Magento and Shopify both platforms have the same core functionalities and features. They have enough similarities that make the choice harder for everyone. However, people keep finding which platform is best for eCommerce store development. Yet, the debate never ends! Both the platforms stand tall with their capabilities and make it harder for people to pick the perfect one.
If you are also stuck up with this confusion, let us help you understand the differences between Magento and Shopify. So you can get an insight into their features and choose the right platform for your eCommerce store development.
Before we start comparing features, let us gather important background information about them and understand them deeply.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is among the most preferred platform for eCommerce development solutions. It offers various tools and services that help merchants build eCommerce stores to sell their products online. These tools include themes, plugins, designing tools, site management tools, inventory management systems, comprehensive analytics, and other marketing tools too.
Shopify is a vast and diverse platform in terms of providing eCommerce development services. Shopify can handle a small online business, mid-sized eCommerce store, or big eCommerce website.
What is Magento?
Magento is an eCommerce solutions provider platform. It works as a sales channel and allows businesses to sell their products and services online via eCommerce stores. Like Shopify, Magento also provides various tools and features for online retailers. Its main features include inventory management, catalog, themes, product listing, designs, and customer management. The platform backs up eCommerce store owners to set up their eCommerce stores, sell the listed products and create a brand identity.
Shopify Vs Ease of Use, Who Is Best?
Shopify or Magento? Who is best? Honestly, it is a tough question to answer. Before answering, Let's compare them on different dimensions and parameters. Then you can decide which one is best for your eCommerce store. Let us start!
Ease of Use
| Shopify Ease of Use | Magento Ease of Use |
|---|---|
| Using Shopify is far easier than Magento. The platform is a one-stop shop for eCommerce website developers. | Magento is a dicey and hard-to-learn platform. It has a steep learning curve. |
| It offers a drag & drop website builder that allows you to adjust store sections and list products at your convenience. | While developing in Magento, you must use codes and interpret jargon to create the eCommerce store. It offers customization that enables you to decide the layout and product placement. |
| It has a wizard mode. So people with little development knowledge can use it to set up their eCommerce store. | It demands skilled developers. The platform is not ideal for novice developers or people without development knowledge. |
Final Verdict
Shopify is a better option if you consider it from the ease of use perspective. If you want customization and full command over the store, Magento should be your ideal choice.
Themes
| Shopify Themes | Magento Themes |
|---|---|
| Shopify offers cheap themes if compared to Magento. For designing, it has 10 free themes and 64 premium themes. Its price range is from $140 to $180. | Magento provides ready-made and custom themes. Readymade themes cost around $0 to $100. Custom themes come in between $600 to $25000. |
| Shopify themes are mobile responsive and offer customization. You can add new pages, change the color palette, replace or resize elements, and integrate the store with social media accounts. | Ready-made themes require no coding and customization, whereas custom themes demand the attention of professional developers. You can build them from the scratch. |
| It supports coding-free theme customization. | Magento themes have better features than Shopify. You can add animations, product sliders, newsletters in the footer, cross-selling blocks, etc. |
Final Verdict
Shopify has more number of cost-effective themes. Even the eCommerce web development company prefers Shopify over Magento.
Sales Tools
| Shopify Sales Tools | Magento Sales Tools |
|---|---|
| Shopify has in-built sales features that provide an opportunity to directly sell on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. | You will have to use extensions to enable multichannel selling on Magento. It has no in-built sales features. |
| Its built-in sales tools include abandoned cart recovery, multichannel selling, digital product sale, and partnership with courier services. | Magento also has an abandoned cart recovery and digital product sale, but it does not have any partnership with courier services. |
| Shopify does not support customization. You can only change the font, color, and pictures. | The platform offers complete customization. That means you can present your products whichever way you want. You are allowed to add or delete steps, payments method, shipping carriers, address forms, etc. |
Final Verdict
Magento is a hands-down winner, as full customization has direct positive impacts on sales. You should prefer Shopify if you have a limited budget for management.
Marketing Tools & SEO
| Shopify Marketing Tools & SEO | Magento Marketing Tools & SEO |
|---|---|
| Shopify allows its users to run email campaigns using third-party integration like Seguno, Constant Contact, Klaviyo, etc. It also enables you to promote your brand and products on social media. | For marketing, Magento relies on extensions and its marketplace. You will have to install extensions to access the marketing tools. |
| It supports multilingual sites that enable you to sell and launch your products in different languages. | Marketing in Magento requires the help of eCommerce website developers. Not anyone can understand its functionality. |
| Unlike Magento, Shopify depends on other apps for search engine optimization. It limits the usage to change the page title and image alt tags. | The platform provides premium SEO tools, guides, and prompts to teach SEO tricks. You can do major tasks like page title editing, URL customization, adding image alt text, etc. |
Final Verdict
Shopify would be our preference for marketing tools. But Magento takes the lead if SEO is more important for the eCommerce store development.
Price Point
| Shopify Price Point | Magento Price Point |
|---|---|
| Shopify has distributed its pricing structure in three plans. These are basic ($29/month with 2.9% + $0.30 per online transaction), Shopify ($79/month with 2.6% + $0.30 per online transaction), and Advanced Shopify ($299/month with 2.4% + $0.30 per online transaction). | Magento is free to use open source technology. However, you will have to pay for using its features, CMS, bandwidth, domain ($10 to $15), and hosting ($15 to $850 per month). |
| Fully hosted Shopify costs around $2000 per month. Whereas Shopify Lite only asks for $9 per month. It does not charge for hosting and offers a 14-day free trial as well. | It is beneficial to pay for what you need. You can switch between the plans at your convenience. |
| The platform supports more than 100 payment gateways like PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, etc. Shopify enforces extra payments for each transaction if you are not using the Shopify payment gateway. | Magento allows payment with 150 payment gateways. However, most of them are only within the reach of large businesses. However, it doesn’t charge anything per transaction. |
| Moreover, it doesn’t demand expert-level development skills. You can hire a mid-level freelancer or eCommerce development company in India for your development project. | You would need the help of an eCommerce web development company to handle Magento. Hiring a team for Magento the the development will demand more money compared to Shopify. |
Final Verdict
Shopify definitely costs less if you calculate the whole amount paid for eCommerce store development. It is a much cheaper option. Although if you want a bigger and better store, then invest in Magento. It is worth the price!
Help & Support
| Shopify Help & Support | Magento Help & Support |
|---|---|
| In terms of customer support & help, Shopify offers less than Magento. The categories don’t have expert-level guidance. | Magento functions as a user community platform. It has standard and detailed guides to take you through complex development strategies. |
Shopify support and help include-
|
Magento trains its users step by step while providing dedicated hosting support of SiteGround. |
Final Verdict
Magento is much better than Shopify in terms of guidance and support. Magento development community will teach you a lot more than you know.
How AIS Technolabs Can Help You in eCommerce Store Development?
We can help you with eCommerce development on Shopify and Magento platforms. We have an expert team and years-long experience handling these platforms' diversity. Over the years, AIS Technolabs has established itself as the best eCommerce development company in India.
In the market, we are known for serving premium quality at an affordable rate. Get in touch with our eCommerce websites development company team to know more about our services.
Conclusion
In the article, we have given you a brief on Shopify vs. Magento comparison. Now, let us give you the results.
You should choose Shopify if
- You want to start the store as soon as possible. Development in Shopify is fast and reliable.
- You have no experience running eCommerce stores or want to start it from the basics.
- You want to avoid complex payment structures or don’t have enough budget to back up your store with enough investment.
You should choose Magento if
- You have coding skills and experience handling complex development tasks.
- You want to build a huge eCommerce store and wish to target a global audience.
- You need customization and total control over the features and platform.
- You have a decent budget to invest in eCommerce store development.
Your choice between Shopify and Magento should depend on your requirements and vision for the store. Take things forward at your convenience.
