In light of the epidemic that swept the globe in the year 2023, online commerce has emerged as the clear winner in the corporate world. The majority of shopping now takes place online rather than at traditional stores.
It’s possible that you’re now using Shopify to run your e-commerce business but have plans to switch to Magento in the future. The two largest e-commerce sites are Amazon and eBay, but you seem to be mixing them up. This article will aid you in comprehending them on multiple levels:
Here I’ll contrast the two platforms, Magento and Shopify, side by side. The comparison should help you determine which option is best suited to meet your requirements. In such case, read on to get responses to your inquiries.
Magento vs Shopify: Overview
Shopify
Shopify: what is it? This is a question to which I have a simple and brief response: Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce solution that includes a website builder, a domain name manager, a payment processor, and a host of other useful features.
Shopify’s best feature is that it’s a no-code store builder, meaning that anyone can set up their own online shop using it. That’s right—no knowledge of computer code is needed to use Shopify. In addition, Shopify makes it simple to integrate third-party tools like Dropship Corporation for AliExpress dropshipping, PageFly for page synchronisation, and MailChimp for email marketing.
Magento
Now, then, what exactly is Magento? I think it poses a significant threat to Shopify. It’s a free and public platform for online shopping. Because of this, you’ll need to set up hosting for your website. To sum up, it offers greater leeway in controlling the direction your site takes.
Magento 2 was created as an upgrade to the original in June of 2020. There is a greater breadth of functionality in this new release. Each of these topics will be addressed in detail in the following section. In addition to being faster in general front-end performance, Magento 2 also supports the most recent versions of PHP.
Differences of Features Between Magento and Shopify
From what you’ve read so far, you may have a general idea of what Magento and Shopify are. Next, let’s look at each one in depth to see what it has to offer.
Simple to use
If an e-commerce platform is easy to use so you can get the most out of it, it’s a good choice. The simpler the solution, the easier it will be for you to try out different features.
Shopify makes it very easy to start an online store and keep it running. It gives you a free trial for 14 days. Once you start, it will take you to an admin dashboard where all the tools you might need are neatly organised into sections that are easy to understand.
Also, Shopify has a drag-and-drop editor that lets users change their own websites to suit their own tastes. Also, they can put in or take out modules like countdowns, images, and text boxes whenever they want.
Magento isn’t as easy to use as Shopify because you need to know how to code to use it. It has a clean and sophisticated interface, but you need to know how to code to use it effectively and move around in it. Most of the time, you have to pay someone who knows how to code to help you design a website with Magento, or you have to learn how to code yourself. So using Magento could take a lot of time and cost a lot of money.
So, Shopify is easier to use than Magento, as you can see.
Programs and extras
Apps and add-ons are important parts of making an online store work well.
I have to say that Shopify’s App Store is incredible. It has more than 6,000 free and paid apps, including integrations with some of the most popular tools in the world, like Dropship Corporation, the best AliExpress tool. Its app store also has apps for marketing, customer service, selling products, and many other e-commerce tasks. You always only need one click to get these apps to work.
Even though Magento’s marketplace has around 4000 extensions, including some great ones for payment processing, SEO, and more, you may need to know how to code to instal these apps. Most of them will also charge an extra fee, which will be a problem for people who want to sell online but don’t have a lot of money.
So, if you want to add more features to your store, the Shopify app store is a better choice than the Magento app store.
Ideas
Both of these e-commerce platforms give you access to different themes, so you don’t have to start from scratch when building your site.
There are more than 100 free and paid themes to choose from in Shopify’s theme library. You can change any theme to fit your needs with Shopify’s easy-to-use theme editor. You can also add your own content, logos, and product images using the theme editor.
You can also skip the theme and start from scratch if you’d rather. With Shopify’s simple drag-and-drop builder, it’s easy to add new things to your website. You can add your own logo, change the colours to fit your brand, and change how different parts of the site look.
Magento has fewer themes than Shopify. There are only about 16 themes to choose from, some of which are free and some of which cost money. About 10 themes are already mobile-friendly, but you can use code to make other themes mobile-friendly as well.
Even though Magento lets developers add their own custom themes and change designs from the back end of their business, it takes a lot of coding to do so. You should also mention that Magento lets you add product sliders to your page, make animations, and add newsletter features to your website.
In short, Shopify has more themes than Magento does. The themes on Shopify are also easier to change because you don’t have to add code.
Ecommerce Features
Both Shopify and Magento are great ways to boost your online sales and find new stores to sell in. You can get a lot of e-commerce tools with your monthly subscription package, such as:
- Abandoned cart recovery: Get your cart back after you’ve left it.
- When Shopify Payments is used on checkout pages: Save money on fees for every sale you make.
- Access to different ways to pay: Let you use a payment gateway that you already know.
- Multi-channel selling across social media: You can choose how to sell your products.
- Collaborations with top delivery companies: Send your package quickly and safely.
- Tools for upselling, cross-selling, dropshipping, and marketing: Many tools to choose from
- If you want to add more features to your store, you can learn more about them in the Shopify App market. Shopify has a lot of tools that are made to make it easier for you to make important sales. Check out the best free Shopify apps, like Dropship Corporation, MailChimp, PageFly, and Loox, to help your online business grow.
Magento also has a huge number of ways to sell things. Here, I have to talk about its unique inventory system, which lets you import information from a database in bulk, try out different versions of products, and get reports on your total sales. There are also other parts of e-commerce, such as:
- Multi-channel selling: Options for selling on multiple channels, such as eBay and social media
- Check out branding and customization.
- Carts that were left behind: Help you lower the rate of cart abandonment
- Sale prices and coupons
- Getting access to more extensions
- Both of these sites have tools that can help you sell things online. But Shopify has a bigger, broader, and better selection. Plus, it’s easy to sell on social media with Shopify, which could be hard to do with Magento.
Taking care of stock
The next part is managing the store’s inventory, which is important for keeping things in order. In reality, both Magento and Shopify have tools that can help, such as tools for tracking products, importing inventory, filtering, and categories.
But Shopify’s easy-to-use interface helps in this case. It makes it easy to use your dashboard to check on the stock of products. Also, you can change the name, image, and category of each product, as well as some of the form fields.
What’s Magento? The way Magento handles inventory is a little different. With it, you can learn more about how to label things like size, colour, and amount. Here, what makes Magento stand out is that you can add custom extensions to track things like offline sales.
Marketing Capabilities
Both Magento and Shopify offer a wide range of marketing tools that can help you make more sales.
Shopify has an email tool that you can use to promote your products and let people know about changes. Shopify also has a lot of great integrations that you can use for things like drop shipping, selling on social media, and cross-selling.
Magento, on the other hand, isn’t quite as advanced when it comes to marketing. On Magento, store owners might need to use apps and extensions to run email campaigns or make social selling strategies. Again, what matters is the price, because you’ll need a web developer to set up more customised marketing connections.
Tip: Both Magento and Shopify have a variety of SEO tools available to them. They let you change the page title and description on both platforms, which can help you get a better ranking in search engines.
Payment Options
When choosing an e-commerce platform, one of the most important things for a store owner to think about is the payment options. On Shopify and Magento, your customers can pay for their purchases with credit cards or other payment methods.
Shopify, on the other hand, has a strong point. Its own payment processor, “Shopify Payments,” doesn’t charge you any fees when a customer buys something from you. Also, Shopify lets you use payment processors like PayPal and Amazon Pay that your customers are already familiar with.
Magento has great payment options of its own, but setting it up takes more work. Again, if you don’t know PHP, you should hire a developer to set up your payment processing system. Magento doesn’t have a payment processor built in like Shopify does. In other words, no matter which third-party gateway you choose for your store, you’ll have to pay a transaction fee.
Overall, Shopify is the better choice for processing payments, even though Magento has a few more ways to accept payments from other countries. Plus, Shopify’s payment gateway is built in, so you won’t have to pay the transaction fee that you do on Magento.
Comparing Magento with Shopify, Pros and Cons
We have put a lot of thought into comparing the two e-commerce platforms. Next, let’s quickly look at what’s good and bad about them. Shopify is a good place to start:
PROS:
- Multichannel selling: Shopify lets you sell on Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay, among other places. App store: I’ve already said that Shopify’s app market is great and impressive. These apps help you make your store even more useful.
- Built-in Tools: The built-in tools make it easy for people to use Shopify, run their online business well, and get their products out there quickly.
- Beginner-friendly: Shopify is much easier to use than Magento because it has built-in tools and instructions.
CONS:
- Less Control: You don’t have as much say over how your store works. If the third-party controller tells you to close your store, you have to.
Then, let’s look at the pros and cons of Magento:
PROS:
- Lots of people use it: Magento can reach more people because its Magento Forum has a full answer for almost everything.
- Platform with a lot of options: You need to know how to code to use Magento, but if you know how to code, you can design your store for free.
- Perfect for small to large businesses: Magento is good for businesses that have their own web development teams or have enough money to hire a developer.
CONS:
- Unsuitable for beginners: As I said, the platform is not good for beginners because you need to know how to code to use it.
- Hard to put together: Magento is different from other open-source software in that it is hard to find a hosting company that will support it (SiteGround is one supporting Magento)
Conclusion
After reading, you can see that both Shopify and Magento have features that make them stand out that can help you build an online store. Shopify is the better option if you want to make changes to your online store to make it more to your liking. Also, Shopify’s themes make it easy to get people to know about your brand. Most importantly, Shopify gives you everything you need in one package, including hosting, online storage, sales tools like Dropship Corporation and marketing strategies like MailChimp for email marketing.
But to get Magento up and running, you need to know PHP. Most small business owners just don’t have the time to learn them. Shopify’s no-code drag-and-drop site builder makes it easier to make a custom storefront. If you are new to online business,
