Magento 2 vs Shopify

Being in business since 2006, Shopify has gathered more than 50 thousand retailers around the ecommerce platform. Despite Magento is a little bit younger, it is the leading ecommerce solution. It was first introduced in 2008, and in 2011 Ebay purchased the company. Unlike Shopify with its proprietary code, Magento is an open source ecommerce platform.

On Firebear, I’ve already compared Magento and Shopify. You can find that blog post here: Magento vs Shopify. Now, it is time to pay attention to differences between Magento 2 and Sopify. The following blog post discusses pros and cons related to both platforms. Let’s start with Shopify.

The Ultimate Magento 2 Guide

Magento 2 Demo

The ecommerce cloud platform Shopify offers 4 prising plans: Basic, Professional, Business, and Unlimited. Depending on a plan you choose, you will be charged for every transaction: costs vary from 0 to 2%. At the same time each subscriptions provides such important features as free setup and unlimited bandwidth. You can even get a free trial for 2 weeks.

Another important aspect of Shopify is a toolkit for editing HTML and CSS, managing inventory, creating various discounts, coupons, and codes. It is also possible to accept online payments via Paypal with the platform. All features offered by Shopify make it a perfect solution for small and midsize businesses. The platform is easy to use and you don’t have to deal with any code, since all the development is available only to the company’s specialists. Thus, there is no need to hire a team of designers to set up a Shopify ecommerce store.

The service provides rapid customer support and top notch security. Besides, there is an app store with tools aimed to extend the existing functionality of Shopify. But what does Magento 2 offer?

First of all, it’s a set of more powerful tools and features. Even the first version of the platform is famous for its robust ecommerce solutions, which outperform ones offered by Shopify. By using Magento 2, you can easily create several stores with different design, languages, and currencies. Moreover, all of them will be controllable within a single admin panel.

Besides, Magento 2 is much more flexible than Shopify. As you can see, the platform suites best for big businesses, but you can easily get the necessary cloud functionality even for the smallest ecommerce shop with the recent offering dubbed Magento Small Business Program. Nobody needs Shopify when Magento offers Shopify on steroids.

Due to an open source nature, tons of third party extensions, top notch out-of-the-box features, and a broad community, Magento 2 provides much more opportunities than Shopify. If several years ago, both platforms have been aimed at a different target audience (Shopify was a reliable ecommerce solution for small businesses, while Magento was prefered by large companies), now Magento 2 offers enough features to displace Shopify out of the market. The platform is good for ecommerce outlets of all sizes: it is the most powerful and customizable solution with a huge community and mind blowing performance. You can easily find high class specialists to make your ecommerce offer competitive among the largest players of your market.

Magento connect (Extensions Marketplace) | Shopify Extensions Marketplace

Other differences between Magento 2 and Shopify

• Shopify offers 70+ payment gateways; Magento 2 provides only several default solutions, while there are tons of third party extensions as well. According to the previous comparison,  I meen Magento vs Shopify, Magento 2 is much more flexible than its counterpart.

• While Shopify provides a built-in blog, Magento relies on third party extensions.

• Magento 2 offers complete social media integration for you and your customers. Shopify lacks such opportunities.

• Default Shopify comes with an SSL certificate and is PCI compliant. In Magento 2, you have to set up some of this features manually.

• You can create all possible custom features and implement them within your Magento 2 website. Unfortunately, it is impossible in case of Shopify.

• Magento 2 offers more advantages related to SEO, provides tons of marketing features, and fully supports B2B websites.

Even a year ago Shopify was a great silution for those merchants who had a tight budget and a small ecommerce project. Now, they can easily use Magento to satisfy their needs. With recent additions, even the first version of the platform is far more optimized for small ecommerce web stores than its closest counterparts. At the same time, it offers a robust ecommerce solution for large enterprises, charges no monthly or transaction fees, and provides unlimited opportunities for growth and customisation.

Please note that this blog post is not ready yet. The above information will be updated with new facts after Magento 2 will be released. But you can already leave your thoughts about differences between the two platforms through a comment field below. Don’t forget to check other Firebear posts related to Magento 2.