Magento vs. Shopify
At Pineapple Development, we work on Shopify and Magento sites. These two popular eCommerce solutions offer distinct advantages. Choosing the best eCommerce platform for your business depends on several factors, including how you intend to use it, how you intend to grow, and the level of customization or literacy your team has with eCommerce sites, to name a few.
What’s the difference between Magento and Shopify?
First, let’s explore what each of these eCommerce solutions does.
Both Shopify and Magento help create powerful online stores. Shopify is an easy-to-use platform loved by new and established businesses alike. Magento supports larger, enterprise-level companies as it is fully scalable, customizable but requires some coding knowledge or even its own development team, whether internal or outsourced.
When to choose Magento or Shopify for your eCommerce site.
Here are the factors to evaluate whether to choose Magento or Shopify to support your eCommerce platform.
Ease of Use
Shopify has a drag-and-drop feature that helps users set up their website by manipulating elements directly on a page. As such, it tends to be more user-friendly for beginners. Magento has more customization but requires coding knowledge and tends to be created exclusively by developers. It also requires extended developer support. Magento tends to have a much steeper learning curve than Shopify.
Another factor to consider is that Shopify offers its own hosting, while Magento doesn’t. Setting up hosting adds a layer of complexity for Magento users.
Popularity
Shopify and Magento represent two of the most popular eCommerce platforms available. While Magento has historically been more popular than Shopify, the two flipped and Shopify is now the fastest growing online store builder. Magento is still wildly popular, powering 1.2% of the Internet or 12% of all online stores.
Themes
Shopify offers many customizable themes. While some of them are free, the majority are paid. With paid options, Shopify allows users to change colors, add pages, resize elements and even link social media accounts. Both their paid and unpaid templates are optimized for mobile, so they will look good across all platforms.
Magento also offers themes. It has 16 themes in total, 10 of which are mobile responsive. They have both paid and unpaid versions. Magento offers much more customization as users can manipulate code on the backend of the website to implement their own themes and animations, including newsletter signup in the footer and add product sliders.
The right platform depends on how much a person wants to customize their site. Shopify offers more themes, while Magento offers more customization through coding.
User Experience
Traditionally, Shopify has been considered a more user-friendly platform, particularly with the amount of coding knowledge needed in Magento.
However, with the use of ready-made extensions and the introduction of Magento 2, many issues that users used to complain about have gone away. Users can now access an admin panel that helps with tasks such as managing payment processors and sorting customers.
Users of both platforms can now manage the backend of their eCommerce site without deep technical coding skills once it’s set up.
Performance
As mentioned, Shopify is a hosted platform so the company takes care of things like page loading time. Also, it has a built-in customer service offering so if an issue arises, there’s someone to call. Users without a strong technical background might find this much more convenient than troubleshooting on their own or hiring a developer like they might have to do with Magento.
Magento requires users to choose their own server. That leaves more up in the air when it comes to page loading times. In the past, users complained that Magento pages load very slowly. However, Magento 2 optimizes pages for faster delivery and minimizes server response times, taking care of a lot of performance issues.
Sales Tools
Ecommerce depends on having the right sales tools online. Here’s how Shopify and Magento stack up in terms of sales functionality.
Shopify:
- Abandoned cart recovery: send emails or install pop-ups to remind customers of what was in their cart.
- Sell digital products.
- Partnership with major shipping companies including USPS, DHL, and UPS.
- Multi-channel selling: sell on popular sites including Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Magento:
- Multi-channel selling: install extensions to sell on Facebook, eBay, and Instagram.
- Abandoned cart recovery: give users a friendly reminder to head back over to your store.
- Set discounts.
- Customize the checkout experience.
- Built-in features on the backend to help store owners bulk import products, review revenue reports and see total visitor counts.
Both tools have great sales features. Shopify has more free options than Magento, however, you can get similar functionality as long as you use Magento’s extensions (prices vary).
Marketing Tools
What’s an eCommerce site if no one can find it? Marketing tools are important for eCommerce sellers. Shopify allows users to run email campaigns through third-party integrations. It also allows users to advertise and sell on social media sites. Magento asks users to download extensions for marketing, including email marketing. Its possible users will need to hire developers to integrate custom marketing tools.
Shopify makes it easier than Magento to advertise to potential buyers because it allows users to advertise on social media and email as a built-in feature, rather than an extension or custom build.
Apps and Add-Ons
Both Shopify and Magento benefit from having added functionality from apps and add-ons. Whether adding Paypal or creating member-only functionality, apps and add ons can make an eCommerce site function better for users.
Both Shopify and Magento offer thousands of free and paid apps. While some require additional coding, most of them can be added with the click of a button.
Extensions and Integrations
From adding banners or social media buttons to integrating email marketing, extensions and integrations can take any eCommerce site to the next level.
Magento Marketplace has over 5,000 extensions compared with Shopify’s 1200 available apps. However, some of these extensions come with a significant price tag and if you’re stacking multiple apps, that can really add up. Another concern with Magento is that the open-source nature of the platform extends to some of its available apps and extensions meaning users may encounter bugs since they can be coded by anyone. Overall, Magento stands out on this functionality as compared with Shopify because much of the platform was built with extensions and add-ons in mind.
Payment Processor Options/Solutions
Shopify and Magento offer traditional means of payment like taking credit card payments online. They also integrate with familiar payment solutions like Paypal and Amazon Pay, with a fee.
Shopify has its own payment processor, Shopify Payments. This solution has zero fees. It also supports many other external payment processors.
Magento also supports all major payment processors (it has over 150 payment integration options.) Magento also supports payment options in a variety of languages and geographies so that payments can be made all over the world. In fact, it’s the preferred solution between the two for international selling.
Scalability
It’s important for any business owner to consider how their eCommerce site will grow over time. Both Shopify and Magento offer options for scaling, though they approach it slightly differently. With Shopify, you can scale up or down by simply choosing a higher or lower Shopify pricing plan to meet your needs. For those projecting large growth, Shopify offers an enterprise-level solution, called Shopify Plus.
Magento is designed to handle massive amounts of inventory. Magento 2 Commerce was built with rapid scalability in mind. It can handle exponential growth in a short amount of time. This is great for selling events such as Black Friday.
While both Shopify and Magento have the capacity to support a scaling business, Magento is built more specifically for larger eCommerce operations.
Security
Since eCommerce companies collect customer data and payment information, they have to safeguard against any security threats. In fact, fear of sharing sensitive personal data keeps users from buying from eCommerce sites.
Magento is as secure as your developers designed it to be. For simple things like SSL, Magento users are responsible for shouldering the upkeep. Magento will alert users of known security risks, but it is still up to them to address and remedy them.
Shopify includes SSL security on their hosted sites. It meets all six categories of PCI security standards.
SEO
Both Shopify and Magento have robust SEO capabilities. They rank equally on SEO functionality to help users drive organic traffic to their stores.
Multilingual capabilities
Shopify has specific multilingual capabilities in its sales and marketing functionality. You can market and sell to a variety of people from different language groups. Magento has specific international capabilities at the time of checkout. They are preferred for international selling.
Customization
Both programs offer robust customization. Shopify offers a drag-and-drop method of changing fonts, colors, text blocks, and even the entire look and feel of a theme. As an open-source platform, all of Magento’s code is changeable, however, it requires a deep understanding of web programming and serious coding chops.
Blogging functionality
Shopify has an integrated feature that enables blogging. Depending on your developer, your Magento blog can be much more customizable than what’s available with Shopify.
Community, Help, and Support
Open-source platforms tend to have a wide and active community of users and supporters. This is certainly true for Magento, where there’s never a shortage of knowledgeable Magento developers. As an Adobe product, it also comes with a huge community of developers willing to share information and resources for individuals looking to learn Magento or contribute to the community.
Shopify has a much more direct customer support model. It offers 24/7 support.
Pricing
Setup fees:
- Shopify offers a free, 14-day trial.
- Magento is completely free, however users need to pay for hosting. This can range from $5/month to $100s of dollars.
Monthly fees:
- Shopify has a four-tiered plan as follows
- Shopify lite: $9
- Basic Shopify: $29
- Shopify plan: $79
- Advanced Shopify Plan: $299
- Magento is free.
Transaction fees:
- Shopify doesn’t charge on their payment method. If using a different payment gateway, they charge as follows;
- Shopify lite ($9/mo): 2%
- Basic Shopify ($29/mo): 2%
- Shopify plan ($79/mo): 1%
- Advanced Shopify Plan ($299/mo) 0.5%
- Magento doesn’t charge a fee above what the payment provider charges.
Theme/template fees:
- Shopify offers paid themes and premiums for making changes to existing themes
- Magento offers more themes (paid and unpaid) than Shopify
Theme/template fees:
- Shopify has more built in functionality
- Magento relies more on extensions (ranging from $3 to $2000/per)
FAQs about Magento and Shopify
Which is better: Shopify or Magento?
The answer to this question comes down to what you are using the platform for, how large your eCommerce operation is currently, where you see it growing and what features are most important to you. Shopify is easier for beginners, while Magento tends to support larger eCommerce sites.
Is Magento the best eCommerce platform?
While Magento used to be more popular than Shopify, the tables have turned. Shopify has a larger market share, however, Magento still has a ton of desired functionality.
How much does Magento cost per month?
Magento is free. Users should consider other costs related to hosting, extensions, and hiring a developer to make the site functional.
Why is Magento so expensive?
Magento users have to pay for their own hosting fees. They also rely on a variety of extensions all with different costs depending on the functionality they need for their site.
What is better than Shopify?
Shopify is a great eCommerce platform. It’s one of the most popular, alongside WooCommerce, and Magento.
What is the best eCommerce platform?
The right eCommerce platform comes down to the business. Budget, size of eCommerce store, marketing functionality and comfortability with coding/the need for customization are all things to consider.
Which One is Right For You?
Between Shopify and Magento, which one is right for you? Contact us and we’ll conduct a research and discovery session to ensure that you select the right eCommerce Magento platform for your business.