Shopify vs Magento: Which eCommerce Platform Should You Choose?

Choosing between Shopify vs Magento (now Adobe Commerce) is always one of the most important decisions when building or expanding an online store. Although these are platforms serving millions of businesses globally, the systems meet completely different needs. In this article, Nextsky will help you determine which is the most suitable choice for your development strategy.

Introduction to Shopify and Magento

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a comprehensive e-commerce platform that enables businesses to easily create an online store, sell across multiple channels, and manage inventory, orders, and payments without worrying about servers or security. With a rich app store, a community of experts to support, and advanced plans like Shopify Plus, the platform helps brands expand internationally and provide a seamless shopping experience. Thanks to its flexibility and strong scalability, Shopify has become the top choice for millions of businesses.

Read more: What is Shopify? All Information About The Platform from A-Z

What is Magento?

Launched in 2008, Magento (Adobe Ecommerce) is an open-source e-commerce platform that enables users to customize the back-end fully. Built on PHP with MySQL/MariaDB, Magento seamlessly integrates features like product management, shopping cart, payment options, and SEO, while remaining easy to scale for large enterprises. Despite some bugs in certain versions, Magento stays a flexible choice and has continued to be developed by Adobe since 2018.

1. Best pricing and plan

Shopify

Shopify operates on a SaaS (Software as a Service) model, so the entire technical infrastructure from hosting and security to server maintenance, is fully built into the service package. This allows businesses to completely ignore technical operations and focus 100% on sales and growth.

Shopify pricing plans include:

• Basic: $32/month
• Grow: $92/month
• Advanced: $399/month
• Shopify Plus: starting from $2,300/month

In addition to the plan cost, Shopify has the following additional fees:

• Transaction fees: 0.6% – 2% if using third-party payment gateways
• Themes and apps: charged separately depending on the type

Thanks to its all-in-one model and reasonable starting price, Shopify is especially suitable for startups and small to medium-sized businesses, although total costs can increase significantly as traffic and demand grow.

Magento (Adobe Commerce)

Magento offers deep customization and flexibility, but comes with a much higher initial investment.

• Magento Open Source: Free (but you pay yourself for hosting, security, domain, and all technical implementation)
• Magento Commerce: $43,000 – $189,000/year
• Magento Commerce Cloud: $60,000 – $247,000/year

The two premium commercial editions provide:

• In-depth technical support
• Full access to advanced features
• Software maintenance, updates, and infrastructure

Magento is best suited for large enterprises or brands that require a high degree of customization. After the initial setup, ongoing costs are typically lower than those of SaaS models when scaling to massive levels.

Read more: Shopify vs Wix: Which Is Better for Your Business?

2. Ease of Use - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify excels in ease of use thanks to its fully hosted, all-in-one model. The platform is designed so that anyone, even with zero technical experience can build and manage an online store. With a clean, intuitive admin interface, fast operations, and a smooth setup process, you get a truly user-friendly experience. While advanced customization is limited to what the platform and its app ecosystem allow, Shopify is perfect for businesses that want to launch quickly.

Magento

Compared to Shopify, Magento is generally considered less user-friendly because it doesn’t come with pre-built infrastructure. However, the big advantage of its open-source nature is virtually unlimited customization and complete control over the website. This means the initial setup requires technical expertise. Although the flexibility creates complexity initially, once set up, users often find the admin panel intuitive and easy to use.

3. Design & Templates - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify offers 24 free themes and 961 paid themes, priced between $100 and $500. Every theme comes with flexible options, allowing you to easily change the look and feel of your store without deep HTML or CSS knowledge. Therefore, Shopify is a perfect choice if you want a beautiful, professional online store quickly and conveniently.

Magento

In contrast, Magento stands out with nearly unlimited customization possibilities. The platform provides 9 free themes and numerous paid themes (around $100), plus a simple drag-and-drop page builder. Moreover, Magento allows you to personalize content for different customer segments, delivering unique experiences tailored exactly to specific business needs.

Read more: Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which Ecommerce Platform is Better?

4. App integrations - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify comes with a wide range of built-in features that cover most basic e-commerce needs, plus an App Store boasting over 12,320 apps. These apps are specifically designed and vetted to integrate seamlessly with the Shopify platform, minimizing compatibility issues and technical risks.

Magento

Magento has a marketplace with more than 5,660 extensions and plugins. However, installing, configuring, and managing these plugins typically requires technical knowledge, along with regular updates and maintenance to keep everything secure and running smoothly.

5. Core E-commerce features  - Shopify

Both Shopify and Magento deliver powerful e-commerce functionality, but they take completely different approaches depending on business needs and technical capabilities.

Shopify

Shopify focuses on simplicity and speed-to-launch, making it ideal for businesses that want to get started quickly. Core features such as product management, inventory tracking, secure checkout, and abandoned cart recovery are built-in and work seamlessly out of the box. Shopify also makes multi-channel selling straightforward with native integrations to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, and more. While the built-in features are very strong, more advanced functionality usually comes through third-party apps from the Shopify App Store.

Magento

Magento, on the other hand, excels in flexibility and scalability, offering advanced native features like product bundling, complex pricing rules, gift cards, reward points, and robust multi-store/multi-website management. Because of its open-source foundation, businesses can fully customize every aspect to match exact requirements. This level of power, however, requires technical expertise or dedicated developer support, making Magento the preferred choice for large enterprises with sufficient in-house or outsourced technical resources.

Read more: Shopify vs. Square: Which Is Better for Your Business?

6. Marketing - A Tie

Shopify

• SEO: Shopify automatically provides a sitemap, allows editing of meta tags, alt text for images, and clean URLs. Although URLs are limited to predefined formats, you can further enhance SEO with apps like SEO Booster to detect and fix issues.
• Email Marketing: Shopify has a built-in email marketing tool that lets you create beautiful, professional emails with a wide variety of templates. Additionally, the abandoned cart recovery feature effectively boosts revenue.
• Social Media Marketing: Shopify enables direct product sharing to major social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
• Influencer & Collaboration Marketing: Shopify Collabs helps connect with creators and KOLs, making it easier to promote products and expand brand reach.

Magento

• SEO: Magento allows full control over page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text, helping search engines better understand content and improve Google rankings. Thanks to its high customizability, you can optimize SEO exactly to your store’s specific needs.
• Email Marketing & Newsletters: Magento supports newsletter management and email marketing, but you usually need to install extensions or involve a developer for advanced customization. You can create flexible coupons and set up discounts for abandoned cart recovery.
• Landing Pages & Promotions: The platform lets you create dedicated landing pages for each product category and run multiple promotional campaigns, optimizing customer experience and increasing sales.
• Multi-channel Selling: Magento can integrate multi-channel sales with Facebook, Instagram, or eBay via extensions. Some partners (Meta, Google, Instagram) offer native integrations, while others like TikTok may require custom or third-party solutions.

7. Payment options & transaction fees - Shopify

Shopify

• Payment options: Shopify supports over 100 payment gateways, offering great flexibility for accepting payments worldwide. However, transaction fees apply depending on your chosen plan.
• Credit card processing fees:
  • Basic Shopify: 2.9% + 30¢ USD per transaction
  • Shopify (Standard): 2.7% + 30¢ USD
  • Advanced Shopify: 2.5% + 30¢ USD
  • Shopify Plus: custom pricing
• Transaction fees: Using Shopify Payments eliminates transaction fees entirely. Customers using Shop Pay also enjoy fee-free, faster checkouts.

Magento

• Payment options: Magento does not have its own built-in payment gateway like Shopify. You need to install extensions from the Magento Marketplace. Currently, there are over 200 payment options and enhanced checkout experiences available.
• Transaction fees: Each gateway has its own fee structure. For example, PayPal in the US charges 3.49% + $0.49 for domestic transactions and 5% for international cards, with no setup or monthly fees.
• Multi-language support: Magento’s payment apps support multiple languages, which is very useful for international expansion and serving global customers.

8. Shipping & inventory management - Shopify

Shopify

• Order and inventory management: Shopify offers a complete order management system, making it easy to track orders, manage inventory across multiple locations, and store customer data efficiently. Small and medium-sized businesses can operate their stores efficiently and without complications.
• Shipping integrations: Shopify integrates with major carriers, automates shipping notifications, and supports multiple shipping options based on weight, speed, and international destinations.
• Dropshipping & product storage: Shopify fully supports dropshipping and offers unlimited product storage, allowing businesses to expand their catalog without warehouse limitations.

Magento

• Advanced management: Magento provides greater flexibility for businesses with complex needs. It supports advanced inventory management, global tracking, and POS integration.
• Shipping options: Magento allows highly customizable shipping methods (fixed rates, weight-based, table rates, etc.). However, setting up and managing large inventories requires significant technical knowledge and can impact performance depending on server configuration.
• Third-party integrations: Both Magento and Shopify can integrate with advanced third-party warehouse solutions like Linnworks or Brightpearl.

Verdict: Shopify is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses thanks to its user-friendly interface, easy management, and fast shipping integrations. Magento, on the other hand, is better suited for large enterprises that need deep customization, complex inventory management, and high flexibility — though it requires more technical expertise.

9. Reporting and analytics - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify includes financial and product reports in all plans, but detailed reports on sales, customers, and orders are only available in higher-tier plans. You can also integrate Google Analytics 4 for deeper insights and more accurate business decisions.

Magento

Magento provides access to most reports even in the free (Open Source) version, including abandoned carts, customers, products, orders, and reviews. Paid editions offer advanced, dynamic, and visually rich reports. Basic reports are usually sufficient, and you can integrate Google Tag Manager or GA4 without upgrading.

Verdict: In summary, Shopify is best for businesses that want simple, fast reporting, while Magento offers deep, flexible, and detailed data control for strategic decision-making.

10. Security - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify is a highly secure platform that hosts and manages its entire server on your behalf. It utilizes SSL encryption to safeguard customer data, incorporates built-in anti-fraud features to detect suspicious orders, and maintains a 24/7 security team. This enables businesses to operate securely online without worrying about complex configurations.

Magento

Magento is also built to be secure, but sellers must set up and manage their own servers, SSL certificates, and other security measures. While some hosting providers support it, businesses still need to take additional steps to ensure their stores are fully protected.

11. International selling - Shopify

Shopify 

Shopify simplifies international selling through its Shopify Markets feature. Merchants can either create multiple stores for each market or manage everything from one store with customized pricing, shipping, language, and content per region. Shopify Plus further enhances this with up to 9 additional localized stores. Shopify’s integration with payment gateways and shipping providers makes it a strong choice for businesses seeking a quick and easy international expansion.

Magento 

Magento offers greater flexibility but requires more technical expertise. It allows merchants to manage separate stores per region and offers language packs for localization. However, Magento’s customization options can become complex and need ongoing development. This makes it more suitable for large-scale operations with specific global requirements.

12. Community and support - Shopify

Shopify

Shopify provides 24/7 support via email, live chat, and phone, along with an AI-assisted help center. Shopify Plus users receive dedicated merchant success managers, and a wealth of tutorials is available. This makes Shopify’s support fast and accessible, ideal for merchants seeking streamlined assistance.

Magento

Magento, on the other hand, offers support through a knowledge base and relies heavily on third-party agencies for personalized support. Enterprise users can access dedicated account managers, but this comes at an extra cost. Magento's support is more flexible but often slower and requires more technical involvement.

Pros and cons of Shopify

Shopify is growing rapidly and is becoming a strong choice for both small businesses and large brands. The platform stands out for its simplicity, flexibility, and scalability. Some of the key advantages include:

Pros

• Beautiful, intuitive, easy-to-use interface
• No coding required to run a basic store
• Rich theme repository
• 100+ integrated payment gateways
• 24/7 support via phone and live chat
• Large and diverse app store
• Strong scalability with a highly secure infrastructure

Cons

• Limited admin area, difficult to customize deeply
• Cannot customize URL structure
• Additional fees for using a third-party payment gateway

Pros and cons of Magento

Magento is known for its customization power and ability to handle complex e-commerce models at scale. Here are some of the key benefits:

Pros

• Nearly unlimited customization for developers
• Advanced inventory and fulfillment features available
• International sales support from the start
• Powerful content management system

Cons

• Responsible for hosting and security
• More complex admin interface than Shopify
• Significantly higher development costs
• No 24/7 support from Adobe.

Shopify or Magento: Which platform fits your business best?

Who should choose Shopify?

Shopify is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses that want an easy-to-use, all-in-one platform with minimal technical complexity. It’s perfect for merchants who need a quick setup, out-of-the-box features, and 24/7 support without needing a dedicated development team. If you're looking for a user-friendly interface, strong SEO capabilities, and extensive third-party integrations, Shopify is a great choice.

Who should choose Magento?

Magento is best suited for larger businesses or those with complex needs requiring extensive customization and flexibility. It’s the right choice for businesses that have technical expertise or can afford to hire developers. Magento excels in creating highly personalized online stores and is perfect for enterprise-level businesses looking for advanced features, scalability, and the ability to integrate with varied systems.

Check out more Shopify comparison articles from Nextsky below: