Shopify vs Magento – What is the Right Platform for your Online Store?

Shopify is a user-friendly solution for building online stores and it supports both fledgling and high-volume businesses, for a monthly fee. Magento is an open-source platform that is free to install onto your computer and you will have to pay about $10 per month for web hosting, security, and extensions. 

Even though it’s a powerful platform, Magento could get challenging for you to achieve your eCommerce goals if you don’t know how to code. It’s better suited for enterprise-level businesses that have their own development teams.

Shopify and Magento are two of the most popular eCommerce platforms, and if you are confused between the two, you are not the only one.  Most people face the same dilemma, and to help you decide we have come up with this Shopify vs Magento guide.

Now let’s evaluate the two platforms:

1. Ease of Use

When it comes to ease of use, Shopify is easily the better choice. It is like a one-stop-shop with a drag-and-drop website builder and lets you customize your store simply by moving elements around the page.

The learning curve with Magento is pretty steep as compared to Shopify. You will either need to hire a web developer or learn coding to build your online store on Magento.

Verdict: Shopify vs Magento – Ease of use

Even though Magento is more flexible as it allows you to customize your website with coding, Shopify is much easier to use.

2. Themes

Your website’s theme will create the first impression on your visitor. That is why this is an important comparison to make between Shopify and Magento.

Shopify offers 10 themes for free and its 64 premium themes cost between $140 and $180 each. Even the most expensive Shopify theme is cheaper than Magento’s average theme.

All Shopify themes are mobile responsive, and once you’ve chosen your theme, you can customize by adding new pages, moving and resizing elements, changing the color palette, integrating social media feeds, etc. 

Magento offers ready-made themes that don’t require any coding customization, but their custom themes demand the skills of a professional developer.

The average Magento ready-made theme costs around $100, while the custom one can cost anywhere between $600 to $25,000. Hence, the custom themes are better suited for large businesses with huge budgets.

Verdict: Shopify vs Magento – Themes

Shopify has a cheaper and wider range of themes than Magento. Since you don’t need coding to customize Shopify’s themes, it is easy for you to tailor your chosen template according to the needs of your brand.

3. Sales Tools

Shopify Sales Features

• Abandoned cart recovery – send automatic emails to customers that left your website before completing the sale to recover potentially lost sales
• Multi-channel selling – sell on Amazon, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram as a built-in feature
• Sell digital products as well as physical ones
• Partnerships with USPS, UPS, DHL Express, and Canada Post

Magento Sales Features

• Multi-channel selling options –  install extensions to integrate your online store with Instagram, Facebook, and eBay
• Checkout customization – create a bespoke checkout for your online store
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Set percentage and fixed price discounts

Verdict: Shopify vs Magento – Sales Tools

Even though Magento offers a lot of great sales tools, Shopify’s range is slightly bigger.

4. Marketing

Shopify offers brilliant marketing tools, which have the ability to run email campaigns through third-party integrations with Klaviyo, Seguno, Constant Contact, and others. You can even advertise and sell directly on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Shopify also supports multilingual sites, letting you sell products in different languages.

On the other hand, Magento relies on its Marketplace for its marketing tools. For instance, you’ll have to install extensions like Remarkety to run email campaigns. Besides, you’ll need to rely on the skills of a web developer for integrating your marketing tools if you want bespoke features.

Verdict: Shopify vs Magento – Marketing Tools

Both Shopify and Magento rely on their respective app markets for the important marketing features, like creating email campaigns, but with the built-in feature of advertising on social media, Shopify wins this one.

5. Search Engine Optimization or SEO

Magento comes with a lot of SEO guides and even prompts to help when you get started. You can edit image alt tags to help Google understand how to categorize a picture on the image search platform, and customize URLs for users to find your web pages easily on search engines.

On the contrary, Shopify is more reliant on apps when it comes to SEO. While you can edit image alt tags and page titles, you’ll need to search the app store for most of your SEO tricks.

Verdict: Shopify vs Magento – SEO

With a wider range of built-in SEO features like SEO prompts and the ability to customize URLs, Magento edges Shopify in SEO. With Shopify, you’ll have to search for and install apps for most of your SEO requirements.

6. Pricing

Shopify comes with three main price plans with fixed monthly rates:

• Shopify Basic: $29/month
• Shopify: $79/month
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month

For Magento, you’ll have to pay for your web hosting, and SiteGround is one of the few providers that support Magento. You can choose from SiteGround’s three hosting plans:

• Startup: $9.95/month
• Grow Big: $19.95/month
• GoGeek: $29.95/month

Verdict: Shopify vs Magento – Pricing

Shopify and Magento offer different pricing models as they are two very different platforms. Magento is an open-source platform, where the costs will depend on your requirements, and Shopify comes with three fixed price plans which might seem cheaper on the surface, but get costlier when you have to pay for apps and themes. It’s a tie!

Magento Vs Shopify – A Comparison

Through this article, we have shown you the key differences and similarities between Shopify and Magento. Let’s do a quick recap of the major differences between the two.

Shopify is much easier to use than Magento. You can get online faster, and also have a support team close at hand.

Magento is more like a project. You will need time and technical knowledge to build the site that you want, or you would have to depend on a developer.

Why should you use Shopify?

• You want to get your store up and ready to run as quickly as possible
• You have been using an eCommerce website builder like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace and want to switch to something more powerful
• You are a beginner in the world of eCommerce, but hope to develop a fully-fledged eCommerce business
• You want the convenience of having a support team on hand and an all-in-one payment

Why should you use Magento?

• You have coding knowledge, and would like to build an online store for a medium or large-sized business
• You prefer total creative freedom through coding
• You have a global audience or international aspirations
• You are aiming to create a big brand with big revenue, and don’t mind investing time and money into the design

What Is the Difference Between Magento and Shopify?

With that, we conclude our Shopify vs Magento analysis. You need to go through all the points carefully and pick the one which best serves your purpose.