For brands, choosing the most suitable E-commerce platform is a tough and challenging task. There are plenty of platforms available and the two most popular platforms are Magento 2 and Shopify. It is important when choosing a perfect platform before investing in E-commerce business.
An important fact is that your online store is a success or a failure depends on the selection of the platform. In this article, we will make a comprehensive Shopify Vs Magento 2 discussion to highlight their differences and help you select the most suitable platform.
A Brief Overview of Magento 2 Vs Shopify:
What is Magento?
Magento was launched in 2007 and is best known for its flexibility, scalability and smooth customization. Magento is offered as an Open Source and Commerce edition.
Magento Open-Source: A free and self-hosted CMS offering functionalities to build and develop a unique online store from scratch.
Magento Commerce: The premium edition of Magento is a paid version and is recommended for the merchants who are looking for the all-in-one cloud solution to enhance the store performance and boost sales.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a commercial platform that allows brands to create their online stores without having technical skills. It is offered in two available options like Shopify and Shopify Plus.
Shopify: A hosted solution allowing online stores to customize the storefront, sell products, run and boost E-commerce sales.
Shopify Plus: A multi-channel platform having a higher level of customization, support, and other important features in comparison to Shopify.
A Detailed Comparison of different categories:
Although both have amazing features that improve store performance and enhance your sales, there are differences as well. Before you hire magento developer or Shopify expert it is important to check these differences.
Ease of Use
When choosing a platform, ease of use is the first consideration. It is very important to get up and run the store easily and conveniently. Both Magento 2 and Shopify have a well-designed and friendly UI.
In terms of coding, Magento 2 and Shopify have a huge difference. Magento 2 uses PHP, while Liquid is used in the Shopify. Magento 2 is an open-source making it easy for the developers to customize the source code while Shopify is proprietary which needs a license for any customization. For this reason, Magento 2 is the perfect choice for the enterprise and Shopify is great for the simple stores. So, when we take source code customization into consideration, Magento 2 wins.
Pricing
Shopify is designed as a SAAS hosted by the company which means developers have to pay a monthly fee to access the Shopify CMS. It also provides its users a 15 days free trial which is quite beneficial if you need to explore the platform before the actual start. Below is Shopify pricing for each particular package:
- Basic $29/month
- Pro $79/month
- Unlimited $179/month
Magento 2 in this scenario, provides users a completely free Community Edition and needs payment for the specific E-commerce store needs. This makes Magento 2 development suitable for every online store.
Speed and Performance
Speed and performance are vital factors for the success of an online store. People avoid online stores where loading time is high and visual appeal is missing. If the users have such experiences, they are less likely to revisit for further purchase.
Shopify is a hosted solution, thus speed is not a worry but a user is unable to control the hosting environment. If a website has problems, contacting to Shopify support team is the only option.
Unlike Shopify, Magento has flexible hosting. A user can select its own server and can customize it to accelerate the website’s performance. It will cost higher, but you can experience the fast loading speeds, and easily customize your website. Hence, Magento is a clear winner in terms of speed and performance.
Security
To run a successful online business, security is highly important. In reality, thousands of websites are hacked on a daily basis. To keep the websites free from security threats, best security plugins and updates need to be integrated within the website. PCI Compliance is a set of requirements that manage online payment. It is costly and time-consuming to ensure PCI compliance.
Shopify comes with SSL encryption, which protects your website automatically. In addition, this platform is of great support for the E-commerce business to handle customers’ sensitive data carefully during the whole shopping experience.
Magento gives you great flexibility to enhance website security. Although Magento is a robust CMS, the user has to do efforts to follow PCI compliance. To improve the security brands can reach out to Magento 2 module development for regular updates.
SEO-Friendliness
Shopify has built-in tools and extensions for SEO activities. It offers flexible SEO features like editing meta tags, customize titles and content. But still, it is a hosted platform and has restrictions for SEO. The default features are unable to implement advanced SEO techniques and make the URL structure.
Magento 2 is more flexible for SEO activities. It has many SEO features like meta tags, image optimization, editing of robot.txt files, canonical tags, and many more. You can easily customize your Magento store to get the desired result and more traffic by applying SEO practices.
Wrapping Up:
Both platforms have their pros and cons. Therefore, the decision is completely yours to choose between Shopify vs Magento 2. Major factors for selection are business strategy, product list, size of business and available resources. For small to mid-size businesses, both CMSs are good.
If you have standard one or two storefronts, and a medium-size product list, then Shopify is the right choice. But, if you have a huge list of products with multi-store operations, then Magento is a perfect choice. Though it is a bit difficult to operate, hence for that Magento development company can be contacted for technical service. And you can avail of endless customization along with complete control over your E-commerce website.
