For thriving trade results, the right eCommerce development framework must be selected. It has to be a well-thought choice and needs thorough research. Many factors must be analyzed. However, some of the most significant matters that all e-commerce proprietors anticipate are user experience and performance of the online store.
To build an online store or to migrate from one to another, there are many eCommerce development platforms available. Some store owners take decision based on the recommendation of their eCommerce development company. However, the right approach is you learn about different popular platforms to build an online store as per the latest trend. Based on your own research, make a choice.
In this blog post, we will compare the two most popular e-commerce platforms based on the functionalities, facts, and trends of 2020:
- Magento
- Shopify
Shopify vs. Magento: Themes and templates
Both Shopify and Magento give a wide array of options of themes and templates to be used to have the expected design of your online store. Additionally, both have free and paid options for responsive themes. Shopify has significantly fewer themes to offer in comparison with Magento, but as per Shopify development companies, they are added modern. Premium Shopify themes begin at $80, while Magento paid themes begin at $1. Magento users have a definite edge here.
Shopify vs. Magento: Marketplace
Both platforms offer add-ons to build a multi-vendor marketplace, where multiple vendors can sell their goods by a single cart. Magento grants most desirable features to maintain a marketplace. Furthermore, Magento 2 allows enhanced performance and scalability to cater to the requirements of a thriving multi-vendor store. All these features are not available in Shopify.
Shopify vs. Magento: Design and branding comparison
Both frameworks provide mobile-friendly and responsive themes, which are paid and free. However, the downside of Shopify premium themes is that they cannot be customized much. Thus, the branding of an e-commerce website can get affected.
Magento 2 introduces a drag-and-drop feature with visual editing capabilities that can be used by even non-technical people to customize the look and feel of the online store.
Shopify vs. Magento: User Experience
Shopify offers a tool for website-building, which supports store customization if you have an in-house team of Shopify developers.
Magento too provides the equivalent level of comfort by providing ready-to-use extensions, which need no development. It just needs to get integrated.
Magnified user experience might not be offered by Magento and its extensions are now available with Magento 2 development. It offers a user-friendly admin panel that provides simple store management without any requirement to hold advanced Magento development experiences. The mobile-friendly nature of Magento 2 stores is easily managed on the go for all varying screen sizes. Admin can handle long to-do lists in less time.
Shopify vs. Magento: Development
Magento and Shopify vary greatly in regards to development. Magento employs PHP and Shopify uses Liquid. Magento is an open-source platform and Shopify is proprietary software. This difference is critical when it is about making the choice of an ideal eCommerce development platform as it establishes the foundation for what is attainable.
As Magento is open-source, the source code is available and can be customized freely. It is not an identical case with proprietary software that Shopify employs. It means not much customization allowed in Shopify as developers do not get access to complete code. Thus, Shopify development is a nice choice to build simplistic e-commerce platforms, but for complicated ones, Magento development is an ideal choice.
Shopify vs. Magento: Blogging functionality
Shopify offers blogging functionality as an inbuilt feature. In Magento, your Magento development company or team can build it with customization of the code.
Shopify vs. Magento: Speed
Speed of website loading is very crucial for stores relying on SEO ranking. Also, time took by a site to load also defines customer experience, which defines its importance. Delay in loading a site can majorly affect sales of the eStore.
Many store owners discovered in the past that Shopify stores are faster than Magento. Nonetheless, Magento 2 is much faster than Magento 1 and stores have bestowed to achieve 20% or even 56% faster load speed, which still keeps Magento neck-to-neck in the competition.
Shopify vs. Magento: Add-ons and apps
Shopify has 100+ apps and add-ons and apps available for Shopify users. This aid in improving and augmenting the store performance by adding new functionalities such as email marketing and accounting, loyalty programs, etc. The Shopify App store is continually evolving and profoundly governed.
As Magento is an Open source, it offers a mountainous 5000+ paid and free add-ons and apps. Magento 2 development experts may not get that many apps and add-ons as it is still evolving, but in general, there are many add-ons and apps available at the disposal of Magento development companies.
Shopify vs. Magento: Discount and coupon codes
While it is about discount and coupon codes, Magento offers discount code generation and consideration since the inception. Shopify offers this feature to all other plan users except its Lite plan.
Shopify vs. Magento: SEO Advantages
Both Shopify and Magento secure the equivalent score on SEO abilities granted. With compelling SEO specialties, both platforms aid you bring more organic traffic.
Shopify vs. Magento: Community
One of the biggest advantages of using Magento is a huge community. It is a proactive community of programmers that build any sorts of e-commerce stores based on customer requirements. The community additionally contributes by adding resources for beginners to learn Magento. Additionally, with this kind of a huge community, getting developers is simple. Magento development companies to learners can get help, receive support and maintenance with the help of community or companies that offer Magento development and related services.
Shopify vs. Magento: Management of Inventory and Orders:
Both platforms let you build multiple product pages and take orders for each product.
Notwithstanding, with Shopify, you get straightforward integration with the dropshipping inventory option. It is additionally essential to know that even if Magento supports the virtual production of unlimited products, the performance of your server and speed to load the site might not support that. You do not need to get concerned about these matters with Shopify development as it is a completely managed and hosted solution available for direct use.
Shopify vs. Magento: Estimation of shipping charges
Shopify and Magento both, are furnished by efficacious and manageable features that enable buyers to determine shipping charges, which is required for companies trading physical assets via eCommerce sites aka online stores.
The versatility for dropshipping tool integration furnished with accurate shipping calculators makes Shopify more advantageous if you need precise charges to be shared with the buyer.
Shopify vs. Magento: Checkout
In any e-commerce web store, an accurate and hassle-free checkout is vital. The checkout provided by Magento 2 platform is outstanding. It has several innovative features such as one-click and two-step process checkout, automatic guest checkout, easy account creation, etc.. Shopify has also added a nice one-page responsive checkout option. However, it does not give real-time shipping charges to lower-tier pricing plans. Thus, here, Magento 2 clearly wins the match if the checkout experience is your prime focus.
Shopify vs. Magento: Payment gateway integration
More than 70 payment gateways are supported by Shopify to aid the Shopify development companies. On the other hand, Magento supports way fewer payment gateways. Still, in the Magento store as well more payment gateways can be integrated using third-party add-ons. Also, Magento 2 supports the seamless payment gateway addition in the e-commerce store.
The downside of Shopify even if it supports multiple payment gateways is the enforcement to employ its built-in payment gateway. Even if there is no Shopify gateway fee on transactions, third-party gateway transaction charges are applied.
Shopify vs. Magento: Multilingual eCommerce web store development
Shopify does not provide direct full multilingual store development functionality. Thus, if you want to build a completely multilingual online store with Shopify development, you need to use third-party/apps, which are obviously paid. One more option to build a multilingual store is customizing theme code. However, it demands Shopify development expertise.
On the other hand, Magento has built-in multilingual support. It means Magento 2 development is an ideal platform if you want to build a multilingual marketplace or online store.
Shopify vs. Magento: Market share
According to Google Trends, Magento holds a higher overall search share. It also claims to have 14% of the top million sites, while Shopify holds 6% of shares in it. Magento has allied itself with brands such as Olympus, Nike, Rosetta Stone, etc. Shopify associated with some big brands such as Tesla, the Los Angeles Lakers’ Store, etc.
Shopify vs. Magento: Expense
Magento is a self-hosted platform. Thus, owners of online stores ought to pay for third-party hosting service, beginning at as low as $3.95. As reliable hosting is required for better performance, picking the appropriate hosting provider is extremely critical. Furthermore, setting up and maintaining a Magento store will need Magento development services from a reliable company, which will cost additionally. However, as Magento is an open-source, you can get these services at pocket-friendly rates.
The Magento Community Edition is available to download for free. The Enterprise solution charge relies on your particular requirements.
Magento Pricing:
Community Edition: Free
Hosting: $4-$100+/month
Shopify, on the other hand, is a SAAS (software-as-a-service). It means store owners need to pay a monthly subscription fee. Nevertheless, you can use it for free for 14 days. After a free trial, you need to buy any one of the subscriptions as per your needs:
Shopify Pricing:
Basic: $29/month
Pro: $79/month
Unlimited: $179/month
Shopify additionally imposes transaction fees for payments executed via third-party payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, and Braintree. The fee varies between 0.5% to 2.0%. With high-priced monthly subscriptions, transaction fees are reduced. Notwithstanding, these can be dismissed if you opt for a direct payment gateway of Shopify.
In addition, for both platforms, costs on add-ons and extensions will be added if you use paid ones.
Shopify vs. Magento: Which is better?
Both are compelling eCommerce development platforms. Shopify is simple to use, quick to start, hosted, and fully managed software; Magento, being free, needs you to buy hosting and take care of store development. When we examine both platforms by comparing with each other, Shopify has the advantage when it is about to simplicity of getting started and abilities allowed. On the other hand, Magento gains edge in terms of cost in long-run, multilingual and multi-vendor marketplace development, and some other aspects.
Making a choice depends on the present and future needs of an online store in the e-commerce industry. Keep a comparison of both platforms and the differences between Shopify and Magento in mind to make the right choice. Alternatively, we can do this job for you of choosing the platform and setting up your store.
