A business’ website ensures its success online. So when it comes to creating a web store, one needs to be extremely careful, well-researched and resourceful. Because creating, managing and sustaining a website requires in-depth knowledge, lucrative platform and appealing UX. Small and Mid-size business need to be most careful while choosing a plan forward as they usually function on capped budgets.
Being in business means one needs to evaluate all the options they can come across. But that means too much human-hours, effort and dead-end researches that ultimately leads to what we are going to talk here, broadly. There are two big-names in website creation and management vertical – Shopify and Magento Community Edition (Magento). However, there are many crucial differences between these two that you will have to consider before getting your website live out there.
Magento CE is:
Having set parameters, let’s move on to a detailed analysis of both:
On the Features end:
Online functionality– Shopify and Magento both have efficient and easy to sustain basic store functionalities. But Shopify edges slightly past on the better side compared to Magento.
Managing the Inventory- At $14 per month, Shopify grants you a maximum of 25 store items meanwhile Magento CE gives away virtually unlimited store items. The remaining Shopify plans enable you to buy and trade unlimited store items. Add to that, Shopify now has Oberlo embedded for latest customers.
Shipping and check-out tallying– Considering the base purpose as selling physical goods, both platforms have remarkably flexible billing abilities
Coupon codes and discounts– While Magento offers discounting calculations and coupon codes, Shopify has omitted this feature out of their basic plan. However, you can get it on an upgrade on Shopify
Payment Gateway– Shopify offers nearly 70 payment gateway options while Magento has much less to offer; giving you options to add more gateway through third-party add-ons.
Templates and Themes at offer– When it comes to themes and templates, both platforms are loaded with a variety of options to choose from. But Shopify has more contemporary designs which are appealing. But if you talk about paid features, Shopify charges $80 for a theme; while Magento charges an unbelievable $1.
Applications and add-ons– Shopify gives you 100+ apps but Magento is exceptionally superior with nearly 5000 apps and add-ons that you can use to enhance your website. Since, Magento is an open-source platform, there is a mix of paid and free apps.
Multi-lingual functionalities– Magento leads yet again as it has built-in multilingual tech while it’s contemporary, Shopify, has additional apps that you need to integrate.
SEO functionalities– Both platforms are at par with each other in terms of Optimization abilities. With powerful SEO benefits and operating, both platforms should deliver what your business needs the best to drive an organic traffic: show up in search ranking!
Features in Customization– With excellent customization available in both the platforms, the advanced user interface allows you to run/edit raw HTML/CSS codes which gives you more flexibility to operate website as you wish and at the same time preserving the appeal your website packs.
Shopify has a slight upper-hand here as it provides a menu where you can change small details about your website, add or remove features. This makes it easy for admins. On the other hand, Magento needs a pundit to operate in order to customize since it is an open-source platform. Only developers with in-depth knowledge can fully manoeuvre through the nitty-gritties of Magento CE.
On the easier side of things
Shopify and Magento both have powerfully advanced technologies and features that drive excellent results. They have interfaces that can exemplify your web-store appearance and at the same time help keep things neat and tidy.
Shopify keeps it simple on the user end by hosting the website on their own, meanwhile Magento asks the users to handle their own hosting. This will be cumbersome for novice developers and admins of the website.
One can make many conclusions out of it- all wiser than the other. But we refuse to be ambiguous. If you have a team of expert developers and coders, then Magento is your calling. It has so many freebies that will give you endless combinations for features. Plus, it gives you the ability to keep things cost-effective. Subsequently, you have Shopify which has hosting features that will make your life easier in that aspect as it provides fully manageable integrated services.