Are you yet another retailer wondering how to start an online store?
Or are you an online business owner planning to move to some other eCommerce platform for numerous reasons?
Whatever the case, you are not alone. So many business owners struggle over the same scenario almost every day. Choosing the right platform for your online store is just as challenging as essential. With numerous eCommerce platforms claiming to provide the best services, it gets just as hard to decide which to choose. As an online store, the success that your business gets strongly depends on the website platform basement you choose. You need to have a strong beginning to enjoy long-term success.
The two most popular eCommerce platforms at your resort are Shopify and Magento. Both these platforms are just perfect platform basement to start designing your commercial website. To ease out your struggle of choosing one, SEO Digital Gurus has come up with a detailed comparison on Shopify vs. Magento. We have highlighted some of the key differences between them for easier understanding.
Keep reading to know which out of Shopify vs. Magento is the right platform for you.
Key Factors to Consider When Choosing an eCommerce Platform
eCommerce is the new ruler in the market. Its popularity seems to grow day-on-day. It is a perfect way to reach out to your customers quickly. Because it is a competitive space, you need to put your hands on the right technologies to make the best of your strategy. You are required to design a website for your online store. There is an option to hire a professional website designer but, that might cost you time and money beyond your budget. Besides, this might hinder your rapid growth.
You can choose one of the many pre-developed eCommerce platforms to design your online store. It shall save you lots of time and cost. We have outlined the key factors that you will have to consider while choosing the right eCommerce platform.
- Ease and time take to set up and start a virtual store
- Pricing and Cost
- Integrations, Plugins, and Tools the platform offers
- SEO Services
- Mobile Friendliness
- Customer Services and Support
- Security
- Scalability and Growth
Starting an online store can be a daunting challenge. But with the right platform and strategies, it is all worth the struggle. As long as you have an online store that keeps up with the trends, attracts and holds customers while bringing conversions, you are all good.
Also, Check – How to Recover SEO Rankings and Traffic After Website Redesign?
Shopify vs. Magento
Creating, maintaining, and managing an online store starts with choosing the eCommerce platform because it is that one factor that determines the success and failure of your business. Shopify and Magento being two leading eCommerce platforms to create an online store, your initial options, to begin with, must include them. We’ll start our comparison by defining the two, followed by comparing them on the grounds of certain factors. It includes:
- Ease of Use
- Pricing
- Tools and Add-ons
- Help and Support
- Payment Process and Transaction Fees
- Search Engine Optimization
- Themes
- Security
- Performance
- Scalability
What is Shopify?
Launched in 2006, Shopify is one of the leading eCommerce platforms that allows retailers and business owners to create their online stores. Its ability to let people create virtual stores without technical knowledge makes it one of the most loved eCommerce platforms. It is an extremely easy-to-use platform.
What is Magento?
Widely known for its flexibility and high customization feature, Magento is yet another pre-developed eCommerce platform used for creating online stores. It was launched in 2007. The free edition of Magento is known as Magento Open Source while, its premium, the paid edition is called Magento Commerce.
In June 2020, Magento was replaced by its better version called Magento 2. Magento 2 introduces an enhanced and wide range of features and services.
Which is Better: Shopify or Magento?
| Factor | Shopify | Magento |
| Ease of Use | Win | Lose |
| Pricing | Tie | Tie |
| Tool and Add-Ons | Win | Lose |
| Speed and Performance | Win | Win |
| Themes | Win | Lose |
| Help and Support | Lose | Win |
| Payment Process/Transaction Fees | Lose | Win |
| SEO-Friendliness | Lose | Win |
| Scalability | Win | Lose |
| Security | Lose | Win |
| Overall Rating on the Scale of 5 | 4.7 | 4 |
Let’s explore the features of Shopify and Magento on the grounds of factors mentioned afore. It shall help us to know which one of them is better.
- Ease of Use
Shopify is lots easier than Magento to use. While using Magento requires you to learn coding and certain technical jargon to work efficiently, Shopify is a drag-and-drop website builder. Although Magento is quite a flexible platform allowing one to build a highly customized online store, Shopify is just not as tricky.
- Pricing
Shopify and Magento are lots similar in their prices. Because the former is a hosted platform, the price you pay here includes all the hosting factors. While Magento being a self-hosted platform, it requires you to pay for web hosting, security, extensions/add-ons, and your domain.
- Tools and Add-ons
Despite Magento providing a wider range of extension tools, applications, and add-ons, Shopify wins this one. While Shopify avails over 1200 free and paid applications as tools and add-ons, Magento provides over 5000 of them. It is because the applications on Shopify are easier to use than Magento. Here you do not require coding knowledge to install them.
- Help and Support
The help and support system of Shopify is just great. It provides:
- 24/7 live chat support
- 24/7 call support
- Support on Social Media
- Email support
- Video tutorials
- Community Forum
- Advanced Specialist support
Yet, the help and support system of Shopify fails to surpass the one on Magento.
- Payment Process and Transaction Fees
Magento wins the tag for better payment process and transaction fees. Shopify offers fewer payment gateways while imposing transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments. Magento supports lots more payment gateways than Shopify.
- Search Engine Optimization
Magento has a wide range of SEO features than Shopify and wins this one. While Magento has in-built SEO features, Shopify requires you to manually search and install the applications of your needs to boost SEO.
- Themes
With Shopify offering a wide range of cost-effective (cheap) themes than Magento. You also do not need any technical/coding knowledge to tailor them to your online store.
- Security
Magento lets you enhance your website security besides sending regular patches and updates to keep your security tight. The SSL encryption and Level 1 PCI DSS Complaint security on Shopify keep your virtual store protected from cyber threats. However, the security system from Magento outranks Shopify because it is designed to serve professional webmasters.
- Performance
Both Shopify and Magento are just great eCommerce platforms to start your virtual store. They give perfect speed and performance.
Because Shopify is a hosted platform, you just do not have to worry about the loading time and speed of the store. On Magento, you can choose your server and take the required actions to trigger your website performance.
- Scalability
Magento is a better bet when it comes to scalability. It offers better flexibility and scalability to your online business than Shopify.
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