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Magento vs Shopify

Magento vs Shopify, the Ultimate Comparison

We will answer your every question regarding E-commerce platforms, and help you to clear your head. Let’s get to the basics first.

What is E-Commerce?

E-commerce or Electronic Commerce is the purchasing and selling of goods or services through the Internet, such as purchasing clothes, shoes, or other articles on an online platform, in other words, E-Commerce is a process where a businessman trades goods or services to the consumer with help of an electronic medium.

Now there’s a proper process for starting an E-Commerce business, you can refer to A Complete Guide: How to Build, Launch and Grow a Profitable Online Store to learn more about how to start an online store step by step. And continue reading to know which is the best E-Commerce platform for your Online Business, Magento or Shopify?

Magento

Magento is an E-Commerce platform developed on open-source technology that gives online merchants a flexible shopping cart system, as well as authority over the appearance, content, and functionality of the online store. Magento development allows convincing marketing, search engine optimization, and catalog-management tools. Magento's capacity to scale enables shops with fewer products and flexible needs to simply grow to many products and complicated custom behavior without switching platforms. It offers a number of plug-ins and themes which can easily enhance a customer's experience. Magento Development has one biggest advantage i.e.; it can be used by anyone. Hence, you must be very particular while determining the correct type of hosting for the Online Store.

To make such decisions, let’s learn more.

To start an online business, there are a lot of aspects that need to be taken care of. The success of an Online business depends on many different pillars, like how well the planning of the business has been done, the use of technologies the business is based on, etc. Choosing the best E-Commerce platform plays a very important role in the success of an Online Store.

Magento Development is composed to be used as an application by someone who isn’t a developer by profession, in other words, it can be used by anyone. The Magento community is remarkably vast and very useful and helpful for businesses. There are a number of benefits of using Magento:

  • It is easy to install and has additional plug-ins and layouts.
  • Magento is an open-source technology that also offers adjustable, scalable E-Commerce solutions.
  • Magento is an effective as well as a cost-efficient platform.
  • It not only allows various discounts but also allows promotions during check-out.
  • Magento gives more than fifty payment gateways.
  • It allows the users to fully control the way of delivering the customer experience without any limits.
  • Magento evolves as the business grows and changes over time.
  • It supports expansion by managing multiple stores, transacting in multiple countries, languages, and currencies, and using various worldwide shipping providers, everything within a single instance.
  • Magento lets users sell customized products and digital goods online.
  • It allows users to manage the complexities of B2B commerce.

Recently the updated version of Magento i.e.; Magento 2 has been introduced. For better uses and updated features, there’s Magento 2. This updated version encounters most of the issues faced with Magento 1. Magento 2 is user-friendly and is now easy to learn for new users. Compared to other E-Commerce platforms like Shopify, it is easier to complete tasks like accessing advanced reports, managing payment processors, sorting customers, marketing products, etc. for the admin. Admin can now achieve more in less amount of time. With the introduction of Magento 2, it is hard to beat Magento in the game.

Let’s take a quick look at Shopify

Shopify

Shopify’s E-Commerce platform works great for stores that trade goods and services that need a minimum arrangement. A businessman can sell a single product or more than one product by executing an advanced Shopify store according to the business requirement. This conclusively leads to an increase in ROI and raises the revenue of the business. Shopify provides great advantages for an Online E-Commerce Business. Let’s look at some of them:

  • Easy to use: Shopify is easy to set up and use, it is the best alternative for those who need a complete solution at one stop.
  • Endless Templates: Shopify is the platform that bundles up a range of professional online store templates that promote the uniqueness and visually appealing online stores.
  • Customization: Shopify owns astonishing customization capabilities that help in easy integration with apps.
  • Security and Reliability: It offers the benefit of security and reliability. In an online E-Commerce business security and reliability plays an essential role.
  • Powerful Marketing: Being a complete solution, Shopify has powerful marketing tools. It offers basic features to advanced marketing tools like custom gift cards, discount coupons, and many more.
  • Mobile-Friendly: Shopify provides great mobile responsiveness, which is a key to success as the number of mobile users is increasing every day.
  • Easy Payments: Shopify offers easy payment methods that make it easy for online retailers.

I assume that we have learned enough about both the platforms, Magento and Shopify. Now let’s get to the part where we actually compare both platforms.

Both Magento and Shopify are considered to be the most popular E-commerce platforms in the market at present.

Let’s compare Magento and Shopify in different aspects to understand them properly. Let’s take a look at them:

Magento Vs Shopify

Magento and Shopify are probably big-time competitors in the E-Commerce Platform Industry. And with the introduction of Magento version 2.0, Magento is touching new heights in the market, making it a perfect E-Commerce platform for every business.

It is generally said that both of the platforms are very similar, but in reality, even though they serve the same purpose, they are quite different in many aspects. They have different core structures, payment options, ways of handling extensions, and many other functions and features.

  • Ease of Use

We have established that Shopify offers a simple and user-friendly interface. You don’t need any technical knowledge to use Shopify, it is that easy. Whereas, in the case of Magento, it can scare some beginners. It does involve a training phase, to get introduced with some terms to use the platform properly. Magento Development can really fit properly for your business requirements and help you to reach your business at certain heights.

  • Popularity

The most common E-Commerce platform is Magento, used by many big International firms like Nike, Rosetta Stone, Olympus, Ghiradelli, and many others. On the other hand, Shopify has a small share of popular businesses like Tesla and the Los Angeles Lakers’ Store, small and mid-sized businesses are in the majority.

  • Coding

Magento and Shopify have absolutely different coding styles which obviously states which is the better E-Commerce platform. Magento is open-source and uses PHP, while Shopify is proprietary and uses a coding language that’s called Liquid. Being open-source, Magento’s source code is available free of cost and it can be modified. The user can alter the template code to match specific store needs with Magento, but with Shopify, you can not do that. This makes Magento Development an ideal solution for more complex with specific advanced functions that require changes in the source code.

  • Expense

Using Shopify as an E-Commerce platform means the user has to pay a monthly subscription fee to access it, this is called Software-as-a-service. Shopify provides a free trial but after that, the user has to pay. It can cost a basic store from $29 per month to $179 per month. On the other hand, Magento is a Platform-as-a-service, the basic store is free and for other advanced features, the user has to pay. It costs only $3.95. The Community Edition is absolutely free in Magento Development, the user just has to pay the development charges. There are no charges for a monthly subscription to the community edition, which is a great steal for developers and small businesses, you just have to pay for the enterprise edition.

Both Magento and Shopify can cost you more than the expected amount, as basic software will not be enough to create the online store that you desire. Moreover, the basic version of Magento Development is free, so the only expense you have to bear is the development charges.

  • Control and Customization

Control and Customization are the most pre-eminent and significant differences between Magento and Shopify. As we all know Magento Development is a self-hosted platform, hence, the user has full control over the decision of servers and hosting. Along with its open-source nature, it also offers endless customization possibilities over the design and operations of the store. Shopify, on the other hand, is a hosted platform and does not need a high level of development expertise. You cannot access the source code, which limits the customizations of the store.

  • Speed and Performance

Visitors usually don’t like to wait for websites that take too long to load, speed and performance are significant for the success of every E-Commerce Online store. With Shopify, there is no need to worry about the page loading speed or the performance issue. But at the same time, the user has almost no authority over the hosting environment and server adjustments. While Magento Development is well-known for its sturdy performance and unique performance-focused tweaks. The user can choose the server and can make all the necessary adjustments to enhance the performance metrics, because of its self-hosted nature.

  • SEO and Marketing

In terms of SEO options, Shopify offers a basic set of SEO options, like you can edit meta tags and optimize inventory and product pages. Shopify also allows in-depth optimization which involves transforming the file structure that facilitates search crawlers in carrying out their job. One biggest limitations of Shopify is that it is self-hosted, hence, the user can not make any server-level configurations. On the contrary, Magento Development helps you to unite and implement your custom SEO and digital marketing strategies without any trouble.

Shopify:

Pros

Cons

  • It is simple to create a store on Shopify without applying a single line of code.
  • Shopify is not built for SEO optimization.
  • It is a self-hosted platform so, there is no obligation to operate the server.
  • It offers restricted customizations and elasticity.
  • Shopify makes the website load fast and secure.
  • In Shopify, a transaction fee is charged per sale.
  • Customer Support is available 24X7.
  • Combining lots of apps can make your store more difficult to handle with Shopify.
  • It is easy to combine the store with different E-Commerce platforms.
  • Shopify provides only 10 free themes.
  • Shopify is a large App Store to enlarges the functionality of the site.
 
  • It lets you choose from an extensive range ( more than 100) of mobile-ready storefront themes.
 

Magento:

Pros

Cons

  • Magento has unlimited features.
  • You cannot create a store on Magento without learning about Magento.
  • Magento is an open-source platform, therefore the user gets huge community support.
  • The expense of hosting, expansions, and themes can be a little expensive.
  • It is accessible in the public domain and for free.
  • You have to regularly optimize it for great speed and performance.
  • Magento offers exceptional SEO features that help to rank better in search engines for your store.
  • As it is an open-source platform, virtually no support is available for it.
  • Magento can be purchased or downloaded with just 1-click.
 
  • There are no design limitations on Magento and you can even create your own design.
 

For a proper comparison between Shopify and Magento, you can refer to the tabular comparison between Shopify and Magento given below:

BASIS

MAGENTO

SHOPIFY

Popularity

It is very popular among International firms

Popularity is majorly among small or medium-sized firms

Coding

Uses PHP

Uses Liquid Language

Ease of Use

Need some knowledge for new users

Easy for everyone

Expense

Affordable and free Community Edition

Costlier than Magento

Control & Customization

Gives unlimited control and customization

Very little control and customization

Speed & Performance

Good speed and performance

Good speed and performance

SEO & Marketing

Unite & implement custom SEO and digital marketing strategies

Basic SEO options

Max Vision Solution

Max Vision Solution is one of the best Magento E-Commerce development companies, offering you unlimited services of Magento Development. Max Vision Solutions is a well-known Magento-certified company, with highly skilled Magento-certified employees forming a strong team. We serve a complete solution for your business, from design to development we take care of everything. Max Vision Solutions has experience of a good 11 years and has been successful in developing Magento Development, and Magento Customization Services for many companies and proven to be helpful in increasing revenue opportunities by using marketing tools and superior search capabilities of our clients’ businesses. Being one of the best Magento Development companies, we keep our bars high and serve high-quality services using an updated version of Magento. Max vision Solution holds specialization

You can choose from the various Magento services for your business

  • Custom Design Platform Multivendor Marketplace
  • Themed Platform Magento 1 & 2 Support
  • Custom Module Development Site Optimization
  • Extension Building Magento Enterprise Edition

To summarise, Magento is the ultimate E-Commerce platform offering a number of features at a really affordable price. If you are one of those who are looking to build your Online E-Commerce store and are confused among various E-Commerce platforms, Magento Development is the answer to your question. Magento Development can be useful for various businesses, especially if you want your business to grow in the future. In the case of running large stores with lots of orders and earning millions of dollars, Magento will work perfectly for you. For unlimited customization features, Magento is the best E-Commerce platform. Magento wins the race with its competitors, Magento Development has a lot more to offer and extraordinary features as compared to other E-Commerce platforms. Features of Magento Development like good for marketing, customizable themes, etc. make Magento the best choice as an E-Commerce platform.

Get high-class services with Max Vision Solutions across the globe. Using the best E-Commerce platforms and working marketing tactics and tools. Along with serving high-quality services, Max Vision Solutions also provides cost-effective services along with quality advice. To collaborate or know more contact Max Vision Solutions.

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