end development.

Although Shopify has low-cost plans and Magento has an open-source version, they still stay forward with their premium versions, which are at an excellent price. 

Magento licensing starts at around $30 per month and can increase up to $2000 per month. So, you can imagine how costly it is to avail the best services in the town. 

The average licensing fee for the clients we work with is between $50k to $100k per year as compared to $24k to $36k for the Shopify platforms.

Talking about the security of your information, Magento Commerce takes responsibility for the protection of servers. On the other hand, Shopify integrates the SSL technology to ensure that all the content added to the site is extremely safe. 

Also, Shopify doesn’t just incorporate SSL on the payments page, but it also integrates it to the whole site to take care of every loophole.

The agility of SaaS is driving the people more towards Shopify. Seeing this situation, it would be good to know what Magento would do in the future. 

Also, it has been said that Magento is continuously upgrading itself to stay ahead of the line. Also, it can be believed that Magento wants to attract the upper class of business, while Shopify sets the sail of small companies.

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Basic comparison

Magento has long held the position of being the most trending eCommerce platform, getting 29.1% of the total market share in March 2016. 

It is the leading eCommerce platform in the B2B space and has a vast retailer audience. Magento is leaving no stone unturned, and following this path, they are growing in the real enterprise business, which is the most flourishing business of the present era. 

Magento is leading in the aspect of the number of top IR1000 merchants, which is another feather in the cap. Some of the well-established brands using Magento are Paul Smith, Nobel Biocare, Agent Provocateur, Screwfix, Hermes, Harvey Nichols, Fred Perry, Missguided, Bulk Powders, Fraser Hart, Nike (AU), Pretty Little Thing, and many more.

But after the launch of Shopify Plus in 2014, a lot of renowned brands started jumping ship.

Shopify is another leading eCommerce channel but has a smaller retailer audience compared to Magento. But with its excellent facilities, it is expanding with its recent launches incorporating Missoma, Protein World, APC, Color Pop, Staples Canada, JB Hifi, Decathlon US, and brands like Fashion Nova and Kylie Cosmetics. 

These launched stores estimate a turnover of more than $1bn per year online. Not to forget, Magento, during the initial years, helped Shopify to spread its success branches with many mid-market B2C brands. 

Having played around for just three years, Shopify Plus has grown quite a lot and acquired customers from Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP, which is nothing less than a huge victory.

Shopify shares a different proposition as that of Magento. By saying this, we refer to the hosting services provided by the two. Shopify masters in facilitating the fully-hosted SaaS platform, and on the other hand, Magento is either a PaaS platform or a self-hosted platform. Therefore, the agility of Shopify is driving a broad audience towards it.

Since Magento announced that their previous sites would stop receiving updates in 2020, the competition between Magento and Shopify Plus has become more intense than ever.

• Ease of use

When choosing your eCommerce platform, ease of use should be the priority. It is the fact that after all, you always want to get up and run your eCommerce site smoothly and efficiently. Both Magento and Shopify come with a well-designed and friendly interface.

• License cost

Magento Commerce licensing begins from around $22k annually. It increases based on the merchant’s turnover and several other aspects. In contrast, Shopify Plus is a flat $2,000 per month (Up to ~$800k per month GMV) and raises from there.

• Popularity

Magento is the most popular eCommerce platform, claiming around 14% of the top million websites versus 6% for Shopify. Magento also has more overall popularity, according to Google Trends:

Magento includes some big names like Rosetta Stone, Nike, Olympus, and Ghirardelli. In contrast, Shopify has Tesla and the Los Angeles Lakers’ Store. Both store platforms boast successful organizations.

• Coding

In terms of coding, Magento and Shopify vary entirely. Magento utilizes PHP, while Shopify uses a programming language called Liquid. 

Magento is open-source, while Shopify Plus is proprietary. The coding factor is essential when it comes to deciding on the perfect platform because it is the core beginning of any platform.

• Speed

A speedy online store equates to a more growing one. In the past, many consumers described Magento as incredibly slow as a comparison with Shopify Plus.

With the invention of Magento 2, it’s not as clear which platform works faster. Magento 2 sites perform an average of 20% faster than Magento 1, in some cases up to 56% faster.

• Security comparison

Shopify has SSL encryption and Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, which makes your site automatically protected. 

Magento provides flexibility to improve website security yourself. Although Magento’s security is robust and tight, you are required to take a more hands-on approach to follow PCI compliance. For these reasons, Magento is more secure than Shopify.

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Comparison of pricing in more detail

As discussed before, Magento has its license fee at a slightly higher cost than that of Shopify Plus. The license fee of Magento starts from about $30k per month. And still, some companies are ready to spend millions on Magento, for it brings a boatload of benefits. 

For starters, Magento uses brackets, but they tend to stay varied on a case to case basis and also differ in the cloud edition. 

The pricing tends to vary on several factors. It can change based on the type of business, several employees, the extent of work, and many more. 

After considering the internal factors for costing, there comes the integration of partner costs. Integrating all the prices, we have seen Magento working at $100k, and we have seen the Magento going as high as $6m. 

This is the time when high CAPEX costs tend to come. Build costs may vary mainly based on agencies/partners and the complexities you are looking for in the business. 

Magento can also offer the add-on apps, the costs of which are not included in the total bills. So, you have to pay even more for those. 

You might be finding yourself getting an app built for yourself out of the following types –

• Content management/page building
• Yotpo for reviews
• Customer fields for a customer in accounts
• Avalara for taxes
• Excelcify to support data migration
• Automatic account invites and bulk account invite for account activation
• Elevar or LittleData app to support GA/GTM setup
• Zendesk for CS/live chat
• Transporter for redirects
• Wishlist (either iWishlist or Wishlist)
• DataFeedWatch for data feeds
• ShipperHQ for shipping management
• One of the meta fields editing apps for managing meta fields
• Product recommendations (usually NOSTO)
• BoostCommerce for improved filtering (without replacing the Shopify product grid pre-filter)
• A third party search solution (usually Klevu)
• Loyalty Lion, Smile or Swell for loyalty

This is just an average number of functionality I have shared. There are a lot more out there which you might be finding yourself asking for. 

When you are paying for Magento’s license cost, that would be the only time you’d be contacting Magento directly with Magento. Rest all the time; you’d be dealing with the consulting groups or the integrating partners. 

The real cost of Magento lies with the system integrators who tend to charge a high fee compared to Shopify. The average rate of integrators and consultants range from $100 – $250 per hour.

On the other hand, the costs included in Shopify tend to be less than those of Magento projects. This is because it takes a less variety of work in hand and has a less complicated structure. 

An excellent Shopify integration can be bought at a decent price ranging between $50k – $100k. There have been some large projects which took the amounts of around $250k from the pockets of the merchant. 

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Shopify Plus pricing overview

• An average website can be built with expenses ranging from $60,000 to $250,000.
• Annual licensing costs have been at the level of around $24,000
• BAU development costs have been around $36,000 – $60,000
• Average app costs – $500 per month
• Shopify plus costs of ownership for three years: $252,000 – $514,000

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Magento Commerce pricing overview

• Average build costs: $100,000 – $500,000
• Average annual hosting fee: $24,000 – $48,000
• Estimated annual Magento maintenance retainer: $24,000 – $72,000
• Average annual licensing cost: $80,000
• BAU development costs: $36,000 – $120,000
• Cost of ownership for three years: $592,000 – $1,460,000

To sum up, we can say that Shopify is a low-cost option for Magento Commerce. Although, yes, Magento is far more scalable than Shopify. 

From the business point of view, the small retailers or the straightforward merchants can go for Shopify; however, those who see the larger picture and are ready to invest more money should go for Magento.

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Magento vs. Shopify Plus – Core and native functionality

If one gets to have experience of the back-end of both Magento and Shopify, one would realize a great difference between both, keeping Magento at the golden pedestal. 

However, the back-end of Shopify is comprehensive and is perfect for the starter or mid-market merchants. There have been various phases in which Magento aces all. Some of these phases are:

• Promotions/Discounts

Magento has a pre-made promotion engine, which sadly is criticized by the users and is always extended by some customizations and extensions. 

It is comprehensive and supports a lot of discounts and promotions. Magento allows two types of promotions, which are catalog price rules and cart price rules.

Shopify, on the other hand, does not support advanced promotions natively. People go for several extensions to take care of that part. The big retailers will face the issues as you’d need to make the right amount of customizations, which are both times consuming and struggling. 

• Merchandising and production

If you have more significant business and a vast catalog, you are likely to go for Magento. This is because things like bundled products, grouped products, and certain other similar things require significant scale customizations which are easily possible with Magento Commerce. 

Magento, unlike Shopify, natively supports bundles and allows for more customizations around handling such things.

Shopify also lacks the concept of product attributes. These can be helpful while forming an eCommerce website, but they are not as much elaborated as they are in Magento. 

Generally, it is not a disadvantage on the part of Shopify; it just increases the complexities for the big retailers who have an intricate pattern of operation. 

Magento commerce bears seven standards, native product types. These are:

• Simple products
• Gift cards
• Configurable products
• Grouped products
• Bundled products
• Virtual products
• Downloadable products

Shopify has just one type of product which can be customized and replicated for a different kind of usage. Variants, on the brighter side, are supported throughout Shopify and they natively also allow SKUs and other various options. 

Shopify also has an option of gift card integration along with an API for broad usage. But Magento allows the extension of gift cards for really complex requirements, which again takes Magento on the upper hand.

Shopify, on the one hand, grants easy management of the product catalog and is often taken to be perfect for a simple product catalog selling simple products. 

There are many ways by which product functionality can be extended on Shopify, such as

• Using separate products to reduce the chance of variant limits
• Using the product in place of variants to get more custom data points
• Take the usage of PIM to manage the product complexity outside of Shopify.
• Using tags to activate custom logic from custom apps
• Using meta fields to store different types of data

It is worth mentioning that Shopify has over 1 million products of various categories in its stack. Not to forget, Magento has more reliable and innovative tools and extensions that are compatible with the complex functions of big merchants.

Magento has a better native offering to provide more robust customizations with decent extensibility. But, with Shopify, you are at the mercy of custom apps. 

With the years of experience, we have felt that if you go with Shopify and some problems occur, it would be a bit difficult to locate the problem and address it. 

But yes, there is a sphere where Shopify goes ahead of Magento. Shopify has a good hold over CSV import/export. On this subject, we have come to know that most of the Magento users either stay clear of the import/export or use the third-party integrations for the same, which hence proves the above statement. 

A vast number of Magento users go with the app called Excelcify to make imports and exports quicker and more comfortable. 

Many things and functions are comparable, but still, in the majority of cases, Shopify takes the back seat. Visual merchandising is not so advanced in either of the platforms, and both follow the conventional drag-and-drop for designing and feature integration.

• Multi-store management

Now, the businesses have grown out of the geographical bounds and have stirred more than one category. For companies like this, Magento is the best software for it that supports multiple stores. 

Another benefit it shares is that the product catalog can be shared with different websites. This can be applied to all the levels of businesses operating through Magento.

Few examples of big firms taking advantage of this feature of Magento are Warner Music, Nestle, Helly Hansen, and many others.

If we talk about Shopify Plus, it does not offer multiple stores. This is by far the biggest reason why merchants choose Magento over Shopify. 

Even if they do not have various stores, there are always the chances of having some in the future. They do not want to block the option by going after Shopify Plus.

However, Shopify has worked to overcome this barrier. It has been cited that a new version of Shopify Plus shall be released soon this year but how far would it be successful, one never knows. And the sources of this news too are not trustworthy.

We have some people managing multiple stores on Shopify in a different way. See how they do that.

• By using a PIM for product data management of the platform.
• Managing the workflows of theme changes across various stores.
• By syncing the data across different stores.
• By using the apps supporting multiple stores (e.g., NOSTO, Shogun)

 

• Internationalization

Magento has developed itself to be an international platform that is compatible with cross-cultural diversity. Shopify, too, can work like that, but due to the limitation of automation, most of the work would be manual, which would again prove to be the weakness for Shopify users.

If you are handling multiple stores, then it is quite apparent that you’d be needing separate languages, currencies, local rules, etc. 

If you are following various stores on Shopify Plus, you might need to have some add-on apps or iPaaS to handle all this. But if you have Magento, you need to worry about nothing. 

Through this, it is straightforward to manage the currencies, the prices, and other diversified subjects.

• Merchandising

Another useful feature of Magento 2 is its visual merchandising feature, which is based on the initial OnTap Visual Merchandiser extension, allowing merchants to sort the products visually according to various categories. 

This solution is similar to what is offered on Shopify Plus, but it is not that great and lags far behind independent visual merchandising apps like Workarea. 

Shopify also gives you the option of choosing a base sorting order, in either manual way or a set order. But, despite that, lots of merchants still go for the third-party solutions in this area. They use apps like Attraqt or Bloomreach for this purpose. 

• Mobile, Headless and PWA

Nowadays, it has become quite common to make the stores as PWA. Magento and Shopify haven’t taken the back seat in this. They are also encouraging their merchants to shift themselves to PWA, for it has more significant scope and larger aperture for business. 

Initially, several third-party applications were working for the development of the PWA framework. But with the new version of Magento, came its own PWA studio, which has taken the command in its hands and has become the first preference. 

Currently, Magento is open for headless constructs, but sadly, they do not have the full coverage of API like a lot of their competitors. Some of the examples of headless Magento sites are:

• Oliver Bonas
• Topps Tiles
• Me+Em

Headless Shopify, on the other hand, has become quite common, although their storefront isn’t a full headless approach. 

This is acceptable as it has a decent checkout, but the main limitation being faced here is the loss of apps due to not having the required API.

Examples of Headless Shopify apps are –

• Koala
• Victoria Beckham Beauty
• Staples Canada

 

• Third-party integrations

Magento 2 Commerce and Shopify Plus, both have a good ecosystem when it comes to the integration with various third-party applications. 

These integrations not just provide the add-ons but also act as the enhancements in the current system of excellency. 

Magento, on the one hand, is an open platform that is often self-hosted, and clients are given a free end over customization of any part of the extension. But on the other hand, Shopify Plus is a bit more restrained and has limited API access.

Two of the most significant benefits both the platforms offer are the integrations available for either of the systems which support a vast scope of expansion. Being two of the biggest market steerers, they have a famous third party integration warehouse.

• Wholesale capabilities

One of the most significant selling points for Magento Commerce is that it offers advanced native support for B2B merchants. Except for B2B, it provides a wide variety of services for the customer base. 

Shopify has been developing itself in the market of Wholesale B2B Commerce and has shaken hands with good market dwellers. 

This is likely to go forward and grow in the coming years. But currently, they stand nowhere near the Magento B2B Suite.

• Platform support

Both platforms support a decent support service. While Shopify offers support service over the phone, email, or live chat, Magento has purely virtual support, for which it is not that much proud.

One of the better things about Shopify is that the support they provide eventually reduces the on-going costs with the agency. Merchants get a dedicated 24/7 account management function, handling both technical and general issues.

• Control, flexibility, and extensibility

Magento is an on-premise eCommerce Platform with a more excellent range of APIs across the platform supporting both front-end and back-end. But it can bring a more significant impact on the control, flexibility, extensibility, and the cost of the platform.

As discussed before, Shopify gives limited access to the users, and hence they do not have to worry about the security of the platform for Shopify to take the care itself. However, it also means that the users do not have control over the great extents.

When it comes to the integrators, Shopify needs not to worry for the same as they are far less reliant on the third party. But when it comes to Magento, there needs to be a stringent vigilance to check the codes and make sure that everything is in sync with Magento. 

On one side, it indeed merits on the side of Magento as it ensures the proper quality.

Magento is suited for more complex sites and is regularly chosen as a solution against the SaaS platform. 

There are many examples in which Magento provided the B2B solutions for big complex companies and streamlined their tasks. 

• Payments

Magento Commerce has a lot of hosts integrating with itself to execute the payments. The payment hostings brought by Magento are highly competitive and reduce the overheads with the integrations.

When it comes to Shopify, it has its Payment integration. But yes, it can be a bit frustrating too. 

A merchant needs to have a registered business, and a local bank accounts for the place they are hosting. They also do not support several countries at present, like France. 

Another limitation on the part of Shopify is that if you are using third-party integrations for the same, you can experience an inferior checkout procedure. So, yes, again in this field, Magento takes the front seat.

• SEO

When it comes to Magento, it is far more flexible and agile as compared to Shopify around Search Engine Optimization and other customizations.

On the other hand, Shopify doesn’t even allow the amendments of the robot.txt file and the URI’s, whereas there are no restrictions on the part of Magento.

• Reporting

In this context, Magento takes a back seat as Magento from the start has been a bad player when it comes to reporting. It uses the conventional method of reporting even when it comes to third party reports.

Shopify, on the other hand, has a good command over reportings. It uses graphical representation and interactive graphics to share the reports. 

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Quick comparison

Category	Shopify Plus	Magento Commerce
Hosting	Fully hosted	Externally hosted
Account support	24×7 support	Open-source without management
Development scope	Suitable for minor front-end development	A broad scope of development work
Product types	2 product types supported	7 product types supported
Best for	High-growth enterprise retailers with fewer development needs	Large scale stores and product catalogs
Product variants	100 Product variations	Unlimited product variations

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Feature comparison b/w Magento and Shopify Plus

• Multi-store support

As of now, Shopify Plus lacks in providing the native support for multi-store, whereas multi-store support is the strength of Magento as their platform successfully manages data at different levels. 

Shopify Plus is not lagging as much as it is coming up with the PIM solutions supporting both multi-brand and international stores.

• Product attribute management

Shopify is not as advanced as Magento in the product attribute management. Magento supports the product attribute management that allows the control of different types of data and attributes at various levels. 

However, Shopify Plus does not make the use of product attributes and uses meta fields and tags instead.

• Visual merchandising

Magento supports visual merchandising but not for global weightings or complex sortings, whereas Shopify supports no such feature. Shopify allows only some basic features like drag and drop.

• Search Engine Optimization

Magento is far more flexible as compared to Shopify around SEO and customization. Shopify doesn’t allow the amendment of robot.txt file and the URl’s, whereas there are no such restrictions in Magento.

• Content management

Shopify remains very basic in content management, whereas Magento has advanced solutions for content management, which are currently not present. Shopify Plus follows a very modularised pattern in managing the content.

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So, Shopify vs. Magento. What is better?

After a quick differentiation between Magento 2 and Shopify, it is clear that Shopify is the best option for small and straightforward stores, which will be provided with ease in the configuration of their website. 

On the other hand, Magento 2 can take functional responsibility for enterprise businesses with unlimited features.

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Hire our experienced Shopify and Magento developers

If you want to bring fortune to your business through Shopify Plus and Magento 2, contact MagnoStack now. 

We have a team of highly skilled and experienced professionals who have earned the praises across the globe. Contact us and let us help you explore the untapped potential of your brand.

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Frequently asked questions

• Which is better, Shopify, or Magento?

Shopify is the best to resolve hosting problems. All hosting costs are included within the monthly plan with no extra effort or cost required from the consumer.

• Why is Magento best for eCommerce?

Magento is a flexible and secure platform for eCommerce sites. It is one of the best platforms in terms of security, features, and support.

• Is Shopify an excellent place to sell?

Yes, of course. Shopify is the best for those planning to develop an online selling platform and the first choice for those who want to use one product to sell.

• What are the advantages of Shopify plus?

1. Security
2. Bandwidth
3. SaaS platform
4. Payments
5. Multichannel sales
6. Custom Fulfillment
7. Customization
8. Reports