Choosing the right e-commerce platform is a challenge faced by any company planning to start selling online. Making the right decision is not easy, due to the many solutions available on the market. Which ones are worth paying special attention to? Among the most popular are Magento and Shopify. Each of them is unique and provides the user with many development opportunities. In our article, we would like to help you understand how each of these platforms can fit into your business expectations. Are you looking for unlimited development and scaling possibilities and also total control over your store? Then an open-source solution may be of interest to you. Or maybe you prefer a SaaS system that is easy to configure and use on a daily basis? Then Shopify is something just right for you. Let’s take a closer look at both of them.
What is Magento?
Magento (now known as Adobe Commerce) is one of the most technologically advanced e-commerce platforms available on the global market. It is an open-source solution. What are the benefits associated with it? First of all, a user who has a license for this software can modify the source code in any way he wishes. This creates almost unlimited possibilities to customize the store in terms of design and implementation with external ERP systems and also other analytical tools. The freedom of business customization makes Magento an optimal choice for large companies with unique needs.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a SaaS (Software as a Service) e-commerce platform. What does this mean? To start selling through this type of software, you don’t need programming knowledge. By purchasing a subscription, you get instant access to a database of templates and applications – ready to be installed in your store at any time. The number of available customization options varies depending on the subscription you have – but there are a lot of choices in each variant. By offering this approach to its customers, Shopify meets the needs of small and medium-sized businesses that want to get online quickly without incurring large platform implementation costs. What about solutions for big brands? With them in mind, Shopify Plus was created – a variant that allows global expansion and comprehensive B2B sales.
Magento advantages and disadvantages
Advantages:
Flexibility of customization: As an open-source solution, Magento gives you the ability to modify your store unlimitedly. How this could be possible? By having access to the engine’s source code, you can customize every element of your e-commerce in any way you want (as long as you have a team of developers to take care of the implementation).
Advanced tools: Magento’s Commerce and Commerce Cloud licenses provide you with advanced tools to support the management of products, promotions, marketing and data analysis, within access to a library of resources from Adobe – Experience Cloud.
Freedom of integration: By sharing its source code, Magento allows you to integrate your store with ERP, CRM and also marketing automation and external analytics – the type of tool is not a problem.
Disadvantages:
Expensive implementation and maintenance: Launching a store on Magento is a long and complex process, involving up to several months of development work. Depending on the complexity of the structure of the future store and the number of integrations needed with the platform, the total cost of implementation can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. The components of this sum are, first of all, the purchase of the appropriate license and the budget for programming work. What’s more, once the work is completed, cyclical manual updates are necessary to ensure the stability and security of the platform – so there is the ongoing cost of maintaining the service. Developing the store in the future will also involve more programming work – something to keep in mind when planning your budget.
Requires constant IT support: In order to take full advantage of Magento’s potential, it is necessary to have programming expertise and thus maintain a permanent development team or an agency that is specialized in this type of implementation.
Shopify – advantages and disadvantages
Advantages:
Easy to use: Shopify has a clear and intuitive interface that will allow you to quickly launch your store and easily make changes to its design. Which is a big advantage over Magento – you can do all these things yourself, without any programming expertise! In this way, you significantly reduce IT support costs.
Speed of implementation: Thanks to the sets of ready-made templates and plugins, launching a store on Shopify is a quick and simple process. Based on our project experience, we can say that it can take us about 2 months to create the right e-commerce for you. By comparison – you should spend a minimum of 6 months for a basic Magento implementation!
Technical support: Shopify provides 24/7 technical support for its users, additionally providing a wide selection of tutorials, webinars, articles and resources in the help center, thus giving you the necessary knowledge to use the platform effectively. With such a background, you can comfortably handle any situation.
Large selection of tools and applications: As a SaaS solution, Shopify offers a wide range of product and category management tools. Among other things, they allow you to: create new products in the store, adjust prices, or manage inventory. The Shopify App Store is a source of access to more than 13 000 apps, which makes it easy to enrich e-commerce with new functionalities such as loyalty programs or marketing automation tools. With a Plus subscription, you also get the ability to modify the checkout any way you want.
Disadvantages:
Limited customization options: Compared to Magento, Shopify offers fewer customization options due to the platform’s inability to tamper with its source code. Making changes to the look and function of the store is dependent on the solutions available within Shopify’s template library and application.
Limited scalability: Shopify automatically adjusts to the growth of store traffic and the increasing number of transactions. Despite less flexibility than Magento in terms of custom solutions, it still offers a solid foundation for growth for fast-growing stores. On the other hand – the speed and level of scaling offered by the platform may not be sufficient for large businesses with specific needs.
Magento vs Shopify – pricing
The Magento license is available in three base variants: Open Source, Commerce, and also Commerce Cloud (Adobe Commerce). In addition, you should be aware of hosting fees (for the cheapest version), SSL certificate and also commissions on transactions via Stripe or PayPal.
Open Source: This is a basic, free version of the software with a free license. Depending on the business requirements for the store, the cost of programming work, hosting and maintenance of the platform can be correspondingly high. It is also worth mentioning that in this version the user does not have access to Magento support (only to community resources) and also has to take care of the installation of an SSL certificate for his store on his own by implementing an external solution.
Commerce: the monthly cost of the license alone is $1988. On an annual basis, this gives an expense of $23,856! To this amount, you should still add programming and maintenance work. The total cost of implementing the platform thus depends on the size of the store, the number of applications needed to be installed and also the number of integrations with ERP systems.
Commerce Cloud: the price of an annual license for the broadest package of Magento solutions starts at $40,000 and is determined individually depending on the client’s business requirements for the platform. As with the other versions – the total cost of implementation depends on the complexity of the store and the amount of necessary programming work to be carried out.
Shopify offers customers pricing plans based on a subscription model. Depending on the plan selected, different sets of features and levels of technical support are available. Transaction commissions and possible additional fees resulting from the installation of templates, plug-ins and integration with third-party applications should also be included in the total cost of implementation.
Basic: $32 per month. Includes 10 supply locations, 3 markets for global sales, 24/7 suport and POS Lite solution.
Shopify: $92 per month. Includes all features from the Basic plan plus 5 additional accounts for employees.
Advanced: $399 per month. Includes all the features from the Shopify plan plus provides analytics and also 10 times checkout capacity.
Plus: is a solution dedicated to large e-commerce, enabling B2B sales, full checkout customization, global sales in 50 markets and unlimited employee accounts. The Shopify Payments service included in all plans at this time is unfortunately not yet available in Poland. Payment integrations with gateways such as Tpay, Przelewy24, PayPo or imoje are available for our country.
Platform security issues
Ensuring a sufficiently high level of security for customer data and transactions is a priority for any online store. Magento and Shopify are taking various measures to protect their platforms. What does this look like in practice?
Security issues in Magento
As an open-source platform, Magento puts full control over security in the hands of users. Responsibility for updates, security and protecting data from leakage rests on the shoulders of store owners. Regular updates to the software and application are essential to ensure effective store protection.
Security issues in Shopify
Shopify ensures security by taking care of automatic engine updates and performing regular backups. The platform is PCI DSS compliant, which means that it adheres to the security requirements for payment card data. As a result – you can be sure that your store is effectively protected against most threats lurking on the Internet.
Summary
The choice between Magento and Shopify should be preceded by a comprehensive analysis of business needs, technical resources and store management preferences. Magento is a good choice for companies with a large budget for the implementation and maintenance of the platform and with advanced technological requirements. Shopify, on the other hand, is a recommended solution for small and medium-sized businesses that need a simple, fast and inexpensive way to start selling online. Despite the simple implementation process and easy further operation of the platform, when planning the implementation of Shopify, it is worth using the services of an experienced e-commerce agency such as Brand Active, which will comprehensively support the entire process by recommending the best applications, ways to integrate data and customization options for the store template. Our experience has helped brands such as Nature Love, Bebe, and Adventure Sports create impressive and functional online stores.
