What is the difference between Shopify and Magento?

When you start an e-commerce business, it’s important to choose the right platform for your website. The most demanded e-commerce platforms are Magento 2 and Shopify. In this article, we will look through the main advantages of both and tell the difference between Shopify and Magento.

Shopify features

Short overview

Pros

The main advantage of Shopify is that it is easy to use. The platform is a hosted solution for an online business that doesn’t require any technical knowledge and skills. It has a user-friendly interface, multiple themes for your storefronts, and App Store with over 3,200 apps to customize your website. This is an all-in-one solution with 24/7 support.

Cons

First of all, Shopify works by subscription and charges fees for every transaction made in your store.

If you need a lot of customization and install too many applications, they can make your store complex and decrease performance. Since Shopify is a hosted solution, you cannot control and set up server settings of your website, and if you got loading speed issues, you need to contact the support team to fix them.

Finally, vanilla Shopify doesn’t have multi-language capabilities, and to launch an international business, you’ll need to set up multiple apps and add-ons.

Magento 2 features

Short overview

Pros

Magento 2 is a free open source platform that is highly customizable via both ready-made extension and coding. It gives you a full control over customer experience with over 5000 plugins.

It is suitable for large and fast-growing international businesses. Versus Shopify, Magento 2 has built-in functionality for multiple stores, languages, currencies, and worldwide shipping carriers. It has a big supportive community.

Also, Magento is a self-hosted platform, so you can choose any server and make the needed changes to improve website performance.

Cons

On the other hand, Magento requires some technical knowledge and skills. So you’ll need to understand the technical part or hire a professional developer/agency when you need customization.

Note: If you need to add custom features to your Magento 2, we are always ready to help you with custom development.

Magento 2 vs Shopify: what is better?

What to choose depends on business needs. Shopify is more suitable for small and medium-sized local stores. Magento 2 will help to easily manage an international business with complex custom features.