Magento is the most powerful, robust, flexible, scalable, free and 100% open source ecommerce platform. Being named as the leader of all ecommerce platforms by Gartner, Magento powers you amazing omnichannel experience by selling on Mobile, in-store, on a plane or anywhere around the globe. Magento has one of the largest communities of developers and users who constantly keep the tool updated. There are thousands of Magento themes & extensions available ranging from analytics, ERP, reporting, Payment gateways to name a few. Magento has cutting edge features including product tagging and multi-address shipping. It is able to support multi-site/multi-stores/marketplaces.
Shopify is a modern ecommerce platform which provides an effortless setup to boost online business profitability. With its help, you can create a remarkable user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Businesses can easily incorporate social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google+ to sell products and services. With its advanced features, you can enable mobile business, including customization options and monitor analytics to know customer behavior as well as the source of the audience. If you have a big enterprise, you can go for Shopify Plus which is for high-volume and fast-growing ecommerce.
Often businesses get confused as to which is better than the other. The choice depends on your business, your approach, the money that will be invested by you and the sort of features that you would want on your ecommerce website.
Here is the comparison between Magento and Shopify that can help you to comprehend both the platforms and decide which one will suit you the most.
Features
Magento is the best ecommerce solution based on global reach. With thousands of extensions available, you can optimize your online store as per your needs. In terms of inventory management, you have to be cautious with Magento because it cannot hold an excess of products. You will be requiring a planned design to scale your store otherwise your website will become slow. However, you can have a large number of apps and add-Ons with Magento.
Shopify, on the other hand, has everything you need to sell online, on social media, or in person. Most of the small businesses or companies choose Shopify as their ecommerce platform because of its effective properties and user-friendliness. Shopify balances its services with its cutting-edge infrastructure and real fast response times. Shopify helps in customizing storefront & organizing products. It has a number of positive features such as it can be easily used on all operating systems, its installation and up-gradation are simple and it is easy to maintain. However, while starting your online business using Shopify, there are many things to consider which only a skilled and experienced Shopify web designer can provide you.
Customization
Magento’s customization features are immensely effective however it can be complicated for those trying it for the first time. You can easily move around the dashboard where you can also obtain reports and analytics. Another remarkable feature is the easy management of payment processors. You can have product tags or set unlimited product attributes. There is an easy classification of customers and utmost utilization of marketing characteristics. There is a simple one-page and guest checkout. You can also integrate with Authorize.net or PayPal for payment options.
Shopify, on the other hand, presents customization that is suitable for first-timers as well as seasoned users. You can add, modify and maintain any type of product page, blog or any other necessary web page. You will be able to choose free Shopify templates or buy one. Moreover, you will be able to customize them in two ways by using HTML and CSS or via theme settings that don’t require any specific expertise. The dashboard in Shopify is just like the one in WordPress with tabs for notifications, general settings, checkout, payments, taxes, and shipping. Shopify presents various links and modules to add contact information, support documents, and videos. There will be some tabs visible for managing inventory, creating gift cards, making collections and other functions.
API Integration
Magento has a robust and dynamic API system that will provide you the means to use web services that communicate with the Magento system. It can be used to perform a wide array of tasks such as creating a shopping app, integrating with CRM, ERP and CMS.
Shopify API is a lightweight system for accessing the Shopify REST admin web services. All API usage happens through Shopify applications where businesses can develop applications for themselves through their own admin. Developers are given functionality across articles, assets, customers, events and more. The API uses a RESTful interface and responses are formatted in XML and JSON.
Magento vs Shopify: Best Ecommerce Platform Review – An Infographic
Infographic Source: Mofluid.com
Optimization
Magento is known for its high responsiveness. Its frontend presents you options like gift cards, coupon codes, a swift checkout and a customer dashboard. Among the built-in features, it provides upsells and cross-sells, a saved shopping cart, wishlists, quantity discounts, related products and also an order status module. To make customer experience exciting, you can add images that can be zoomed, product reviews and re-orders.
Shopify is a completely managed and hosted solution and you will not encounter the inventory management problem. It also has more user-friendly and contemporary themes. Blogging is easy to set up because blogging functionality is an integrated feature in Shopify. Shopify’s frontend has a minimalist design and along with presenting an excellent checkout area, it is responsive for viewing on smartphones. There is a quick integration with Facebook and Pinterest, however, a lot of other functions vary on the plan that is decided.
Access to Source Code
As Magento is an open source platform, you get the access to modify its code which provides you with an incredible creative freedom when designing and configuring your website. This attracts sellers with their own developers in-house. However, you may need the assistance of a Magento developer who can customize the codes for unique functionalities like optimizing the shopping cart, products pages, shipping options etc.
Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform which means that all the server issues are handled by Shopify and user does not have any access to the source code. As a result, you get a less flexible solution than Magento, but it is much more user-friendly and easy to use.
Costs
To download the Magento Community Edition, you don’t have to pay money but you will require asking for a quote if you want to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition. Nevertheless setting up Magento store is a complex task and you will need to hire a Magento developer.
There are no setup fees in Shopify but there are monthly fees involved. Considering your requirements, you can select any of the 4 different plans that Shopify provides. They also provide a free trial for 14-day so that you can test and check its features and be sure while buying it.
Marketing/SEO Features
Magento has immensely robust features in terms of optimizing an ecommerce store for search engines such as SEO friendly URLs, Meta tags, a Google Sitemap and handy Google Content API that will help to grow your SEO endeavors. It has easy integration with Google Analytics.
Shopify has all the essential components such as robot.txt and Google sitemap. .XML files, canonical URL tags to circumvent duplicate content, easily editable meta descriptions, title tags, and URLs.
Newsletter
Magento provides a newsletter subscription service. Coupon codes can be integrated easily in their system to obtain promotions right in your newsletter.
You can easily design your own signup forms while using Shopify, however, the build in subscription management is not great so you may require an extra app to send emails.
Conclusion:
Using the right platform is extremely important because the success of your online business depends on it. So choose the right platform that will enable you to grow your business and stay ahead of your competition.