Magento vs Shopify: The AI-Lead E-commerce Showdown

This guide provides an in-depth comparison of Magento and Shopify, two leading e-commerce platforms. It focuses on their distinct features, ease of use, product management, hosting, theme design, mobile accessibility, email marketing features, ad integration, payment processors, reporting capabilities, third-party integrations, and customer support. It highlights Magento flexibility and customizability for experienced users, and Shopify's user-friendly interface suitable for beginners. This comprehensive analysis is vital for decision-makers to understand which platform aligns best with their business needs and technical expertise.

In this digital world, where thousands of websites are becoming Live every day, It is vital to choose the most appropriate eCommerce platform to create, manage, and hold an Online Store.

Magento and Shopify are two leading names in the field of eCommerce platforms. Click To Tweet

In this Magento vs Shopify guide, we will compare Magento vs Shopify in terms of features, customer support, pricing, third party integrations, and much more.

Keep in mind that your website can lead either to your business’s success or failure. For small companies, this is especially important because of their limited resources and budgets. Here in this Magento vs Shopify guide, we discuss the most popular Shopify and Magento eCommerce platforms.

Shopify has a little bit of a grip in the ‘hosted, one-stop,’ while Magento is the largest participant in the more significant, complex trading industry. Shopify and Magento open Source today are two well-known and widely used e-commerce store development and management systems.

Shopify is an open-source proprietary product (for which you pay), while open-source Magento is free. Shopify is a hosted platform, while Magento is self-hosted, downloading, configuring, and configuring everything until you can start building your store.

Shopify is more suited to beginners using a primary user interface, while Magento is more suited to experienced developers. So, you have to hire Magento developer to build your store.

Magento offers a paid version, but it is incredibly pricey. We’re not going to check the premium version because most entrepreneurs and small corporations don’t have the money. Most enterprises can choose Magento’s open-source platform, whether they have an accomplished team or not. If not, you can use Shopify to create an online store.

Let us start our Magento vs Shopify guide with detailed features of both the platforms:

Magento Features

Magento supports various payment gateway such as PayPal, credit cards, money orders, cheques, and Google checkouts.

  • Allows retail shipping at many addresses in one order
  • Helps in efficiently handling directives using the administrative panel.
  • Defines stock status order and product history
  • Supports Email and RSS feeds
  • Embraces several languages, varying currencies, and rates of tax
  • Filters in grid or list style items and displays.
  • Things like zoom-in images and a stock availability monitor
magento vs shopify

Shopify Features

Unlimited bandwidth Unlimited bandwidth
Fraud analysisOnline sales channels
Guft CardsShopify point of sale
Manual order creationOnline sales channels
Certificate for Free SSL
magento vs shopify

Magento vs Shopify: How Magento and Shopify are different?

The market offers various choices, but any wrong choice can interrupt your business’ growth and success.

A careful search is, therefore, essential. Magento and Shopify are two famous platforms to develop an eCommerce store that have long dominated the industry.

The main difference between Magento Shopify is that Magento is self-hosted, and Shopify is a hosted solution.

magento vs shopify

Magento and Shopify are widely mistaken to be very similar.

Still, the fact is that while they are somehow identical, they are different on things like payment mode, extension management, core structure, accessibility, and other skills. They are very different. Magento is one of the top-notch ecommerce platforms for businesses, offering both a free and premium version. The first is a Business version, and the latter is a Community version. It’s versatile and has several choices for adapting to an online shop.

Shopify has a growing base of customers, on the other hand, which meets the needs of merchants that are not involved in the technology. However, since this is a hosted platform, the subscription fees for running the shared infrastructure is there for users.

In a couple of minutes, it helps create interactive stores online.

magento vs shopify

While both are robust eCommerce platforms, offering you a powerful and easy to use user interface. Both Shopify and Magento can also promote development despite different methods when you need to scale your e-commerce store.

Magento vs Shopify features comparison:

Magento vs Shopify

Ease of use

The quick start of selling and earning money is one of the most critical features of the eCommerce platform.

You and the staff must be able to scale up fast, grasp, and make full use of the platform’s functions.

For organizations new to the website, they can use Shopify as it is straightforward to get ready to work and offer a user-friendly experience with ease of use. In just 10 minutes, newcomers can comprehend how it works.

Shopify dashboard has drag-and-drop features that make it very easy to adapt the website to just how you want by dragging objects across the list. You need to install software or use special coding to more advanced functionality.

Magento is not synonymous with ease of use and a self-hosted platform.

You can use the eCommerce solution reasonably quickly (in several languages, payment systems, etc.). However, seasoned email traders can find all their functionality in a versatile, personalized GUI. The app is not the right option for newcomers. Magento requires a tremendous overhaul and more time to set up and go online.

Magento and Shopify vary when it comes to coding language. A code word named “Liquid” applies to Shopify, and PHP refers to Magento. It is an open-source platform, while Shopify is a closed (owned) platform. You can update the source code with Magento to satisfy those App store specifications, but you cannot do it with Shopify.

Magento vs Shopify

Product editor and management

As the Shopify interface is easy to use, it can primarily accommodate inventories of low volumes, such as for small firms. You can introduce various enhancements to the Shopify eCommerce solution by integrating plugins for promotional and registered users’ discounts.

Many advanced features complement Magento in the simple inventory management framework, enabling it to cater to medium-sized and big business with ease of use. Inventory management can be made simpler by incorporating extensions such as those that allow the inventory to categorize by product categories or colors. The work taken to set up them is worth the effort consumers can quickly encounter in inventory management.

Magento vs Shopify

Hosting of website

Shopify is a cloud-based hosted platform that ensures that you do not need to look for hosting from third party providers. The framework runs your servers and optimizes them for performance and security updates. But a significant drawback to a cloud system is that you have little leverage over the solution because Shopify works, manages, and tracks it.

For retail firms with highly confidential data and complicated storage requirements in an online store, this may be challenging.

You can host Magento via, in, or by a third-party onsite. In Magento, you can host and operate your eCommerce store in cloud storage, while you need the buy the domain and storage in open source. The profit is that you have the full server and home directory access so that you can build a personalized Magento store with core programming. But even for encryption and hosting, you need to pay separately.

Magento vs Shopify

Theme Design and Flexibility

The theme of your eCommerce website forms the foundation for the visits of your customers to your site. There should be a range of subjects on the forum you chose. Alternatively, the online store is more likely to look bland without good design and themes. Shopify and Magento also offer a wide variety of themes and flexibility for your eCommerce platforms.

Shopify store offers a broad spectrum of mobile themes (more than 60). There’s also a ‘Product Zoom’ option that helps the clients to see each object in greater detail. Some are unrestricted, but most of them are paying for it. Theme rates vary between $140 and 180.

Magento store stocks 12 free and paying subjects, of which ten images are for smartphone apps.

They are not costly but ready to customize for mobile and other devices if you decide to purchase a subject. Theme rates vary between $29 per month and $499 per month.

Magento vs Shopify

Mobile accessibility

The only thing websites ought to do now is looking fine. You must also concentrate on smartphone users, in particular with Google’s first mobile strategy. And Google has agreed to emphasize mobile technology; it is not unexpected. 79% of smartphone users shop for their mobile devices in 2018.

Although some retailers can still battle for laptop customers, a significant majority are beginning to compete in mobile combat zones, optimizing the accessibility and ease of using their eCommerce business websites for mobile devices.

Fortunately, Magento and Shopify both have the default models for eCommerce platforms. Although always simple, these templates do the work and keep a sleek, intuitive user interface. However, Magento commerce shines in terms of smartphone experience if you are ready and able to grow your eCommerce store. We saw some fantastic prototypes from agencies as well as from traders.

Advanced smartphone layout customizations fewer render, “which one” a topic of the debate between Shopify Magento? “And more of a” can I? Noticed that Magento stores use interactive category maps, mega menus, and customizations in their innovative style.

Shopify has some of these but running the online store in the first-world mobile market means that it’s far more effective to manage an eCommerce website that offers you better features and clean codes to function as SEO.

Magento vs Shopify

Email marketing features

With access to things like useful marketing resources, your company can reach new clients and boost performance.

Shopify offers brilliant marketing resources, including the ability to email campaigns through Segundo, Klaviyo, Constant Touch integration, and much more. You can sell and advertise on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest directly. The potential of Shopify to endorse multilingual websites and allow you to sell items in multiple languages.

On the other angle, with much of its marketing resources, Magento depends on its marketplace. E.g. to carry out email promotions, you must add plugins, such as Remarkety. Moreover, if you want custom-based features, Shopify provides several advanced marketing solutions to help you scale the store; you need to use a web developer’s expertise to incorporate the marketing tools.

Magento vs Shopify

Ad integration features

Shopify can now hit a whole new user group by purchasing digital ad campaigns across the Microsoft Search Network, including Yahoo and AOL, inside Shopify Marketing. Click on “build campaign” in Shopify Marketing to make this function to connect your Microsoft Advertising account to your store to hit 116 million unique search companies per month in the US. Every month.

Shopify is the first trading website for Microsoft Ads integration. Through this latest functionality, you can customize and monitor your campaigns’ outcomes alongside your Shopify dashboard. You may also set a regular budget depending on your seasonal criteria and priorities.

You can build and handle directly inside Shopify announcement camps, simplify the promotion process, and save you time concentrating on your business.

Magento has collaborated with Google to create an indigenous Google Merchant Center and Google Ad incorporation in the Magento Admin to help eCommerce businesses simplify run Google ads and improve their ROI.

The functionality of Magento Advertising Channel:

You can now handle all-in-One solution-Google Center and Google Advertising with one end-to-end solution. There are several other options, but only both can meet the promotional objectives.

Native incorporation-manage the ease of your Magento Admin store to manage your Google ads.

You cannot have to add another site to the list. Instead, for all your eCommerce operations, Magento is the only source of truth.

Simple on-boarding and maintenance – make it easier for Magento to embark and maintain it. To keep the advertisements up to date, push Google’s product updates instantly when they arise inside Magento.

Smart Shopping Campaigns – Make use of the newest ad format from Google to exploit their apprenticeships to simplify ad management and optimize conversion and scope. By picking the items to be marketed, how much to sell, whom to target, and what to screen, Google can optimize for the best return on ad spending. Google has found that advertisers’ sales in Smart Shopping Campaigns have increased by over 20 percent at similar costs.

Magento vs Shopify

Payment processors

Payment processors encourage your online stores to accept payments online. Fortunately, Shopify and Magento will quickly link your business to a payment processor in only a couple of clicks. So what is the right platform?

Shopify has its own Shopify Payment gateway (except for the standard credit card processing fee) that charges zero transaction charges.

You can only pay for each credit card transaction fees by using Shopify Payments.

Shopify accepts over 100 separate payment gateways that come with Shopify’s purchase charge instead of Shopify Payments. Popular payment gateways include PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay.

Magento funds over 150 payment gateways, including WorldPay. You only need to install them from the marketplace to combine your store with the more popular processors such as Stripe or Square.

Moreover, when using your Magento-based Inventory, you can sell via Amazon directly. It is smart because you can reach even more customers through Amazon.

Magento vs Shopify

Reporting

In the monitoring and review section, Shopify has done a decent job. It provides the appropriate sales, customers, and visitors measurements.

You just have a summary sheet with funding reports (including fees and taxes) in your simple Shopify reporting solution.

You can view reports containing the following metrics if you select higher plans –

  • Reports on revenue-orders, returns, fees, etc
  • Consumer surveys- At-risk clients, consumers are returning, faithful clients, etc.
  • Reports on acquisition- time visits, publicity campaigns, etc
  • Behavior studies – Highest online store searches, cart review, etc
  • Specific reports-Build reports according to your needs

Magento report data may be opened or imported into other programs in a spreadsheet.

Reports on marketing: This category covers reports for Cart items, search words, carts, and problem reports from newsletters.

Check Records: This segment contains consumer and product feedback reports.

Reports on revenue: This segment covers PayPal and Braintree records for sales, fees, bills, postage, refunds, and coupons.

Insights into the system: The web analytics tool (SWAT) offers 24-hour, accurate monitoring of Magento’s Commerce Cloud installations’ results, reports, and suggestions.

Reports of Consumer: This category contains the entire, latest, wanted list and segments of your order account.

Reports of Product: Views, bestsellers, low stock, orders, and downloads in this list

Reports on private transactions: Information for events and private sales in this segment

Business Intelligence: To gain useful knowledge, access business information resources, and report.

Customer Engagement: Cloud Interaction monitoring on digital features. Set report configurations, sync data, and success assessment files, campaigns, and more.

Magento vs Shopify

Third-party Integrations & extras

Both of these eCommerce platforms allow users to add plugins and add ons to the online store. Shopify has a small range of applications that contribute to enhancing the functionality of your online store.

The Shopify App Store helps to grow your online store with add ons like applications, billing, and email marketing, and so on. The applications are eligible for quick download as well.

Magento is open-source, community-driven eCommerce platform that comes with a combination of free and paid add ons to expand the functionality and functions of the Out-of-the-box without thinking about writing code.

Mageplaza is an excellent choice for you, provided you are looking for a trustworthy, high-quality extension provider for Magento commerce. Various Mageplaza add ons for Magento commerce are available that are the cheapest and best for eCommerce solutions.

Magento vs Shopify

Support

Shopify already has a limited partner group with a lesser background in carrying out business experiences and delivering merchant services, primarily within North America. You can use the patented Liquid language used by the Shopify community of developers trained to assist with projects.

A massive, global Solution Partners group provides a wide variety of design and delivery services for Magento with experience in different verticals, segments, and geographical locations. They are skilled and ready to support you at every point of your digital business ride.

You can conveniently find tools and customer support for projects of all types for more than 260,000 developers worldwide.

Magento vs Shopify: Pricing Plans

Shopify plans: 

Four Shopify plans are available along with 14 days free trial.

Basic Shopify – $13/month (for starting your business)

Online store (with e-commerce website & blog)

Sales channels (online marketplaces & social media) Two staff accounts
Abandoned cart recovery Unlimited products
Free SSL certificate Discount codes
Manual order creation 2.0% transaction fees

Shopify plan– $54/month (for growing your business)

1.0% transaction fees Gift cards
Abandoned cart management All Basic Shopify plan features
Professional reports Five staff accounts

Advanced Shopify plan – $107/month (for scaling your business)

Advanced Shopify report builder 0.5% transaction fees
Third-party shipping rates All Basic features
15 staff accounts Abandoned cart management

Shopify Plus – by quote (enterprise solutions for large businesses & high-volume sellers)

Magento offers two pricing packages, namely Magento basic and Advanced Magento.

The final price will depend on your store’s total order size and the estimated annual online sales.

From the formation date, a 30-day free trial lasts. For more information regarding community edition and themes, you should contact their support team.

Magento Pricing: 

Magento Starter – starting at $2,000 per month

Promotions and Pricing
Site and Content Management Order Management and Customer Service
Analytics and Reporting Business Intelligence Catalog Browsing
Customer Loyalty 24×7 email support Website Product Browsing
Customer Accounts support Catalog Management Checkout and Payments
Cloud hosting & deployment Layout and Website Themes Customer Support for Global Sites

Magento Pro – starting at $3,417/month

  • All Starting features, plus
  • Hardware committed
  • Dedicated manager of the launch
  • Support fast availability
  • B2B optimized element, including:
  • corporate account management and support
  • customized themes catalogs and price-lists
  • A platform for rapid ordering
  • online requests for quote workflow
  • Enhanced visibility of inventory across retail channels
  • Use cases by different business type

Magento vs Shopify – Users Comparison

Shopify Users:

Shopify and Shopify Plus are drawing more large e-commerce customers with a growing market share on the global e-commerce network. More and more products switch to the web for online purchases. Here are the Shopify superstars without further ado.

BULLETPROOF

Bulletproof gives food, drink, and vitamins to help people reach the high-performance stage. They help people do more, learn more efficiently, and live better using technology, old experience, study, and science. Bulletproof are mindful of the world and market their ethically-driven goods online so that the fitness and wellness industry can create a prosperous future — through Shopify Plus.

HASBRO

World-famous toy distributor Hasbro agreed to supply Shopify Plus with a new e-commerce space, Hasbro Pulse. And the fans of the company look as excited as their toys!

THE ECONOMIST

The Economist online provides a robust analysis of world news, policy, trade, finances, research, and technology. A selection of printed and audiobooks from the Economist, several officers, and diaries are available at the e-commerce store.

HEINZ

The first direct bid to customers, fueled by Shopify Plus, is the 150-year-old food giant.

CRABTREE & EVELYN 

Crabtree & Evelyn, the scent and makeup company, had trouble defending the SFCC’s massive platform overhead and clunky ways. With a migration to e-commerce that focuses on the foreign market through Shopify Plus, they are now breathing worldwide elegance.

Magento Users:

Magento’s largest sites are focused on structure, load level, navigation, UX, and mobile convenience.

Helly Hansen 

The first in our list of Magento store examples is our famous Norwegian sportswear and extreme sports equipment. It’s a long-standing and conventional business. People worldwide have faith in their high-quality goods. In the world economy, the company has made its reputation. Helly Hansen had $650.8 million in gross sales in 2019. They continue to thrive and benefit online retailers.

Sigma Beauty 

The beauty and cosmetics industry is currently rising at an unbelievable rate: the famous British makeup company, Sigma Beauty. Their brush makeup trademark is not just in England but has become bestsellers.

Magento 2 is used by Sigma Beauty and can boast great functionality and usability.

Ford

Possibly there’s nobody in the world who hasn’t heard about the brand. The car industry’s Ford Motor Corporation is an important player. Ford is one of the world’s biggest carmakers and ranks fourth in revenue over its history. One of your mates possibly has a brand’s car. Since 2012, this US company has a Ford Accessories Online store on our Magento website page of cases.

Monin

Monin has also succeeded in our top list of Magento websites. Who hasn’t tasted her great syrups? It’s what makes one want to sip a cup of caramel or try a grenadine cocktail. The business is a big multinational player in the beverage industry: Monin manufacturers syrups, licorice, fruit combinations, frappes, and fruit sauces. It is a delicious online shop. The pictures of food build a vibrant atmosphere on the market.

The statistics indicate that Monin’s revenue growth rate was more than 400 percent – by 20 percent – and +10 percent, based on the official Magento case studies directory. The business has achieved excellent results by the decision to move to Magento 2.

Liverpool

Another corporation that is selected for Magento 2 is Liverpool FC online shop. An English soccer team of world renown has an own line of clothes. With Liverpool fans, the online store is trendy, which isn’t unexpected. Yet also people who don’t want to play football are still frequent customers.

Magento vs Shopify

User Review

Shopify

Ken m, Director Of Information Technology, Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)

What’s best for you?

Shopify makes creating online stores simply to view your items. You should start placing orders in a couple of hours.

There are several themes to make your store exclusive and welcoming. Shopify’s user-friendly interface is advantageous. Repeat consumers love to view historical orders and then repeatedly order them.

Suggestions to those considering the commodity:

Incredibly easy to connect to established shipping suppliers or use the reduced prices Shopify provides to different transport companies.

What are your issues with the product? What advantages did you achieve?

I can now enter the whole world through the store using Shopify.

You don’t need to run brick and mortar stores to get more sales in different locations. The store is Shopify.

Angie N, Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)

What do you like best?

Shops are straightforward to navigate, and no knowledge of coding is required.

The dashboard and analytical functions are incredibly realistic and offer a wide range of details used every day to strengthen our approach.

There is also a fantastic range of applications that include any functionality you might require in any field of your eCommerce business. The payments are easy to grasp and transparent.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

For all e-commerce owners or who are just beginning their e-commerce ride, I would suggest Shopify. A wide variety of available resources are essential for all large organizations, and I see no move to another platform as a result.

What are your issues with the product? What advantages did you achieve?

Shopify takes care of all the back-end work of building an extensive website and e-commerce store, and we were able to create an e-commerce store without much money.

Without coding expertise, it is straightforward to set up goods, distribution, and information sites.

Magento

Kelly S, Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)

What do you like best?

Magento has a robust application ecosystem, extensions, etc., and offers ease of use. Anything in the marketplace for any desire.

There have been many professional tools there for a while now, and they need a lot of expertise.

It is also easy to find strategists with expertise as one of the most often used sites. It’s a lot of possibilities if you need access to proper technological tools.

What are your issues with the product? What advantages did you achieve?

We should set up genuine changes in efficiency that continue to lead to improvements. All of them enhanced, as we kept investing in new technologies, clean up technical debt, speed, conversion, sales, etc.

Shahid N, Freelance Developer, Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)

What do you like best?

I love it; Magento comes with so many functions that other eCommerce sites don’t or may not need to buy extra plugins.

The company Magento helped us give consumers a range of features to incorporate or integrate with other sites for eCommerce

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Use Magento only if you need a lot of functionality or have a strong knowledge of languages, technologies, or programming. It might be fantastic and impossible to understand if you don’t.

What are your issues with the product? What advantages did you achieve?

With Magento, we give our customers too many features and save time on many of them. Magento is a dynamic but highly secure application with stable features for the eCommerce business.

Our Experience

Although Shopify and Magento are the best eCommerce sites, Shopify is a hosted solution and professionally operated service.

Magento is self-hosted and working out all of the software/system development and maintenance processes yourself as it is free of charge – which you can only do with very technologically advanced individuals (and not with average end-users).

After reading this Magento vs Shopify guide, we can say that no one size fits all, and you need to consider your business type before you choose the best eCommerce platform for your business.

Frequently asked Questions About Magento vs Shopify Comparison:

Is Magento easier than Shopify?

Comparing Magento vs Shopify, Magento is an open-source and eCommerce platform in the market and is self-hosted. Shopify is somewhat simple, and Magento is the leading player looking to build large sites. Shopify offers a primary user interface, simple drag, and drop to help you make your website get up and running in no time.

Do you have Magento rather than WordPress?

Magento is typically more mature from a growth standpoint than WordPress. It is not expandable and developer-friendly, but to be an eCommerce portal for businesses. For instance, a WordPress developer trying to create themes in Magento can be frustrated quickly.

Will Shopify enrich you?

Shopify cannot make you wealthy. Since it’s a hosted solution and easy to use, you can’t develop large online stores or bigcommerce using Shopify.

Is Shopify valuable?

It can work with a PayPal button or WooCommerce plugin on your website. If therefore, a multi-product eCommerce store with stocks, marketing software, customer information, etc., is required, then Shopify is worth it if you have the advantage/ conjugation balance depending upon your objectives, finances, skills, etc.

Is Shopify ideal for startups?

Shopify offers a perfect hosted platform with low startup costs and an easy to use eCommerce platform. For startups looking to develop a quick online store, this platform is right.

Is Magento open source still?

It is a free open source platform, and you can extend and modify your platform if you wish. Opensource users need access to various extensions and topics, and a growing ecosystem is supported.

Does dropshipping be advantageous in 2024?

Yeah. Well, yes. The number of eCommerce operations worldwide also makes dropshipping lucrative in 2024. It is prosperous and not just successful! Ecommerce and dropshipping revenues amounted to over $4 billion, a 7% growth annually over the last ten years.

Vanhishikha Bhargava
Vanhishikha Bhargava

Vanhishikha this side and I am an accomplished B2B SaaS content marketer and writer with over 8 years of experience helping startups and enterprises develop robust inbound strategies. As founder of Contensify, an award-winning content marketing agency, I specialize in creating pillar content and integrated campaigns that fuel marketing and sales. My data-driven approach to content has been featured on Forbes, Semrush, Coschedule, and other leading platforms. My expertise spans content strategy, writing, design, SEO, and social media. I leverage my technical background to create content that resonates with B2B buyers across ecommerce, HRTech, EdTech, martech, and other industries. An insightful consultant, I advise clients on aligning content with sales and ABM. I am passionate about producing high-quality content that drives organic growth. I thrive on helping B2B brands establish their voice and connect with audiences through inbound marketing. With my deep expertise and analytical mindset, I am dedicated to fueling content success.

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