Magento vs shopify: which E-commerce platform is Right for Your Business

Magento vs shopify: which E-commerce platform is Right for Your Business

It’s always a tough decision to choose between Magento and Shopify. The truth is you are not the only one facing issues while choosing the right e-commerce platform for your business. Magento and Shopify are two of the popular e-commerce platforms in the market.

Though both are put in a competitive scenario, they are quite different from each other. However, since it’s nerve-wracking to start from scratch after making the wrong decision, it is better to choose the right platform in the first place.

It is very important to select the right e-commerce platform for creating, managing and maintaining an online store. Always remember the e-commerce platform that you choose can be an important factor responsible for success and failure for your business.

There are several e-commerce platforms in the market. However, not all of them are as famous and popular as Magento and Shopify. Both these platforms are powering a large portion of e-commerce websites across the globe.

If we talk about the difference between Magento and Shopify, Magento is way more reliable when it comes to designing complex e-commerce sites. So, if you are looking forward to developing an e-commerce store with an extensive range of features, choosing Magento is the right option.

All you have to do is hire a Magento eCommerce development company in India and let the professionals build an online store for your business.

However, that doesn’t mean that Shopify cannot be trusted as a reliable e-commerce platform. Here are some of the points that will make it easy for you to cherry-pick the most suitable platform for your online business.

  • Shopify is for the beginner and small-scale businesses. The features offered by Shopify are very simple. Whereas if talk about Magento, it is packed with a wide range of features that’ll make it easier to build personalized e-commerce stores. However, the learning curve for Magento is quite steep and requires technical expertise.
  • Shopify is a commercial product whereas Magento is open-source and doesn’t require any license fee.

It is also worth noting that Magento has a paid version, known as Magento enterprise edition. However,  small businesses and startups are less likely to invest in the enterprise edition as they usually look for affordable eCommerce development services.

Comparison between Magento and Spotify:

  • Shipping charges calculation:

Both these platforms are extremely flexible in calculating the shipping charges, which is one of the most important aspects of selling physical goods through an e-commerce storefront. Shopify also coordinates with shipping estimates along with more exact shipping calculators which might be very beneficial for you if you are trying to be as accurate as possible with your clients.

  • Online store functionality:

Both Shopify and Magento provide the basic store functionalities that are very powerful and easy to maintain on an ongoing basis. Shopify is way easier to set up as compared to Magento as you can get the basic features like shopping carts, checkouts, collections, product pages, and modules as all these are included in both Magento and Shopify.

  • Arrangements for coupons and discount codes:

One of the main features of coupons and discount codes is not available on Shopify’s light plan which is a bit of a longshot here. However, it is available on all the other plans.

Magento provides the facility of discount codes and coupons and it does offer the calculation functionality from the very beginning. This is one of the best features given by the Magento to the customers who are more attracted to the discount codes and coupons.

  • Blogging performance:

Both Magento and Shopify has the functionality of blogging which is available as a unified feature at Shopify and Magento. If you have a developer who is working on your site for a very long time, it gives you a benefit as your Magento blog should be far more customizable as compared to Shopify.

  • SEO capabilities:

Both Magento and Shopify are SEO-friendly. It means that you can optimize different elements of the site to make it search engine friendly. As a result, you can drive more organic traffic to your store.

  • Inventory management:

Shopify plans and allows for unlimited products in your store. Magento also provides you the services to create and sell an unlimited number of products. You can easily create the products on both the platforms but Shopify gets the thumbs up as it provides the direct integration to drop shopping inventory apps like oberlo.

The cost – magento vs spotify:

Setup fee:

Shopify does not charge any setup fee. On the other hand, they offer you a free trial for 14 days in which you can test and evaluate the functions and features which are offered by their e-commerce platform. And if we talk about Magento, the question of setup fee can never arise as it is simply free and the cost does not arise as it is absolutely free. There are various plans which are offered by Shopify starting from monthly fees starting from $14 to $179 as follows.

  • Light plan: $9
  • Shopify plan: $79
  • Basic Shopify plan: $29
  • Advanced Shopify plan: $299

And if you choose Magento, you are free to choose the hosting of your choice as well. This makes Magento comparatively more affordable than Shopify as hostings anywhere between $5 to $100. One of the most popular and powerful eCommerce hosting providers is Bluehost which is very decent in nature. Here you can buy the hosting for your Magento very inexpensively.

Theme prices:

Both platforms provide you with a plethora of free and paid themes. Shopify and Magento theme prices usually start at $80 and $1 respectively. Of course, the paid themes are more appealing and can easily attract customers. However, you can still choose free themes as well.

Magento vs shopify which one is better for you:

Both Magento and Shopify are powerful e-commerce platforms but if we look deeply Shopify provides greater ease to the people as it is beginner-friendly.

Magento, on the other hand, is a complete e-commerce development package, but you must have the desired technical knowledge to work with Magento.

Large business enterprises always prefer the Magento platform as they want to manage each and everything from their own perspectives. Whereas Shopify is best for the small business and startups as the platform handles everything on its own.

By all the difference between Magento and Shopify, it is clear that Shopify is a suitable platform for small businesses while the advanced functionalities of Magento make it a suitable platform for large-scale enterprise e-commerce websites.

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