Magento v/s Shopify – Which Is the Right Platform for You?

Magento and Shopify are two of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market today. Selecting the most suitable ecommerce platform for creating, managing and maintaining an online store is of critical importance, as it can be the factor responsible for either success or failure for your business. This is particularly important for small businesses since they have to make do with limited resources and budgets.

Shopify and Magento are leaders in the SaaS ecommerce space. Both are feature-rich, easy to use, and help businesses get up and running quickly. Businesses that are totally new to ecommerce may choose to start with Shopify stores, but more established businesses looking to grow often choose Magento for its extensibility and flexibility.

Here’s a short description of each.

Magento 2

Magento 1 was released in 2007 and then followed by the launch of Magento 2 in 2015.
Magento 2 has two editions, Magento Open Source, and Magento Commerce. The latter is available as either an on-premise or a cloud solution. In June 2018, Magento was acquired by Adobe for $1.68 billion.

Shopify

Shopify is a Canadian SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce platform that was founded in 2004.
The founders, Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinland, and Scott Lake, created the platform after they realized that the available eCommerce platforms at the time were not meeting their requirements. And that’s how Shopify was developed.

Which companies are using these platforms?
While Magento may have a bigger market share, both eCommerce solutions are being used by big brands:

Magento

•Nike
•Olympus
•Harvey Nichols
•Hermès
•Liverpool FC

Shopify

•The New York Times
•Rebecca Minkoff
•Herschel
•Heinz
•BBC

The basic difference between Shopify & Magento can be highlighted in a tabular form as below:

• Shopify is a commercial product (that you need to pay for) while Magento Open Source is a free, open-source software.

• Shopify is a hosted solution (where your store is hosted by them) while Magento requires that you provide your own hosting, install, setup and configure everything before you can actually start creating your store – something requiring medium to high level of web development and programming skills.

• Shopify is more for beginners, with a simple user interface, while Magento is packed with features but more suitable for advanced developers.

• For Magento, you have the options between Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce. The Open Source edition is free to download and install. On the other hand, with the Commerce edition, the costs depend on your business’s revenue, starting from $22,000 per year. While Shopify offers several packages – Basic Shopify, Shopify, Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus to suit start-ups, new businesses and large brands.

• When it comes to Inventory management, Magento users can control an unlimited number of items. The same thing is provided for Shopify stores except for those who are using the Basic Plan – only 25 items are allowed.

• When Shipping is concerned, both platforms offer flexible shipping methods and automate shipping fee calculation.

• Magento offers multiple languages as you can add as many languages as you want to Magento 2 store by easily installing language packs. For Shopify, you have to look for language apps.

• Blogging is available on Shopify and can be added to Magento by using a free or paid extension.

• Since Shopify is a hosted solution, thus its website performance is guaranteed by the company. Shopify websites in most cases have a stable and reliable performance. For Magento 2 websites, their website speed majorly depends on the selected hosting services.

Conclusion

There are no shortage of ecommerce platforms to choose from, but it’s no secret that Magento and Shopify are some of the biggest names in the business.
Hopefully Agilis World Inc.’s guide has helped you understand a few of their key differences and decide which might be the right fit for your business.