Choosing Between Magento & Shopify – Which is Right for Your Business?

11 March 2021

Are you having trouble making a decision on whether or Shopify or Magento would be best for your company? If so, rest assured you’re not alone. Many businesses are struggling with the same issue. Both ecommerce platforms are very popular, so choosing one can be a challenge.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of both platforms and hopefully, that will help you make a decision!

What is Magento 2?

This is an open-source platform, which is free to install on your computer. The expenses you’ll need to cover are web hosting, extensions, and security.

While this is a great platform, it may be somewhat challenging to deal with if you don’t know how to code. You may find other platforms are easier to use, which will work just as well for your ecommerce business. Magento is a better option for enterprise businesses, who have on-site IT teams.

The Pros & Cons of Magento & Shopify

Let’s start out with the pros and cons of Shopify.

Pros of Shopify

Shopify makes it easy to sell across a wide variety of channels including eBay, Instagram, Amazon, and Facebook.

It offers over 70 responsive themes, with 10 free options, and 64 premium options (you pay for these).

In addition, Shopify has its own app store, which offers a large range of apps that add more functionality to your site.

Cons of Shopify

Shopify is one of the only platforms to charge its own fees. You can wave the fees by using Shopify Payments.

When it comes to the cost of apps, it’s easy to buy too many!

Pros of Magento

On the other side of the fence, Magento offers a larger user community called the Magento Forum. Here, you’ll receive a comprehensive answer on almost any issue you’re having.

Flexible Platform

When it comes to being flexible, Magento is the best. You have the flexibility to create your store in any way, as long as you know how to code.

Best for Medium- to Large Businesses

The Magento platform is advanced enough to provide all the functionality an enterprise site requires. This means having an in-house IT department or choosing a third-party agency.

Cons of Magento

This is not a platform that’s easy for beginners. You or someone on the team will need to know how to code.

Magento is more challenging to install and to find a hosting service that support this ecommerce platform.

Ease of Use – Which Platform is Best?

When it comes to ease of use, Shopify is the hands-down winner in this area. This is a drag-n-drop platform that means it’s easy to customise just by moving elements on the page. Put them exactly where and how you want, rather than having to code them in.

Magento has quite a learning curve and is not for beginners who don’t code. This platform uses a lot of jargon and code in the building process. The other option is to be hired as a developer to build your ecommerce site for you.

In the end, Shopify is the better choice if you don’t code. Magento is better for those who code and it’s a more flexible choice. You can build and customise your store with coding.

Sales Tools – Is Magento or Shopify the Best Choice?

Sales tools are a part of building an ecommerce site. You must have these. Let’s take look at the features offered by Shopify that help you to make money with your site:

Multi-channel selling means you’ll make more money by taking advantage of more than one online selling tool, which includes Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon, and Instagram. These are built into the platform.

Sell both physical and digital products

Abandoned cart recovery: you can more easily recover abandoned carts and make money with this feature. The platform sends an email to those who have left your ecommerce site before making a purchase.

Partners with DHL Express, Canada Post, and UPS. This makes it easy to find a courier service, which delivers products to your customers.

Magento Sales Tools Pros

Multi-channel selling: just install extensions to integrate with your platform of choice include Facebook, eBay, and Instagram.
Abandoned cart recovery
The ability to set percentage and fixed price discounts
Checkout customisation

In this case, Shopify is again the winner. This is because it has a wider range of sales tools. Plus, it’s one of the best ecommerce platforms you can choose. It’s easy to use, offers plenty of built-in tools, and more.

Themes – Which is Best Magento or Shopify?

Themes are extremely important; this is the first thing customers will see when visiting your site. So, you’ll need to be careful when choosing the theme that will work the best and make a great first impression. And don’t forget, you want your ecommerce site to look credible and be trusted.

When it comes to Shopify, this platform provides a mobile responsive site. This means your website will look great whether displayed on a tablet or a mobile phone. Once you’ve chosen your them, then you can customise the site as desired. And there’s no coding involved.

While Magento does offer pre-made themes that don’t require coding to customise, you will need a coder if you’d like to customise the site.

We have to go with Shopify on this one because it’s cheaper to use and offers a broader choice of themes. Plus, you don’t need to know how to code, unliked Magento.

Marketing Features – Shopify or Magento?

You’ll definitely need some powerful marketing tools to help your business grow!

When it comes to Shopify, this platform includes some great marketing tools. These even allow you to run email campaigns through a third party such as Constant Contact, Klaviyo, Seguno, and more. This platform also makes it easy to advertise on different social channels such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. Not only that, Shopify makes it easy to support multilingual websites. This way you can reach out to a global audience.

On the other hand, Magento has its own marketing tools that are included in its Marketplace. You’ll need to install extensions to run email campaigns, as well as hire a web developer to create customised features. Shopify, however, offers so many marketing tools it leaves Magento in the dust.

Shopify has the win, here, too. It simply offers a broader range of marketing tools to help you reach out to customers.

Summing It Up

There are quite a few other factors to check between Magento and Shopify. However, as you can see Shopify has a lot to offer. It’s easy to use, with no coding required, and you can get your shop up and running that much faster.

Magento is better if you’d like to take the time to code and heavily customise your online shop. It’s also the better option for medium- to large enterprises.

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