Choosing the right e-commerce platform for building, operating, and sustaining an online store is very important, as it can be responsible for either success or loss of your business. It is especially important for small companies since they have to manage with limited budgets and resources.
There are various e-commerce platforms, but none of them are more famous than Magento and Shopify. Shopify is an effortless and easy-to-use solution for creating online stores. It charges for monthly subscriptions, and it can support both beginners and big businesses. Magento is the primary player for giant, more complex e-commerce sites. They are very different platforms, but this article will guide you to pick the right platform for your business. let’s discuss which one is best according to your business requirements: Magento vs Shopify.
Magento vs Shopify some Key Differences
To give you clarity in your mind, here’s our head-to-head comparison of Magento vs Shopify.
Price Comparison
Magento cost
Magento doesn’t charge a monthly subscription. This platform is free to use, you can download, install, and create your online store. But, it will charge for a domain and a hosting provider to publish your website. Therefore, the price for Magento is adjustable depending on your needs.
Besides, if you want to improve and expand your store, you can add several integrations to your store’s website. These integrations are available on Magento App Market, and the price can cost up to $10,000.
Shopify cost
Shopify charges for the subscription. For more detail, there are five pricing ranges that you can consider, going from $9 to over $2000 per month. Fortunately, this plan has both domains and hosting prices so, you don’t have to worry about purchasing these plans separately.
For more information, Shopify offers a more reasonable variety of themes and website design and templates. While the highest price for a website theme on Magento can go up to $499, Shopify charges $180 only for its best website template.
Apps & Extensions
Themes only make up your website, yet, to add more functions and designs, adding extra extensions is what you need. All platforms offer app stores and extensions. Most of these applications are just one click away, enabling you to add multiple tools to your e-commerce site.
Magento Extensions
At present, Magento offers nearly 3600+ extensions via the Magento marketplace. In addition, no complete coding knowledge is needed to install and execute these extensions.
Shopify Apps
Shopify App Store offers about 4200+ paid and free apps to add features, and themes, control your store and increase sales. For more knowledge, some popular Apps allow you to show trust icons to your website visitors and potential customers to decrease cart defection.
Payment Fee
Shopify Payment
For more details, Shopify gives more than 100 Payment Gateways options to choose from, but you need to pay some specific charges.
Credit card processing fee
Payment providers charge a fee for conducting all transactions, including data transmission between buyers, and sellers, making payments, and receiving payments. It will charge based on the Shopify plan you desire. Shopify charges you some fee for each transaction.
- Basic Shopify: 2%
- Shopify Lite: 2.4%
- Shopify: 1%
- Shopify Plus: 0.15%
- Advanced Shopify: 0.5%
To avoid some costs for e-merchants, Shopify also offers a payment processor that is free to use called Shopify Payments. On the other hand, if users use Shop Pay, they can enjoy a free transaction!
Magento Payment
Magento doesn’t provide the Magento Payments which means you have to download the extension of the payment processor separately through the Magento marketplace, then pay a transaction cost for them. At the moment, Magento is offering 339 selections for store owners to select from.
For example, if you select PayPal to make the Magento payment gateway option, PayPal will charge you 3.49% + $0.49 fee for every transaction within the US and 6.0% for international cards.
Moreover, the payment apps of Magento support many languages, so if you want to beat the world’s eCommerce business, multi-language is important.
Let’s talk about Magento 2 vs ShopifyÂ
Magento 1 was introduced in 2007 and then pursued by the launch of Magento 2 in 2015.
Magento 2 has two versions, Magento Open Source, and Magento Commerce. In June 2018, Magento was taken by Adobe for $1.68 billion. We will discuss some key points and let you decide which one is better for you Magento 2 vs Shopify?
- Ease of use
Magento 2 is more complicated to set up in comparison with Shopify. The platform offers unlimited chances for companies to create their special stores, but it needs some technical expertise. You may have to employ developers and designers to create the e-commerce shop for you.
- Coupons and discounts
Magento 2 enables you to develop many codes as you like by default. Shopify also offers this feature but does not come in the Basic plan.
- Stock management
Magento lets you control and manage an unlimited number of items. Shopify offers the same thing to users but does not come in the Basic Plan – only 25 products are allowed.
- Shipping
Both platforms provide flexible shipping methods and automate shipping cost calculation.
- Multiple languages
Magento 2 provides to add multiple language options by effortlessly installing language packs. For Shopify, you have to use language apps.
- B2B features
 Many enterprises use Magento 2 Commerce with the B2B feature to sharpen their businesses. You’ll find features like B2B Quote, Quick Order, and shared catalogs on the website. Shopify is more focused on B2C with its features, but experts are working to decrease the barriers in this aspect.
Magento 2 vs Shopify pros and cons
Magento 2 pros
- Flexible platform
- Great features
- Good for B2B businesses
- Free version offer
- User friendly
- Great scalability
Magento 2 cons
- Lack of coding experts
- Costly
- Not ideal for startups
- Delicate server required
- Time-consuming
Shopify pros
- Mobile friendly
- Comparatively cheap
- No coding knowledge is required
- 24/7 support available
- Various free themes
- Speed and secure
Shopify cons
- Transaction cost
- Limited inventory
- Relatively expensive
- Lack of multiple features
- Not ideal for B2B businesses
Final thought
We have deeply discussed and compared both, now it is up to the user which platform is more suitable for your business. We hope the article guided you well, for more information about Magento, Shopify and Magento 2 visit our website. We offer extensions and make the effortless journey of creating an online store and migrating Magento to Magento 2.
