Choosing the right ecommerce platform is crucial to the success of your online store. Two popular options are Magento and Shopify, each with its advantages and disadvantages. In this article, we’ll explore the six main differences between Magento and Shopify store development that will help you make that important decision for your business.
Cost
Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform with three pricing plans ranging from $29 to $299 per month. Each plan includes different features; the higher the plan, the lower the transaction fees. However, you must pay fees using payment gateways other than Shopify Payments, such as PayPal or Amazon Pay.
In contrast, Magento is an open-source platform that is free to use. However, you must purchase hosting, a domain name, and an SSL certificate for your store, which can quickly add up. To host your website, you can opt for a plan that costs as low as $12 per month. To secure a domain name, you will need to spend at least $14 per year, and an SSL certificate will cost you $37 per year. Keep in mind that although Magento doesn’t charge any transaction fees, you should still factor in these extra expenses.
User Friendliness
Shopify is famous for its user-friendly interface, which allows non-technical users to easily navigate and modify their store with a drag-and-drop interface. On the other hand, Magento is more complex and requires technical knowledge to set up and maintain. While Magento ecommerce development offers more customization options for those with coding skills, it can be challenging for beginners.
Themes and Customization Options
Shopify store development has a range of themes to choose from, both free and paid. The platform offers nine free themes and 64 paid themes, all of which are mobile responsive. Shopify’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for users to update and customize the store without needing high-level development expertise. However, Shopify users cannot access the source code, which may limit their options for store-level customizations.
Magento ecommerce development offers more powerful features than Shopify, but you may need a helping hand to fully customize your store with Magento. Magento offers 17 themes, both free and paid, with 10 of those being fully mobile responsive. Premium Magento themes may come with a price tag, but they provide many customization options. Unlike Shopify store development, Magento is self-hosted, giving users endless customization possibilities over the design and operation of their store.
Customer Support
Through Shopify, you have the option to reach out to customer support instantly using either phone or live chat, ensuring prompt assistance from a representative. Additionally, you can inquire and access user responses within the active Shopify community. By utilizing Shopify, you gain a solid feeling of collaborating with a proficient team of engineers and reliable business advisors.
If you go with Magento, you can only seek consultants from forums and communities. On the other hand, because Magento is free, it does not offer support as a service to its users. Users can look for advice and instructions from experts worldwide in online communities like Magento Community and Magento Stack Exchange.
App Stores
Shopify offers an app store that helps users expand the functionality of their online store through apps for many purposes, including email marketing, accounting, analytics, and more. Shopify also moderates its app store well, so users don’t have to worry about installing junk apps that could damage their site.
Magento offers a huge collection of extensions that integrate smoothly with Magento’s backend. With over 5,000 extensions, users can add more features to their online store without worrying about writing code. Regarding add-ons, Magento surely beats Shopify, as it has over 5,000 extensions to powerfully boost your store.
SEO Capabilities
Shopify store development offers a straightforward approach to SEO. Changing page titles and meta descriptions are easy, and auto-generated canonical tags are added to pages to prevent duplicate content. Your website’s sitemap files are also automatically generated.
However, the most prominent limitation of Shopify store development is that it does not give you complete freedom in choosing your URLs. A subfolder structure such as “blog” or “news” will always be in your blog URL.
On the other hand, Magento allows for finely-tuned permalinks for inventory items, which can be crucial for SEO. By leveraging no follow links, redirects, and canonical tags to their fullest extent, Magento streamlines the process of search engine indexing and enhances comprehension of its website’s structure.
Magento is SEO-friendly and can help you integrate and implement your custom SEO and digital marketing strategies without major hassles. It also allows you to customize and tweak your design for maximum output.
However, Magento ecommerce development requires technical experience to operate effectively. On the other hand, Shopify store development is more user-friendly than Magento, making it a better option for beginners and those who want to avoid technical headaches. You’ll be able to get online faster with Shopify and have the support team close at hand.
Conclusion
Both Shopify and Magento are great eCommerce platforms with their strengths and weaknesses. We hope that this blog post has provided you with a clear understanding of what you can anticipate from these two eCommerce platforms. It’s important to carefully consider your business needs and requirements before deciding.
At Vserveecommerce, we specialize in meeting all your Magento and Shopify store development needs, providing development, customization, migration, and managed services. Our team of experts is ready to help you succeed in the e-commerce world. This blog draws inspiration from a YouTube video titled “Shopify vs Magento Comparison: Top 6 Significant Differences to Consider (2021 Updated).”
