There is a longer discussion to decide which is the better platform for E-commerce business, either Magento or Shopify. There are many points where merchants get confused to choose the better one as per their requirements for online store.
But here we are to get find the facts to choose the platform suitable for your store.
1. Cost to Begin:- If you start with the Magento platform, you’ll get two options from the platform to choose either Magento Open Source or Magento Commerce for your online store.
And when you choose Magento Open Source then you’ll be able to start with $0.00 whereas, in the case of Shopify you’ll get 14 days of a free trial at the beginning and later you’ll have to choose the package.
2. Platform Popularity:- No doubt that Magento 2 & Shopify is a very well-known platform for E-Commerce business, you may find more than 2 lakhs business running with Magento for small & large business organizations whereas small E-commerce business owners prefer to choose for Shopify.
In case you choose the Magento platform for E-commerce business then you’ll need great technical knowledge or you’ll have to hire an expert Magento Developer, whereas in Shopify you don’t need much technical knowledge.
Quick Tip: Learn about set rest API in Magento 2
3. Expenses at Operations:- At Shopify, you’ll have to pay monthly charge till you’re running your store which includes the hosting charges and if you’ve stored at Magento then you don’t need to monthly charge but will have to pay hosting charges.
If you’ll have Shopify platform, then it will charge some percentage at the time of sale in case you’re using external payment gateways. Whereas Magento doesn’t take any additional charge for integrating external payment gateways.
4. Easy Implementation:- Magento & Shopify both are very easy to implement & user-friendly, regardless of technical knowledge for Magento. We can easily access the store features, orders, products list, CMS pages, sale reports, etc.
5. Functionalities:- On both platforms, you’ll get functionalities to manage your online stores, as in the case of Magento it allows ‘discount and coupon codes’ to generate various codes and at Shopify also available this option but not included in the basic plan.
For ‘Inventory management’ Magento allows unlimited numbers of control whereas Shopify within basic plans only 25 items allowed. Both platforms have a ‘flexible shipping’ function.
Magento has a function to use ‘multiple language setup’ but for Shopify, you’ll have used some applications. Both platforms support SEO abilities which helps giving top ranking on SERP.
6. Customization:- In favor of code Magento utilizes PHP and Shopify uses Liquid, where Magento is Open Source & Shopify is proprietary. Magento Open Source allows easy customization code as per needs and Shopify doesn’t allow to modify code.
7. Scalability:- Magento is an Open Source and allows customized theme & dashboard to manage products, orders, etc. whereas Shopify has its theme available with no modification allowed. As a result, majorly small businesses preferred to choose Shopify and large merchants choose Magento to set up their business.
8. Performance & Speed:- With survey analytics, it is proofed that slow speed sites lose many leads as a user don’t wait for slow sites to get loaded. Shopify is a self-hosted company and its speed guaranteed by itself.
Whereas at Magento the speed will be dependent on selected hosting service & if you have the strong hosting server then you don’t need to worried about the website.
9. User-Experience:- At E-commerce user, experience counts at check out process, on Magento have 2 easy steps of checkout process including shipping, payment info, as well as guest checkout and one-click account creation checkout.
Whereas Shopify offers a convenient checkout process with a single page and doesn’t show actual shipping at the beginning. Magento is a good option for medium & large scale organizations to manage thousands of products & whereas Shopify is a good choice for small businesses.
10. Plugins & Module:- Shopify offers 2300 applications and Magento 2 offers 3000 extensions available at their market. As a result, Magento provides a larger number of extensions and quality stores as well as also the compatibility to use third-party extensions.
On both platforms, there are many features available to be use-call it extensions to customize the dashboard. These involve all modules like content management, enhancement & customization of the store, support, analytics & reports allows all by Magento comparing to Shopify.
With the above feature key difference between Shopify & Magento is cleared which may help you to choose the right decision for your E-commerce business as per scale.
Here, as per ratio, to choose a Magento platform as if you’re having a medium and large scale business is a great option.
If you’re not technically strong to manage Magento code, then you can hire Magento Developer specialized in Magento 1 & Magento 2 with experience as a freelancer or worked in a collaboration of many top Magento Expertise in a team.