Magento vs Shopify – Which is the Best Platform for Your Store
Which factor do you consider is critical for your online business?
Indeed, there are many!!
But, the one that decides the success or failure of your business is the best eCommerce platform!!
Yes, the platform that creates, manages, and maintains your online store!!
eCommerce has several platforms in its pocket, but there are two that never fail to impress its customers are; Magento and Shopify.
Both of these eCommerce platforms are in the race to the best one. Being different in features, both are battling head to head. Anyhow, for your convenience, we have curated some of the fundamentals that you need to look after while choosing the one platform:
- Ease of use
- Load time
- Developer friendliness
- Presence of technical support
- Cost of the initial set up
- Mobile-readiness and Design flexibility
- Search Engine Optimization tools
- Cross-selling and Upselling
- Product options
- Robust Content Management System (CMS)
- Marketing automation
So, keeping the above points, you can choose the one that fits perfectly to your online business needs.
Astonishing Stats of Magento and Shopify
Shopify is one of the popular eCommerce platforms that has drawn competitiveness in the market, whereas Magento is demanded by a large number of competitors for a long time. When the release of a new version of Magento, it has become richer and is an ideal solution for all.
It attains almost 24.8% of the eCommerce market share whereas Shopify has only 9%. Magento is the leading platform for Search Engine Optimization with a 100/100 score.
Magento has 14% of the top million websites and Shopify has 6% of all online store websites. According to Google trends, the Magento online store has a higher search interest. Check out the below graph to make it more clear:
Basics of Shopify and Magento
Shopify is a simple and feasible eCommerce platform for those who want to create an online store. All you need to pay the monthly fee to leverage its features. This platform has the capability to support simple and complicated online websites.
Pros
- Easy to set up and beginner-friendly
- 24X7 Customer support
- Lighting speed load time
- Integration to other stores like Amazon is probable
Cons
- Bad reviews in Search Engine Optimization
- Transaction fee, charged per sale
- Cannot customize everything
On the other hand, Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform, similar to WordPress. It is a free and powerful platform. It is tough for the average person to understand Magento’s perspectives without knowing the coding skills.
Pros
- Fully-featured
- Strong Search Engine Optimization
- Valuable SEO features
- No design constraint
- Built-in 1-click selling
Cons
- Cost of hosting, extensions, and themes can add up and become costly
- Abrupt learning curve
- Slows down easily
- No-support virtually
Comprehensive Comparison- Magento vs Shopify?
1. Magento vs Shopify: A Feature Comparison
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Discount codes and Coupons
Shopify lacks here, it does not provide the feature on the Lite plan. However, it is accessible on other plans as well. Magento offers calculation functionalities and discount code creation from scratch.
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Fundamentals of the online store functionality
Magento and Shopify provide essential online store functionalities that are robust to use and to handle the daily operational activities. Both of these platforms offer you fundamental features, such as, product pages, collections, shopping carts, and checkout modules. The most important difference here is that Magento includes more advanced and intermediate features than Shopify. For extended functionality in Shopify, you need to have an app.
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Shipping charges calculation
Magento and Shopify, both have powerful and flexible options for shipping charges calculation. It is elementary and necessary for selling the goods and products from the eCommerce storefront. Shopify has some outstanding dropshipping tools via shipping estimates and more accurate shipping calculators. From the shipping charges, you can choose the platform whose shipping charges you find are more convenient for your online store.
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Inventory management
In the case of inventory management, both of these platforms do not fail to impress the businesses. Shopify plans enable the store to capture unlimited products; whereas Magento, allows you to develop and sell an infinite number of products.
The online store owners can easily make the products and collect on Magento and Shopify. As it is known that Magento allows a limitless number of products, so the website loading speed and server (host) performance has to be taken precariously. Same in the case of Shopify, even if it is a hosted and fully-managed solution.
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Payment Gateway Options
Both of these platforms are battling edge to edge with the best payment gateway options. Magento can be integrated into the store with third-party add-ons. Here, Shopify lacks behind- it forces users to use the built-in payment gateways. The payment gateways of Shopify include 0% of the transaction fee, but, even though, they enable the online stores to pay for the third-party gateways.
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Templates and Themes
The Magento and Shopify have the best collection of templates and themes for your online store to have the appearance that fits as per your brand objectives. Although, Shopify does have much of the free themes comparative to the Magento open-source platform.
Both of these platforms offer themes in paid and premium versions. Shopify hands down here- it’s premium theme starts at $80 whereas, Magento paid themes, starts at $1, unbelievable!!
Understanding the website requirements of today’s scenario. It is a must to have a responsive website design; responsiveness of the website is defined by its designs that fit perfectly in any device and the browser. Magento and Shopify, both provide several outstanding responsive themes and templates (free and paid).
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Multilingual Capabilities
To get your website accessible in many languages with Shopify, you have to get paid and third-party apps. The other thing that Shopify can get you is the custom code with which you can add the multi-lingual abilities to your eCommerce website.
But, for that, you need to hire a professional Shopify developer to do your tasks. Hence, you cannot make a fully multi-lingual store with Shopify directly. Again, Magento is at the upper hand. It completely offers built-in multi-lingual support.
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Add-ons and Apps
Shopify includes almost 100 add-ons and apps that expand and improve the online store functionality in many ways. The growth of the Shopify App store is constant and it includes, many features, like, email marketing, accounting, loyalty programs, etc. It even moderates its app store on a regular basis. Hence, there is no need to install some unnecessary apps that can damage your website.
Here, as well- Magento succeeds. It has extensive 5000+ add-ons and apps. It is because of the reason that it is a community-driven, open-source and large platform.
Both platforms have a mixture of free and paid add-ons and apps.
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Search Engine Optimization capabilities
These platforms provide a comprehensive list of search engine optimization abilities for your business to have more organic traffic. All this done from the search engines; compelling SEO benefits and features that make your website to be reachable to all search engines, like, google, bing, and yahoo.
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Customization abilities
Magento and Shopify provide powerful customization abilities from the user-friendly interface. It enables you to edit the raw CSS/HTML code to offer you the control on appearance and design of the store.
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Blogging functionality
Simple blogging functionality is accessible as an integrated feature on Shopify. It could also be achieved from Magento as well. For the developers, the Magento blogs are more customizable as compared to Shopify.
2. Magento vs Shopify- Coding
If we consider Coding, Shopify and Magento are very broad. Shopify includes the coding language, termed as Liquid, and Magento uses PHP. It is restrictive whereas Magento is open-source. It is significant because when it is about knowing the best platform, it understands what could be done.
The meaning of open-source is that the source code is free and the modification can be done easily, while it is not possible in proprietary code. Magento platform alters the template code to fit into some particular online store requirements, but, in the case of Shopify, it is not possible. It implies that Shopify is an easy solution for the simple stores, but is not perfect for the complicated and huge ones.
3. Magento vs Shopify – Search Engine Optimization
Most of all now prefer to purchase from online stores. It makes it significant to discover the online products and stores from Google and other significant search engines. Most of the eCommerce platform is, essentially better when it is about Search engine optimization (SEO).
From the study of search engine optimization scores of shopping cart platforms, Magento is leading than Shopify and other search engines.
The SEO features analyzed incorporate things, such as titles, page URLs, meta descriptions and headings, etc. From the analogous SEO scores, the SEO abilities of Magento and Shopify can offer you organic traffic to your eCommerce website.
4. Magento vs Shopify – The Cost
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Set-up fees
When it is about Setup fees, Shopify provides a 14-day free trial. Here, you can test and examine the features and functionalities provided by the eCommerce hosting platform. Magento, at the same time, is cost-effective. So, those who are looking to have an eCommerce website, can choose a Magento platform. Have a look at all the measures of Magento cost.
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Monthly fees
Shopify has four varied plans with the monthly fees ranges from $14 to $179 as shown below:
- Shopify Lite Plan: $9
- Basic Shopify Plan: $29
- Shopify Plan: $79
- Advanced Shopify Plan: $299
Whereas, in Magento, you have to get your own hosting, which is accessible at monthly cost; and it ranges from $5 to $100s.
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Transaction fees
In case you have used Shopify payment gateway, then you do not need to pay extra. But, if some other gateway method is used, like Cash on delivery, then, the structure of the transaction fee is as below:
- Shopify Lite Plan ($9/mo.) : 2%
- Basic Shopify Plan ($29/mo.): 2%
- Shopify Plan ($79/mo.): 1%
- Advanced Shopify Plan ($299/mo.): 0.5%
Magento is an Open source platform that does not charge any transaction fee, except the gateway providers’ fee. It varies from one gateway to another.
Magento vs Shopify: Design and Branding
Making an online store means you are creating an exceptional brand that the customers respect and recognize. The important part of branding lies is in its design.
Shopify and Magento provide free and premium themes. Almost every theme is responsive, which means, they are capable enough to work on every screen size. Certainly, a mobile-friendly store is critical because now, everyone uses smartphones to purchase.
As the Shopify themes are proprietary, hence, they do not demand more tweaking. Despite changing the font and color, the Shopify users cannot fully customize the themes and establish a viable solution for store branding. Magento2 upgrade has the drag and drop visual editing that enables the technicals and non-technicals to make an appealing website in less time.
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Magento Vs Shopify: Which is Best?
Choosing an ideal eCommerce platform depends on many aspects-your store size, what are you selling and which business model you are using. To be clear, no eCommerce platform is best. We have mentioned the major features of the Magento and Shopify eCommerce platform.
Now, you have to decide- which one is best for your business!! Both are great!! As of now, you might have a fair idea about which platform suits your online store!!
As per our recommendation, if you want to develop an eCommerce platform with more potential for customization, features, and scalability, then, Magento is the best one.
So, which platform do you think you will choose??
Share your opinions with us!!
If you have any queries and suggestions, then let us know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!!
