Magento Vs Shopify: Which Ecommerce Platform is Best For Your Online Store?

Nov 16, 2022 |

12 minutes read

Creating an eCommerce store is a major undertaking, and choosing the right platform is critical to your success. This rings especially true for small businesses that must be extra mindful of their budget and resource limitations.

An Ecommerce Website Development Company will often recommend either Magento or Shopify as the two best ecommerce platforms on the market. How do you know which one is best for your business?

Shopify is a monthly subscription-based platform that makes it simple to construct online stores. It’s scalable for new businesses as well as established ones. Due to the web-based nature of Shopify Development, no software download or installation is necessary.

Compared to Shopify, the open-source ecommerce platform Magento provides companies with more customization and flexibility possibilities. Although, you will have to pay for basic things such as web hosting ($10/month), security and additional (extensions). You can think of extensions like apps.

Magento Ecommerce Website Development is a bit more complex and, therefore, is often recommended for businesses that are already generating a good amount of revenue and have the resources to support a Magento site.

If you need to learn how to code, it will be easier for you to utilize the full potential of Magento Development. This powerful ecommerce tool is better suited for large businesses with their development teams.

In this blog post, we will compare and contrast Magento Development Company with Shopify Development company to help you decide on the best ecommerce platform.

Magento vs Shopify: Pros and Cons

Below is a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of both Magento and Shopify. Be sure to weigh all aspects before deciding on the build platform for your eCommerce website.

Magento Pros:
  • More control and flexibility over your online store
  • A larger pool of themes and plugins to choose from (although you have to pay for most of them)
  • Ability to create a custom site without having to code from scratch

Magento Cons:
  • Not as user-friendly as Shopify
  • Requires hosting, which can be expensive
  • You need a dedicated development team to maintain and troubleshoot your site

Shopify Pros:
  • User-friendly platform that is great for beginners
  • No need to worry about hosting or security since it’s all taken care of by Shopify
  • Less expensive than Magento when you factor in the cost of hosting, security, and add-ons

Shopify Pros:
  • User-friendly platform that is great for beginners
  • No need to worry about hosting or security since it’s all taken care of by Shopify
  • Less expensive than Magento when you factor in the cost of hosting, security, and add-ons

Magento vs Shopify: Ease of Use

You need to choose a platform that’s too complex to use to be able to create the ecommerce store of your dreams. This could have negative consequences on how people perceive your brand. Shopify is much easier to use than Magento. You can customize your store however you want by moving elements around the page, and Shopify will take care of the rest. This is ideal for businesses that don’t have a dedicated development team.

Magento, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. You will need to access the code if you want to customize your Magento store. This can be difficult if you’re not a developer or need a development team to help you make changes.

Magento vs Shopify: Plugins

Magento is the way to go if you’re seeking for an ecommerce platform with a broad range of extensions. Nevertheless, the majority of these plugins are not free. You must account for the cost of acquiring and installing plugins when evaluating Magento Open Source. In contrast, Shopify’s plugin store is smaller, but all plugins are free. And, since Shopify takes care of hosting and security, you don’t need to worry about installing plugins that could compromise the safety of your site. Magento Web Development Services use different plugins for hosting and security.

Magento vs Shopify: Inventory management

Oberlo will instantly integrate with your inventory when you add an unlimited number of items to your Shopify store. Magento also has this capability, but Shopify is better because it offers direct integration. You can create products and collections on both platforms effortlessly.

Magento’s main advantage is that you can add an unlimited number of products. However, your host’s performance and site loading speed could significantly decrease if you overload Magento with too many items. With Shopify, there is no need to worry about this because it is a fully managed and hosted solution. Magento Web Development Company can help you with this.

Magento vs Shopify: Payment processing

Numerous payment methods are available through Shopify, including well-known ones like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe. You can also accept payments in multiple currencies. Magento Open Source also offers a wide range of payment options, but you’ll need to install third-party plugins to add them to your store. And, unlike Shopify, Magento doesn’t offer built-in support for multiple currencies. You’ll need to purchase a plugin for or develop yourself.

Magento vs Shopify: Shipping rates

Dropshipping and ecommerce have made it easier than ever to sell physical goods online, but one of the most important details is still calculating shipping charges. Shopify’s customizable options make this easy while integrating with some dropshipping tools that can help you be even more precise for your customers’ convenience. Plus, since Oberlo is built into Shopify, it’s easy to find products to sell and get them shipped to your customers without hassle. In Magento Open Source, no shipping tools are included in the core software. You’ll need to either develop a solution or install a third-party plugin.

Magento vs Shopify: Multilingual capabilities

While Shopify does have some language support, it is only partially multilingual. For Shopify, third-party/paid apps are available for building stores that support many languages. Another choice is to code your theme specifically to support several languages. To finish the process, you will most likely need a skilled Shopify developer. Magento is again advantageous here because it has more built-in multilingual support.

Magento vs Shopify: SEO capabilities

Shopify has many great SEO features, such as editing your store’s title and meta tags, generating sitemaps, and adding alt text to images. Magento also offers all of these features, but you’ll need to install third-party plugins to get them. That being said, both platforms are equal in terms of SEO capabilities.

Magento vs Shopify: Security

Both Magento and Shopify are secure ecommerce platforms. Magento Open Source is more secure out of the box because it doesn’t have as many vulnerabilities as Shopify does. This is because there are more targets for hackers because Shopify is a closed platform. However, Shopify is constantly patching these security holes and is generally considered a very secure platform.

Magento vs Shopify: Customization

Magento is a more customizable platform than Shopify. You can change the code with Magento to provide your store a totally unique experience. Shopify, on the other hand, offers a limited amount of customization. You can change your theme and add some apps, but you can’t edit the code as you can with Magento.

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Concluding Thoughts

Magento and Shopify Ecommerce are both great ecommerce platforms. There are advantages and disadvantages to both platforms, and which one is right for you depends on your business needs. If you need a more customizable platform with built-in multilingual support, then Magento is the way to go. However, if you need an easy-to-use platform with great dropshipping integrations, then Shopify is the better option.

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    Jinal Shah

    The Managing Director of iFlair Web Technologies Pvt. Ltd. since 2004. He has spent 20+ years growing client businesses and assisting organisations ranging from Startups to Fortune 500 companies. Always shares cutting-edge topics on various technology platforms, Builds the prevailing concepts of the IT industry with interested readers.



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