Choosing the right e-commerce platform has a huge impact on the fate of your business, its future, and its potential success. Being well informed is therefore very important because if not chosen wisely, it will limit the future growth and success of your online store. It’s time to read about it from an e-commerce agency’s point of view. You’d be surprised of our objectivity.
Ready for the clash? … Let’s go!
Magento vs Shopify
The most common misconception about Magento and Shopify is that they are very similar platforms. In fact, the truth is that although they have the same purpose, the two platforms are seriously different in almost every aspect. This includes their core structure, payment options, the way they handle extensions, and much more functionalities and capabilities.
See our agency profile on Adobe Solution Partner: partners.magento.com/baldwin
Magento
As one of the most popular e-commerce platforms on the market today, Magento is a self-hosted platform that powers thousands of stores – from individual store owners to some of the biggest brands. The platform is known for its flexibility & has endless possibilities to help the customization of your online store.
Magento has a network of 150,000 developers and over 300 highly-trained solution partners.
Shopify
Shopify is a hosted solution that focuses on serving the needs of retailers that aren’t too concerned with the technical aspect. It requires a monthly subscription fee in return for shared hosting infrastructure. The e-commerce builder makes it very easy to build dynamic online stores within just a few minutes.
Small online stores are in general more inclined towards Shopify. When it comes to Magento, a general perception is that the platform is most preferred by medium and large-sized online stores. But the fact is that Magento can also be an excellent choice for small online stores that want to prepare for effortless scalability in the future.
Hosting and control are one of the most important differences between Magento and Shopify. With the Magento Platform, you have full control over your choice of servers and hosting. As the Platform has an open-source nature, the customization possibilities along with the control over the look and feel are endless. So with Magento, you don’t have to worry about any restrictions to reach a certain level of technology or integrations.
Shopify, however, is a hosted solution. This means you won’t have to go through any hosting hassles, but you also will be unable to access the source code, which will limit your options of store-level customizations.
With Shopify, the SEO options are quite basic. Editing meta tags, optimizing inventory and product pages and in-depth optimization can all be done in an SEO-friendly way.
Baldwin created a custom SEO module for the Magento Platform. It comes with a series of tracking and SEO functionalities, developed based on extensive 1st hand experience and thorough research. Thanks to this SEO module, you don’t only benefit from advanced e-commerce tracking without any extra custom development, but you’ll also monitor more closely the visitor’s interest and interaction with your company. And the best part: you get to access all this data in your Analytic account.
Read more about Baldwin’s unique SEO module for Magento 2.
Of course, a single platform can’t be a jack of all trades, so there can’t always be just one winner in every situation.
Conclusion
The Magento Platform might be an investment, but keep in mind that it doesn’t come with a monthly subscription. The Platform offers incredibly powerful features and complete freedom of customization as well as the functionalities and possibilities to grow in the future. The robust platform gives the capability to scale your store in the future. Magento will also be the best choice if you are planning to build a solid omnichannel strategy.
Shopify however, lacks freedom of customization and fine-tuning. It might be easy to use, but consider the charges that come with its services and the future potential of scaling the store. Most of the advanced features are fee-paying.
