In the ecommerce realm, choosing the best CMS for your online store is not a walk in the park. There’s a lot of debate on whether you should go for Magento and take your store to the next level, or if you should opt for Shopify and sidestep all the technical hassles and just get on with your online business. The answer is not easy, though, but this is why we are here.
The answer is not easy, though, but this is why we are here.
We’ll make your life easy by conducting a head-to-head comparison of the two CMSs and explore in-depth the features, performance, and pricing, etc., to help you decide once and for all which is the better platform for you. Even though you’re on a Magento-centric website, we’re going to keep this showdown completely bias-free and give both the popular platforms an equal chance to impress you with their shiny armors and gears.
Before you can dive into the details, though, here’s an awesome infographic we created for you!
Now it’s time to dive into the details. We’ll judge the two platforms in the following categories:
Features
There’s no way that either ecommerce platform could have compromised on basic functionality, so when it comes to features, you get loads of them in both. Here’s a look at what both have to offer you in this department:
Inventory management – While inventory management is available on both platforms, Magento allows you to add as many products as possible. Shopify, on the other hand, limits you to a limited number of products based on the plan you choose.
Shipping Charges Calculation – Both platforms have a flexible calculation system, and don’t have any kind of limitations.
Discounts and Coupon Codes – You can create discount and coupon codes in Magento out-of-the-box, while if you opt for Shopify, you’d have to purchase a plan that is higher than the starter plan.
Themes and Templates – It’s a tie when it comes to themes and templates. There are a number of free themes available for both platforms. But free themes have limitations, and if you want to go above and beyond what free themes have to offer, you can purchase premium themes on either ecommerce platform.
Payment Gateway Options – Shopify beats Magento here by a mile. With over 70 payment gateway options, Shopify is a no-brainer if your favorite gateway is not available on Magento because Magento has significantly fewer options.
Multi-Languages Support – Magento gets the edge here with support for several languages that come built-in. Shopify, unfortunately, does not support multi-lingual support.
SEO Capabilities – Once again, Magento and Shopify can go head to head in this department and both would stand shoulder to shoulder. Both offer powerful SEO options for you to take your online store to heights of success.
While both are laden with features, Magento edges Shopify here due to its open nature and a plethora of functionalities that trump Shopify unless you shell huge loads of money on Shopify’s Plus plans.
Performance and Speed
Speed and performance are two of the most important factors for the success of an ecommere store. Users prefer shopping at fast and quick-loading stores so that they can browse swiftly, decide, and buy products with ease and comfort. Stores with slow speed and high-loading times usually result in loss of users and customers.
Magento is a powerful CMS and more feature laden than Shopify as pointed out earlier. While this is an advantage, it does result in a slight compromise in speed and performance. This does not mean that Magento is a crawler, though, but there’s a significant difference in load times and overall performance in Shopify and Magento.
Shopify is fast and loads up pages swiftly. Magento struggles. Shopify wins.
Security
Security mostly depends on how optimized and careful you are with your online store and overall practices. Almost 30,000 websites are hacked daily, so safeguarding your website and ensuring that the best security plugins and updates are being used is one of the best ways to stay away from security lapses.
If security is a major concern (wait, it always is) then Magento gives you the flexibility to keep a close eye on security yourself, but that mostly means added responsibility. If you opt for Shopify Plus, on the other hand, you have a major upper hand in security. From SSL encryption to Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, Shopify will keep you in a far secure environment without much effort. With Magento, you’ll have to take care of it all yourself. But Magento’s security can be as tight and robust as you intend it to be because everything is your hand.
Ease Of Use
Magento and Shopify both are powerful ecommerce CMSs in their respective ways. Both sport great user-interfaces and have plenty of options to play around with and do whatever you have to with your online store.
However, when it comes to ease-of-use, one platform beats the other without much effort. And here’s where Shopify shines brighter than Magento. While Magento is open-source and gives you more flexibility in terms of what you can do with your store, you’d have to be learned enough to make changes and go through customization. Shopify is a walk in the park comparatively, The Wizard mode in Shopify will let even a beginner with no knowledge of code of CMSs can set up a store in no time.
So if convenience and ease-of-use are what you are looking for, Shopify is a no-brainer once again.
Support
Support is crucial no matter which CMS you go with. If the platform you choose does not have a well-established support system, you might face serious issues without any solution later on.
Magento is an open-source platform, as mentioned earlier, and has a large community worldwide that provides support and keeps the wheels spinning for new and old users. Magento is host to hundreds of thousands of merchants worldwide, and there are numerous events and meetups that take place around the world frequently. This all boils down to enormous support for the platform and always available solutions to all your Magento related problems.
Shopify is also gaining a lot of traction and thousands of merchants have started using it on a daily basis. However, as far as support is concerned, for a robust support system, you’d have to buy their premium plans. In contrast, the basic community version of Magento has better support.
Cost
Magento is an open-source platform (informing the readers one last time), so there’s no question of anyone paying any fees or money to use it. You can deploy a store on Magento for free, which makes it a great choice for most merchants who don’t have huge budgets. Shopify, on the other hand, starts at a small fee of $9 for the Lite Plan (there’s no fee for setting up a store on Shopify, though), and goes up to $299 for the Advanced Plan. And these are the monthly charges, not a one-time pay-off, so do keep that in mind.
However, with Magento, you’d have to incur hosting charges which you’d have to buy from hosting vendors like Cloudways.
Conclusion
Pitting the two CMS head-to-head was fun. It was and still is, a tough call to judge which is the better option for you. While it also boils down to the fact that it depends on your needs and requirement, we still have to make a final choice. And considering that one of the contenders edged itself to victory, we are proud to announce our winner based on merit alone:
Magento!
It was a tough call, but considering that Magento wins in the features, security, pricing, and support departments, it is safe to say that Magento should be your go-to platform for an online store that will take your business far!
If you have any thoughts to share, feel free to use the comment section below and discuss your gripes!
6 Comments
Great article and a nice Info-graphic :) Keep up the good work!
But hard to take seriously from a company that works with Magento. As an example you talk about support and the Magento community but you’re relying on the good nature and willingness of volunteers. With Shopify you can be on the phone in minutes to a trained consultant and the monthly cost is trivial.
Hey Mark. First of all, we have absolutely no association with Magento. Magenticians was started as a forum to help people with their Magento related problems and has grown into a huge community. So we don’t work with Magento at all!
As for the support point you have raised, I agree. Shopify definitely has good support, but we gave Magento the edge because there’s amazing support from the community (that surprisingly doesn’t let you down 98% of the time) as well as a plethora of resources in comparison. Hence, most problems can be solved without having to pay a monthly fee.
EE $18000/month ??? Wanna check that..
Man, you can’t just eliminate a comment like this. Being on the internet means you should be able to take both sides of the coin, be transparent, even when it’s bad for you business. What you did reflects exactly what I meant by the Magento community is more focused on the money side. Good luck buddy, a bit of self reflexion next time.
Chhola, our system does not automatically allow comments that have links in them. This is to stop spamming and misuse of the comments section.
We have approved the comment and it is there where it should be. The writer will hopefully respond to your queries soon. :)