Magento Vs Shopify, the competitive guide

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Goes without saying that Magento and Shopify are the two top guns of the ecommerce industry. Choosing between the two platforms for your e-commerce business can be a tough decision to make!

When you start with an e-commerce business, the first and the foremost decision that requires your attention is the platform that you choose.  A platform lets you  build and operate your ecommerce store with. When you research, the two names that will be repeatedly suggested to you would be ‘Magento’ and ‘Shopify’. Choosing between the two giants of the ecommerce industry is an important decision as it would set the path of success for your business!

Both of the platforms have their own perks. Where Shopify is known for its user-friendliness, set pricing and a fully hosted platform with a diversity of capabilities. There, Magento is famous for giving you the option between Commerce and Open Source. Both of the platforms are famous for their great range of feature sets and customization capacities.

Through this guide, we will make a comparison between the two in terms of pricing, their features etc. Hence, this will help you to pick the best choice for your business. So let’s get started!

Features of Shopify and Magento

Features have a vital role to play. You should select the platform whose features cater the most to your business needs. Let’s have a look at the highlights of the features that both of them offer.

 Shopify 

Shopify is famous for its unique capabilities. Shopify’s great range of features makes it different from the rest of the similar software. Some of Shopify’s amazing features include:

Shopify Payment support

Numerous payment options are supported by Shopify. Shopify also has its own payment gateway known as Shopify Payments.

Shopify Blogging platform

Shopify along with a store website lets you have a blogging platform. Through this platform you can publish articles and engage customers in construction discussions.

Customization and flexibility in designing

Shopify lets you customize your store just the way you like it! You can create your ideal Shopify store with any theme that you think would make it easier for your consumers. The best part is that you can also avail its free logo maker app.

Tools for sales and growth

Shopify offers various sales and growth tools. Shopify’s great inventory system along with its other apps such as abandoned cart recovery app makes the process of building your ecommerce operations a breeze. Thus, giving you the opportunity to give your full attention to making your brand attractive and powerful!

Marketing Services

Shopify developers are experts at providing multiple development solutions including SEO and marketing services. SEO not only helps in getting organic traffic and increasing conversion rates but it also acts as a catalyst to optimize the online store within itself.

Shopify App Store

Shopify lets you integrate with almost anything! Be it integration with the shopping cart, APIs, payment gateway or any other third-party application-it can be done for you. Thus, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Shopify enhances the functionality of your eCommerce store through integration with various applications.

Magento

Just like Shopify, Magento has a name in the market for its impressive list of features. Let’s have a look at some of its amazing features that it offers along with its platform.

Site Management:

With Magento’s advanced site-management abilities, you can control multiple websites and stores side by side from only one admin. Moreover, it not lets you create and preview but also lets you schedule content updates.  

Quick Checkout:

Along with the general shopping cart abilities, Magento offers you to have a quick checkout. This allows the users to effortlessly checkout on one page and that too at a faster pace.

Payment gateway integration

Magento makes sure that the payment gateway integration is completely optimized according to business needs. The Magento platform supports multiple currencies including international ones.

Reporting 

The Magento platform offers 100 predefined reports along with nine reporting dashboards. Moreover, it also offers you to create and edit your own personal reports.

Customer Engagement and Development

Magento offers some amazing ways for you to keep your customers engaged and supported. Some of them include marketing email campaigns, promotions, coupons, wish lists of products, gift wrapping options, guest/login checkout etc.

Managing multiple country sites

Magento supports international commerce. Along with working with international payment gateways, Magento supports and offers you to manage multiple country sites using the same environment or store. Moreover, with Magento you have the benefit of supporting a number of currencies, tax rates and languages.

Enhance store functionalities

With Magento, you can enhance your store functionalities with over 4500 various add-ons. These add-ons are easily downloadable and help in improving the functionality of your store.   

Pricing of Shopify and Magento

Despite having a range of extensive features, the pricing of both of these ecommerce giants is quite different. Let’s have a look at the pricing of both Shopify and Magento to develop a better understanding.

Is Shopify cheaper than Magento?

Shopify operates on the basis of subscription. It lets you subscribe according to your own feasibility. You can opt from many options of subscribing from month to month, or an annual basis or even biennially. The best part is that it even offers you a free trial of 14 days and you do not require any credit card for the same.

Shopify offers a number of plans;

Ø  The most basic one is the Shopify Lite

Ø  Followed by the next plan which is Basic Shopify

Ø  The next two plans which are offered are Shopify and Advanced Shopify

Ø  The final and the most advanced one is the Shopify Plus

The pricing information of each plan is easily available on Shopify’s website however, Magento is different in this aspect. The pricing specifics are not readily available for its consumers on the website. In order to get pricing specifics for Magento Commerce, you need to contact their sales team for a quote. You may avail a free demo by signing up on the website after giving in your details. You can enjoy Magento open source whose download is free. However, you may bear some additional costs linked to it.

In addition to that, you not just have to pay for the web hosting, security but also for the development work that may be needed to develop and launch the store. Moreover, there are additional charges for accepting payments online however, this varies according to the selected gateway. 

Where does Shopify win?

Both Shopify and Magento have an array of features to offer. However, there are certain aspects where Shopify takes the lead. Let’s have a look at them.

Usability

Usability is one of the areas where Shopify takes the lead. The platform of Shopify is spontaneous, clean and best to use for beginners and those with more technical knowledge. It’s relatively easier for you to quickly build and design your store on Shopify. Hence, it’s the user friendly attribute of Shopify that makes it an all the time favorite for its consumers! 

In comparison to that, Magento does not happen to be much user-friendly. Magento Open Source requires a certain range of developmental abilities and knowledge thus making it relatively difficult to set it up. Although Magento Commerce is easy to manage, it’s the amount of capabilities that make the interface complex. Hence, creating hurdles in the way of getting the store up and running quickly.

Pricing

Even when we talk about pricing, Shopify takes the lead. Yes, Shopify can go higher than its actual price structure due to its add-ons, shipping services etc. But due to no transparency in pricing of Magento, Shopify takes the lead in this aspect.

The best part with Shopify is that you know the starting point for what setting up your store with Shopify will cost. Thus, you can manage your budget around that.  Also, the subscription charges of Shopify are relatively less than those of other similar platforms. In comparison to this, with Magento you do not really have a starting point of what setting up your store will cost.

Magneto open source may strike as a better option. But, even with that you end up paying a lot more than is estimated. When you deal with the costs of security, web hosting and developments etc. it gets more expensive and time consuming too.

Where does Magento stand out?

Magento takes the lead when we talk about customization and enhancing the capabilities of your ecommerce store.

Extensive Features

 Magento is literally incomparable when it comes to an extensive list of features. Shopify offers a huge list of features too but Magento is a step ahead. It would let you do whatever you possibly want from your store. Features of Magento such as the instant cart checkout, international commerce facilities etc. make it extremely impressive!

Add-ons and Customization ability

Add-ons and customization make Magento a huge hit! You can always add on whatever you want on your store even if it is missing from Magento’s feature list. The option of apps and integration on Magento are twice more than that on Shopify. Thus, making it possible for you to customize your store and enhance its functionality as much as you desire. 

Conclusion

Shopify is well known for fulfilling the needs and requirements of its users to the fullest. Customers of Shopify are mostly happy with it. They appreciate it for being user friendly and easy to start up with, especially beginners. Moreover, they acknowledge the fact that Shopify helps them grow their business. The only downside of Shopify is the payment processing fee.  

In comparison to Shopify, Magento is also liked by its consumers; however, the reviews are of mixed nature. People like it for its ability to customize and add-on features. You can literally get anything in your store with Magento.

However, despite all this, difficulty in using it hinders its popularity in its consumers.  Magento requires time, resources and a trained staff to use it. Although Magento open source is free to download yet, people find it costly due to the additional charges attached with it.