Difference Between Magento vs Shopify
In this article, Magento vs Shopify, Today, the number of online merchants are vast and expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the near future. Magento and Shopify are two prominent providers of e-commerce solutions. Though both have some similarities, note that they have some differences as well. Each is better or worse when compared to the other in certain areas. You need to carefully study and evaluate each solution to determine better, which fits your unique and specific needs. This may well determine the fate of your business venture. We compare the two e-commerce platforms below.
Head to Head Comparison Between Magento vs Shopify (Infographics)
Below are the top 23 comparisons between Magento vs Shopify:
Key Differences Between Magento vs Shopify
Let us discuss some key differences between Magento vs Shopify:
- Scope of Operation: Magento is more suited for international commerce targeting customers of different countries, languages, and currencies. Shopify is not as proficient in targeting and retaining a global audience.
- Future Proof: Shopify is not as good as Magento in anticipating and adapting to future business trends. As your business evolves and matures, you will find Magento is better equipped to handle the complex as well as the ever-changing marketplace.
- Integrations: Magento offers seamless and hassle-free integration with new extensions and plugins. It is not such a smooth affair when it comes to Shopify.
- Popularity: Magento is more popular than Shopify currently. Whether this scenario persists in the future remains to be seen.
- Coding: Magento employs PHP, while Shopify employs Liquid which is a coding language.
- Scalability: Magento scores over Shopify in terms of scalability. If you expect your business to grow significantly in the future, you are better off using Magento as an e-commerce solution for your online store.
- Frontend Offerings: Magento provides more frontend features as well as functionality than Shopify. These include order status modules, coupon codes, wish lists, and a number of other useful features.
- Admin Panel: Magento 2 offers a highly user-friendly admin panel which even new learners find easy to operate. Benchmarked against Shopify, admins in the Magento platform can accomplish tasks with ease. Examples include obtaining advanced reports, manage a multitude of payment processors, classify customers, and others. The end result is that the admins are empowered with more efficiency, which is especially advantageous to new enterprises.
- Better Checkout: Magento 2 checkout is faster as well as more user-friendly than that of Shopify. The former comes loaded with novel stuff such as automatic guest checkout, discount code box, and others. Shipping and payment data are segregated to avoid confusion. To your knowledge, the checkout process in Magento is more intuitive when benchmarked against that of Shopify.
- Superior Promotional Features: Magento inherently has more promotion functionality than Shopify. This includes important features such as promotional pricing, flexible couple and others.
Comparison Table of Magento vs Shopify
The table below summarizes the comparisons between Magento vs Shopify:
| Magento | Shopify |
| The community edition is free to use. | It comes at a modest but significant cost. |
| It is open-source, which means that you can access as well as change the source code. | It is proprietary. You do not have permission to access or change the source code. |
| It does not offer a domain name. | Offers domain name. |
| Easy to migrate domain names to other solutions providers. | Inconvenient to migrate domain names to other solutions providers. |
| More suitable for large enterprises. | More suitable for small enterprises. |
| Some technical knowledge is required to set up a Magento powered e-commerce website. | A non-technical person with no technical knowledge can easily set up a Shopify powered e-commerce website. |
| It takes some time to launch your online business because of a steep learning curve. | It takes relatively very little time to start marketing and selling products to customers. In other words, you can have your online store up and running in minutes. |
| You have to find a different hosting provider for your website. | Shopify hosts your site. |
| You have control over hosting. | You have no control over hosting. |
| You can change the hosting provider whenever you want. | You cannot change to any other hosting provider. |
| There is a large Magento community that can help you. | There is no significant Shopify community existing to which you can turn to help. |
| More flexible and customizable. | Less flexible and customizable. |
| Lacks its own payment gateway. | It has a proprietary payment gateway that you can use at no additional cost. |
| Difficult to use. | Simple to use. |
| No free trial period to determine whether Magento is suitable for your unique as well as specific needs. | 14 day free trial period to find out whether Shopify is the ideal e-commerce solution. |
| You have control over the security of your e-commerce website. | You have to rely on Shopify for the security of your online store. |
| Offers no support. | Has 24/7 phone support, live chat as well as email support. |
| Has a comparatively greater number of free themes for your Magento-powered website. | Only 10 of Shopify themes are offered free of cost. |
| You may require to hire and pay a developer to work on or change your e-commerce site. | Even a novice can make changes. There is no cost, time, and effort incurred on hiring an external developer. |
| The cost of extensions and integrating them into the website may make it expensive. | It doesn’t cost much to buy apps for the Shopify powered online store. |
| Lags behind the variety of themes when benchmarked against Shopify. | It offers a much wider range of themes that make your online store look professional and authentic. |
| It has much more sophisticated features and functionality making it ideal for ambitious and/or large businesses. | It May is not be suitable if you are a large entity or looking for quick growth. |
| The online store has to be regularly optimized for the sake of speed and performance. | No such requirement as Shopify manages speed and performance. Usually, users will get decent as well as competitive speed and performance, which pulls in customers and earns their loyalty. |
Conclusion
To make sure that you make the right choice, obtain feedback from people who have actually used Magento and/or Shopify for their respective online stores. It is advised that you put down your requirements on paper and shortlist the platform, which is the best fit. You may also consider using LitExtension to help migrate your store from Magento to Shopify or vice versa, should your top choice change in the future. After trial and error, you are bound to find which one of the two best satisfies your unique and specific requirements. A pearl of wisdom – don’t take only your current requirements into account. Keep an eye on the future too.
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