Unable to choose between Shopify and Magento? It’s not just you. These two companies operate some of the most well-known e-commerce sites available right now.
A simple tool for creating online storefronts is Shopify. It can support both start-up and high-volume businesses for a monthly price.
Magento is a free open-source platform that you may install on your computer, similar to WordPress. But, we’ll talk in more detail about these costs below. Although being a complex platform, it will be challenging to accomplish your e-commerce goals without coding knowledge. For big businesses with internal development teams, it works well.
What Are the Main Distinctions Between Shopify and Magento?
Pricing
Free to download is the Magento open-source edition. The domain name, hosting, themes, and extras, on the other hand, will cost money. You can start your online store’s development with the help of the free version by yourself or hire dedicated Magento developer.
To increase the functionality of your eCommerce website or grow your eCommerce business, however, you must choose paying versions. Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud are the two accessible premium versions. Your eCommerce website’s customization choices will affect the price.
You must speak with Magento development companies with expertise in creating specialized Magento-powered e-commerce solutions in order to obtain an exact estimate. Shopify offers a 14-day no-cost trial period before imposing a monthly price. There are no additional costs associated with this plug-and-play solution, such as those associated with outsourcing or the internal management of developers.
Easy of Use
How many personnel you need to create and operate the e-commerce platform will depend on how user-friendly it is, as well as whether you can utilize the solution’s full potential.
Shopify has a long history of being praised for its ease of use. By using the platform, you can create a website without having to deal with difficult programming languages or extensive amounts of code. A basic, intuitive interface has drag-and-drop capabilities available for quick adjustment. However, in exchange for simplicity of use, more customizability and the flexibility of third-party system interfaces are compromised.
More coding expertise or a team with Magento developers will be needed for Magento. The more customized you make it, the more code you’ll need to create for your website, and managing the business after that will require you to master many new skills.
One of the platform’s main advantages is that it requires coding. As an open-source platform, Magento offers countless opportunities for customization.
Product Catalog Administration
The amount of products you can sell at once is still restricted by the $29 monthly Shopify Basic plan. The catalog for a starter store is limited to 25 goods. You must upgrade your plan in order to change the limit.
Unlimited products are already available in the catalog of the free Magento Community.
Remember, though, that only some stores would profit from a limitless number of product listings. Too many products added to your website could slow down loading and result in additional issues. These issues won’t arise with this platform because it is a hosted and managed solution.
Templates & Themes
How their platform will look is one of the top concerns for many businesses, following issues with budget and ease of use. Consequently, a customer’s first impression is a crucial one. Themes provide you with the chance to showcase your gorgeous brand and unique personality.
Shopify has 95 premium and 11 free themes available for anyone looking for further information. Due to the fact that Shopify entrepreneurs must pay between $150 and $350 on a theme for their eye-catching stores, things may still be out of reach for some customers even at the price range.
Prices for the six completely mobile-responsive Magento themes start at $499. While creating your theme using Magento, you may even start from scratch. But, in order to do this, you either need to have a deep understanding of coding or a big budget for hiring help.
Conclusion
The fact that Shopify is a hosted and fully managed service makes it easier to use than Magento, despite both being fairly capable e-commerce platforms.
Although Magento is free, it still requires that you purchase hosting and perform all software/system setup and installation yourself, which only fairly tech-savvy people (and not ordinary end customers) would be able to do.
This makes Shopify a standout e-commerce platform for developing your online store with the most user-friendly interface and potent features, along with some of the other factors mentioned above.