Shopify vs. Magento: What’s the Difference?

Choice of eCommerce platform is essential to your online store’s success. It’s what allows you to scale your operations and grow. There’s a popular debate on whether Shopify vs. Magento is right for successful online stores. We will discuss the differences between Shopify vs. Magento to help you with this decision.

Shopify vs. Magento

Shopify is a software as service platform which you cannot customize like Magento. Also, unlike Magento, Shopify is only an eCommerce platform for extremely small businesses. So, if you ever plan on growing and expanding your business, Shopify is probably not an ideal choice.

Magento offers many extensive features, while Shopify will give you minimal functionality. However, Shopify offers high quality themes at a cheaper price than Magento. Also, unlike Magento, it is very easy to purchase a domain with Shopify and get your store up and running quickly. With Magento, you will have to find a hosting provider. Unless you plan on remaining a small business, Magento is the ideal option.

How Can Magento Benefit Your Business?

While Shopify has many great features and benefits, there are good reasons why Magento is so popular and why choosing it for your business could make future growth much easier.

There are no surefire ways to success in business, but having a website that is user-friendly, scalable, fully customizable and ready to adapt to your changing business needs will help. Here are just a few of the many ways Magento can benefit your business.

Magento Delivers Outstanding eCommerce Functionality

Magento is an award-winning eCommerce platform, marketed as “the high performance, scalable digital commerce solution for fast-growing and large businesses”. With many years of experience building eCommerce websites, our team at Centennial Arts has yet to come across any platform that can compare.

Thanks to its power and flexibility, Magento now holds around 30 percent market share amongst the top 30 eCommerce platforms, including Shopify. The release of Magento 2.0 in 2016 has delivered everything from heightened user engagement and improved performance to smoother navigation and enhanced productivity, making it simpler to use.

A Platform to Futureproof Your eCommerce Website

Ongoing maintenance is necessary for any website, as well as development and refreshing to keep pace with market trends and support your business as it grows.

No matter if developing your business means extending your product range, expanding into into Europe or diversifying to target new markets, Magento is fully scalable. Magento has every feature you could possibly need as you move forward, rather than requiring you to start again from scratch. Also, with support for most languages, currencies and tax calculations, it is a truly international platform.

Magento is Fully Customizable

Having an effective eCommerce web design shouldn’t rely on a “one-size-fits-all” approach, like many other eCommerce platforms tend to do.

Magento is an open source platform that is fully customizable to meet your unique needs as a business. It is adaptable, has a responsive design, has powerful product merchandising options and there’s a huge marketplace for sophisticated Magento plug-ins. Therefore, you can ensure your website is meets your business requirements.

Manage Multiple eCommerce Websites from a Single Platform

With Magento, you can manage multiple eCommerce wesites from a single platform. Not every eCommerce business is a simple one-site operation. If you are looking to expand your business with multiple online stores, Magento has the functionality you need.

From the same Magento installation, you can manage numerous stores and each store can share customer details, settings and product catalogs. This saves your business time and money. And, no matter how many products or product variables you have — even running beyond the tens of thousands — Magento has the power to manage them.

Equipped with Built-In Reporting and Analytics Tools

Businesses run on information. The best eCommerce platforms will supply the data necessary to target your customers and keep them coming back.

Magento offers built-in, comprehensive reporting on everything from sales and search terms to purchase histories and abandoned carts. This helps you refine and improve your customer loyalty.

 

We hope this answers your question on Shopify vs. Magento. Magento websites are complex and time-consuming to build, but Centennial Arts has years of experience designing Magento websites for our clients to ensure successful growth for your business. Contact us with the link below for more information!