Magento vs Shopify: Which Is The Best eCommerce Platform?

Selecting the most suitable and the best eCommerce platform for creating, managing, and maintaining an online store is a complex but essential task, as it can be the primary factor for the success or failure of your business.    

Nowadays, both Magento and Shopify are the most recommended and used eCommerce platforms. But if I talk about the best among Magento vs Shopify, it’s hard to say who will be wearing the crown. 

Let’s convert this hard term into simple by examining various features and factors related to Magento and Shopify, as this will ultimately help in knowing who’s head (Magento or Shopify) will carry the crown.            

So, let’s move further and begin the Shopify vs Magento war.  

Magento and Shopify Overview

Before talking about the Magento vs Shopify topic, I will first tell you essential things about Magento and Shopify.

Magento

Image Source: Javatpoint

Magento is one of the well-known open-source eCommerce platforms that renders retailers a content, shopping cart system, and other online store functionalities. This platform incorporates various tools related to robust marketing, catalogue management, and SEO.                       

The platform supports various themes and plugins, which mainly improve a customer’s experience. Magento allows you to create leading customized eCommerce websites. Additionally, it supports high-level features and provides an expandable architecture.

Pros

• Best and suitable for small to large level businesses
• Excellent user interface and unlimited customization possibilities
• Numerous apps accessible from third-party retailers

Cons

• Hosting alternative of Magento is expensive than other eCommerce platforms
• In the free version, you require to find the domain and hosting name
  

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Well, in order to make effective use of Magento, it will be beneficial to take expert help, even you can also hire Magento developers from one of the excellent Magento development companies. This will help you shorten the eCommerce software development cycle.

Shopify

Image Source: Habr

Shopify is the most famous cloud-based SaaS (software as a service) eCommerce platform. The platform proffers eCommerce solutions to ship, market, and handle your stocks.  

Employing Shopify service can get access to an admin panel where you can accomplish a number of tasks. The Shopify paid version enables access to the admin panel where you can add products, enter & save data, and process orders. 

Pros 

• Starting price for a small business size online store is low compared to other eCommerce platforms, which is $9/monthly
• Numbers of excellent eCommerce themes
• Includes an alternative option to selling on Facebook directly 
• Numbers of functionalities accessible such as designing, marketing, orders, shipping, etc.

Cons

• No FTP support
• Charges additional fees for non-Shopify payment gateways like PayPal
• A big challenge to move away from Shopify

Sometimes it’s quite difficult to resolve the issues occurring on the Shopify platform. Well, you are also facing the same? Avail of Shopify development service or hire Shopify developer. This will lead to resolving issues within no time and will support you in meeting your business goal in a shorter time. 

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Also Read: Shopify Analysis for eCommerce Business in 2021

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Magento vs Shopify: Why Magento and Shopify?

Image Source: Search Engine Journal

eCommerce software application market had an expected value of around $5.1 in 2018 and is projected to rise to approximately $6.3 billion by 2023. Worldwide retail eCommerce sales are predicted to reach $6.5 trillion by 2023; the e-commerce software market is expanding so rapidly.

Seeing the stats, I can say that in the upcoming time, the usage of various eCommerce platforms will also rise swiftly, but all you require is to pick the best to form leading eCommerce web development.

Let’s move further and know which one will best among Magento vs Shopify.

Numbers of Retailers using Magento and Shopify

Around 270,000 retailers prefer using Magento for their business, whereas around 100,000 retailers are currently using Shopify.

Numbers of Live websites

199,326 live websites using Magento and additionally 558,136 sites used Magento historically, whereas 1,389,995 live websites currently using Shopify and additionally 2,295,768 sites used Shopify historically.

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Brands using Shopify and Magento

Hp, Canon, Ford are the few popular organizations utilizing Magento. Penguin Books, Heinz, Bulletproof, DTH are popular organizations using Shopify.

Magento vs Shopify: Overall Rating

Shopify is one of the excellent platforms for small enterprises selling around 10 products, and the overall rating of this e-commerce platform is 4.7 out of 5. Well, if you are looking for help to make use of Shopify in online store development, then hiring Shopify programmers will be the best alternative. 

The overall rating of Magento is 4 out of 5 and is one of the foremost enterprise-level eCommerce platforms. Moreover, to make comprehensive use of Magento features and functionalities, you can hire a dedicated Magento developer from the best Magento development company in India (ValueCoders).

 

Viewing the stats, I can say that currently, in the Shopify vs Magento war, Shopify is leading. 

Magento vs Shopify: Factors To Help You In Choosing The Best eCommerce Platform

The features comparison of Magento and Shopify will help you analyze the Magento vs Shopify war result and eventually help you find the crown holder’s name. 

Ease Of Use

Shopify is much easier compared with Magento as it includes a drag-and-drop feature, which allows you to move elements while building the online store. Moreover, Magento’s learning curve is quite steep in comparison with Magento. 

Magento is more flexible, enabling you to customize your store using code, but overall it is quite trickier to use it, which ultimately makes it hard to use compared with Shopify.

Inventory Management

Shopify and Magneto both allow you to create and sell limitless products. Creating a product with these two platforms is quite simple but then to Shopify is more preferred because it allows direct integration to dropshipping inventory apps. Magento provides a virtually countless number of products, host (server) performance, and site loading pace might turn out to be a serious problem.

Including Coupons & Discounts Codes

Shopify free plan lacks this feature as if you will use the free version of Shopify; then you might not be able to add Coupons and Discounts codes in your online store, whereas using Magento features enables simple integration of coupons and discounts codes in online stores.

Payment Gateways

If I talk about the numbers of Payment Gateways, then in Shopify, 70 payment gateways are available, whereas Magento does not include so many payment gateways, but it allows you to integrate third-party payment alternatives. The main drawback of Shopify is that it pushes you to use in-built payment gateways in your online store. 

Themes and Templates

Several themes and templates are offered by both eCommerce platforms Shopify and Magento. But the open-source Shopify offers limited and basic themes and templates, whereas open-source Magento offers attractive themes and templates.

The great disadvantage of Shopify is that its premium themes start from $80, while Magento paid themes – start from $1, so unbelievable.

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Multilingual capabilities

Shopify directly does not offer full multilingual capabilities for forming multilingual stores, but using third-party/paid apps allows you to develop the same in a hassle-free manner. But if I talk about Magneto, then it supports built-in multilingual, which helps you directly form multilingual online stores without using third-party elements.  

SEO Capabilities

Both platforms proffer extensive SEO capabilities to help enterprises drive more organic traffic to online stores via search engines. The robust SEO tools available in these platforms help you perform multiple things like making your site SEO friendly, optimizing, and so on.

Customization options

Magento and Shopify platforms offer outstanding customization options that allow you to edit and rewrite the raw HTML/CSS code directly to provide you complete control over the eCommerce software development and design.

Pricing

If I talk about pricing, then Magento is more affordable than Shopify, but Magento requires full setup, whereas Shopify just requires the installation process to be initiated after that, it setups all the thing as per the entered details and picked options. 

Shopify Pricing:

• $29 USD/month
• $79 USD/month
• $299 USD/month

Image Source: Shopify 

Magneto Pricing: 

Unmanaged hosting price starts from $10 to $250 (monthly) 

Managed hosting price starts from $190 (monthly)

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Magento vs Shopify Comparison Table

The below-mentioned Magento vs Shopify comparison table will help you out in choosing the best between Magento and Shopify.

Key Dimensions	Magento	Shopify
Hosting	Externally hosted	Fully-hosted
Customization alternative	More customizable	Less customizable
Product Time	Supports 7 product types	Supports 2 product types
Product variants	Limitless  Product variations	100 Product variations
Payment Gateways	Less and limited	70 Payment gateways
Blog Functionalities	Via Plugins	Integrated
Scalability	Strong	Medium
Customization Flexibility	Strong	Medium
Themes and Templates	Large variety	Medium variety
Pricing	Affordable	High

 

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Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide To Launch eCommerce Business In 2021

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Ending Words 

Considering all these facts, I can say both eCommerce platforms Shopify and Magneto, are giving neck-to-neck competition, and that’s why it is really complex to say whose head deserves the golden crown. In a few cases like talking about pricing, themes & templates, customization, and more, Magento is leading the Shopify vs Magneto war. But if I talk about hosting, setup, management sort of things, then Shopify is winning Magento vs Shopify war.

So, simply I will say that both e-commerce platforms are best at their own place, and you can prefer any of the platforms based on your project requirements. If you are running a startup or SME business, then Magneto will be the best pick as its price is quite affordable than Shopify.

If you want to make adequate use of Magento and Shopify features, you can hire Magento developers and hire Shopify developers, respectively, from the top-rated eCommerce web app development company (ValueCoders)

ValueCoders is one of the reliable and best IT outsourcing companies since 2004 serving various industry verticals such as eCommerce, retail, banking & finance, healthcare, and more. The organization has already worked on a number of projects and successfully delivered around 4200+ projects globally. The development team of this company is proficient in handling small to large-level projects.