Magento Vs Shopify - Choose The Right Platform For Your eCommerce Website

Magento Vs Shopify

Are you confused if you should pick Magento or Shopify for your e-commerce website? Shopify is preferred by businesses that are new to the digital world since it is simple to use and manages large volumes. However, Magento’s flexible platform capabilities give coders enough space to customize sites and use powerful features to their advantage. Both these platforms offer unique advantages that assist you to establish your digital store.

Below are few comparisons between Magento and Shopify to help you decide which platform will fit best for your online store.

Magento vs Shopify Comparison

1. Popularity

Shopify

In the last couple of years, Shopify’s swiftly surging to occupy 21 percent of eCommerce shops. Since it’s easy to use, it has garnered attention from a lot of businesses.

Magento

Magento, launched in 2004, was the most famous eCommerce medium. Magento’s popularity lies in its personalization capabilities, and it still attracts a loyal customer base. It powers around 12 percent of all internet shops, and 1.2 percent of businesses use it.

2. Code Usability

Shopify

‍Shopify protects its code and doesn’t allow any modifications. With Shopify, customization and new add-ons are not possible. While this move reduces flexibility, businesses still appreciate Shopify because it works well for simple web stores.

Magento

‍Magento empowers the programmers to build on their code as they see fit for the consumer.

We’ve highlighted some other code differences for you.

Speaking in terms of their code usability, Magento vs Shopify is a battle of open-sourced vs a hosted platform.

3. Ease of Use

Naturally, most novice firms want to build sites quicker and start selling as fast as they can. They need their team to quickly get accustomed to the site, understand its features, and take advantage of those features easily.

Shopify

‍Shopify is the ideal choice for novice businesses to quickly set up businesses and run them well. Simply browsing for 10 minutes can aid quick learning! With its revolutionary drag-and-drop tools, website building becomes extremely simple and fast. To use even more attractive features, firms can look up to their store to add multiple apps.

Magento

‍Magento is a quick-to-deploy tool that needs technical expertise to build. Additionally, sustaining such sites also requires extended developer support to fix issues and ensure smooth running. While it may not suit new stores, experienced e-commerce stores find its flexibility and custom interface extremely liberating. As compared to Shopify, Magento needs a lot of design restyling that takes up significant set-up time.

4. Hosting

Shopify

‍Through Shopify, you host your website through cloud-based systems. So, you don’t need to search for a different hosting service. The platform handles your server operations, site performance, and security updates effectively. In exchange for this freedom, you lose site control and the ability to manage your data according to your needs. For retail companies with highly sensitive information, it’s risky to try this medium. Such platforms need a high level of personalization that cloud services simply cannot provide.

Magento

‍Through Magento, you can choose to opt for on-site hosting, on-the-cloud hosting, or third-party hosting. If you choose cloud hosting, you allow Magento to host and run your site for you. However, the open-source option makes you in charge of purchasing the domain and hosting the site. Through this flexibility, you get full server access and directory access to change the code according to your needs. For this additional facility, inevitably you need to shell out more bucks for security and hosting.

5. Costs

Shopify

‍The first step towards building a website on this platform is to select a good theme. You could either choose one of the ten free themes or opt for classy paid themes for $140 to $150. The right theme will help you enhance customer experience, increase site visits, and improve SEO rankings significantly. Eventually, this sum pays for itself when you garner sales.

Shopify gives a free domain name if you opt for their monthly package! However, it’ll contain the brand in your site URL like www.yoursitename.myshopify.com. To avoid such an unprofessional domain name, we recommend that you buy it instead. You may have to shell an additional $10 to $15 per year for it.

he platform also offers a 14-day trial period to test out their plan before opting for a paid one. If you decide to use their paid services, you can choose a monthly plan, a 1-year plan, or a 2-year plan. By selecting the longer duration plans, savings can go up to 20 percent over 2 years.

These costs cover: -

1. 24*7 site support
2. Free SSL certificate that shows your site is secure
3. Analysis that protects you against hackers
4. Unlimited storage space for all site content
5. Ample space to handle a high volume of users

Magento

‍Just like Shopify, theme and domain name charges apply to the Magneto platform as well. However, since it’s a self-hosted platform, hosting service charges also apply with the other costs. If you choose a low-cost hosting service, you’ll compromise on the bandwidth and site performance. Also, as you scale, you need to ensure your hosting provider scales with you. When you don’t pay attention to these issues, your online presence becomes less appealing to your users, and it impacts your shop.

So, select a hosting plan that gives your site room to flourish and manage a greater visitor load. Hosting services cost $4 to $1000 per month based on your storage needs. Don’t skimp on this part as it can lead to site crashes that’s bad for business! We recommend Bluehost or HostGator for hosting services.

If you’re not well-versed with coding skills, you’ll also need a great developer by your side to create a compelling site for you. Ensure that you factor in development costs as well.

Magento vs Shopify - Conclusion

These were few of the differences between Magento and Shopify. Shopify is the best for businesses that want to build and scale quickly without focusing on the technical aspects. You can opt for Magento if you need greater control over your resources and can spend a lot on your site.

Magento vs Shopify Running a eCommerce business can be simplified with our eCommerce outsourcing services. Our services can assist you in managing your everyday operations seamlessly enabling you to focus on your strategic business plan. Over the years, Invensis has successfully provided eCommerce support services for numerous online retail businesses across the world.