Shopify vs Magento (Adobe Commerce): Which Ecommerce Platform Is Better?

Whether you’re planning to launch a new online store or migrate an existing one from its current platform, you must be wondering whether you should choose Magento or Shopify.

As shown in our Magento vs Shopify guide below, both platforms have upsides and downsides. So, some ecommerce business owners are better off with Shopify, while others will find Magento a better fit for their needs.

To help you understand which category you’ll fall into, we’ve prepared this guide that compares Magento and Shopify regarding functionality, pricing, design, and more.

Looking for Shopify or Magento developers? Make sure you’ll get a quality product with GetTrusted. We prepare an estimate and recommend the three pre-vetted development companies that match your requirements the best.

What is Magento (Adobe Commerce)?

Magento is an open-source ecommerce platform that you can use in your online store for free. Its first version, Magento 1, was released way back in 2008. Magento 2 replaced it in 2015.

In this guide, we’ll compare Magento 2 vs Shopify as it outperforms Magento 1 in virtually every aspect, from performance and speed to SEO features and user-friendliness. Plus, Magento 1 is no longer supported, and Magento 2 is more widespread than Magento 1.

In 2018, Adobe bought Magento and rebranded it as Adobe Commerce, a paid tool. Despite that, you can continue using open-source Magento for free. Adobe Commerce, in turn, is the enterprise version of Magento that requires less development, but the price tag can impress you.

Below, we won’t be comparing Adobe Commerce vs Shopify. Instead, we’ll focus on the open-source Magento 2.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a subscription-based ecommerce platform that processed $197 billion in gross merchandise value in 2022 alone. Since its founding in 2006, Shopify has grown from an online store builder into a well-rounded platform with the following:

• Its own payment processing system, Shopify Payments
• A point-of-sale system, Shopify POS
• Fulfillment network
• Partnerships with delivery services like USPS to offer discounts to sellers
• Presence in 170+ countries

Shopify’s key difference from Magento is the business model. It’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). There’s no free Shopify version, and you can choose from five different paid plans depending on your ecommerce needs.

Magento vs Shopify: Which One Is More Popular?

Let’s see how the two ecommerce platforms compare in popularity using the data from BuiltWith:

	Shopify	Magento
Currently live websites	4,248,567	146,372
By country:
United States	2,675,324	50,231
United Kingdom	184,657	10,911
Australia	133,423	4,175
Brazil	117,843	4,886
Germany	105,976	9,131
By category:
Fashion	105,067	2,836
Apparel	86,747	1,147
Jewelry	76,778	1,286
Bags	48,210	2,079
Shoes	38,961	2,079

As you can see, Shopify beats Magento in terms of popularity and market share, fair and square. But instead of leaving it at this, let’s dive a bit deeper and see which versions of both Shopify and Magento are the most popular:

	Currently live websites
Shopify:
Shopify Plus	33,028
Magento:
Magento 1.1 to 1.8	4,872
Magento 1.9	26,501
Magento 2	93,580

As for the various Shopify plans, Shopify doesn’t allow tracking whether the website is using the Basic, Shopify, or Advanced plan.

Shopify & Magento: How They Stack Up in 11 Aspects

To help you make a well-weighed choice between Magento and Shopify, let’s compare them across 11 parameters, from pricing to SEO optimization.

Pricing

As mentioned above, Shopify is a paid ecommerce platform with no free version. You can try it for free, but only for three days—barely enough for a test drive. On the bright side, Shopify currently offers new subscribers the first two months for $1 a month.

Shopify has three different plans with varying features and commission fees:

	Basic	Shopify	Advanced
Subscription fee (per month)	$39	$105	$399
If billed annually	$29	$79	$299
Shipping discounts	up to 77%	up to 88%	up to 88%
Staff accounts	2	5	15

If you have a brick-and-mortar store and want to use Shopify POS, it’ll cost you $89 / mo, no matter the plan. Other expenses you might incur include paid themes and apps.

Apart from these three plans, Shopify has Starter and Plus packages:

• Shopify Starter costs $5 / mo and is intended for social commerce sellers.
• Shopify Plus starts at $2,000 / mo and is a solution for high-volume businesses with more than one storefront; comparing Shopify Plus vs Magento is a whole different topic.

Magento, on the other hand, is free to use as long as you opt for the open-source version. That said, you’ll have to factor in the development costs for your online store. You’ll also need to invest time in finding the right development partner Magento consulting company. (GetTrusted can be a good shortcut for you here.)

With Magento, you’ll also need to pay for web hosting, whereas Shopify doesn’t pass this burden on to its customers.

As for Adobe Commerce Pro and Managed Services, two of Adobe’s paid offers, their pricing isn’t public. You’ll have to fill out a form to get a quote.

Forbes, however, named a starting price of $1,998 / mo in one of its Advisor posts. So, if you compare Shopify Plus vs Magento Commerce, their pricing is similar.

Verdict: it’s a tie as the two platforms come with different, incomparable cost structures.

Ease-of-Use

Magento, especially its open-source version, loses out to Shopify in terms of user-friendliness. Magento is designed for web developers; introducing major changes to a Magento store often requires solid technical skills.

So, you’ll need a development team not just to develop your Magento store but to tweak it, too. That’s why turning to freelancers isn’t an option, and choosing the right vendor is crucial. (With GetTrusted, you can find one easily.)

Shopify, on the other hand, is destined for users with any level of technical skills. While some aspects of it can be improved (like having to use templates to modify the look of the website), it’s a lot easier to use than Magento.

Shopify contains everything you need to make changes to your online store in the admin panel, with no coding required. There’s also a drag-and-drop website builder.

Verdict: Shopify wins this round of the Shopify vs Magento 2 showdown.

Features

Shopify comes with a robust set of out-of-the-box features included in the plan. Its sales tools include abandoned cart recovery, omnichannel selling, and digital and physical product types. Shopify also has partnerships with multiple shipping operators.

As for the marketing tools, this is where Shopify truly shines. Most, if not all, of the marketing tools you may need to promote your store come in-built or in the form of free apps. That includes multilingual support, email campaign management, social media integrations, and more.

While Magento may not be as beginner-friendly as Shopify, the sky is the limit – if you turn to the developers with the expertise it requires, of course. (Freelancers’ reputation is bad for a reason.)

Once you have a clear vision of how your store should function, developers can make it happen with a combination of in-built capabilities and open-source and proprietary tools. What’s more, as long as the specific app you need allows integration through APIs, Magento developers can implement it.

Let’s make a quick comparison of the most sought-out ecommerce features in Shopify vs Magento 2:

	Shopify	Magento 2
Dropshipping	Built-in (integration with Oberlo)	Possible with extensions
Multi-language support	Possible with apps	Built-in
Multi-currency support	133 currencies	200 currencies
Inventory	Unlimited	Unlimited
Blog	Built-in	Possible with extensions
Omnichannel commerce	Built-in integrations with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and WordPress; other integrations possible with apps	Built-in integrations with Facebook and WordPress, other integrations possible with extensions (eBay, Amazon) or custom development
Marketing tools	Standard, built-in	Basic, with extensions for advanced tools
Discount codes	Built-in	Built-in

Verdict: Magento beats Shopify in this round of Magento vs Shopify comparisons thanks to its unrivaled flexibility, customizability, and global commerce features.

Performance

Before diving right into this point, let’s be clear: both Magento and Shopify stores can show subpar performance. Here’s why:

• Magento is resource-intensive by nature. So, without the right optimization done by developers – and the right web hosting – a store with hundreds of thousands of SKUs will be lagging.
• Shopify is, by default, a monolithic solution, meaning the back and frontend are tightly interwoven. So, if you have too many apps running in the backend, for example, your frontend’s speed may suffer – unless you decouple the two and switch to headless Shopify commerce.

However, for developers with the proper technical skills, Magento offers more robust performance optimization capabilities. For one, since it’s a self-hosted platform, you can select the best vendor for your computing needs – and, with proper configurations, get the best performance in return.

It’s worth noting that Magento stores are highly scalable and flexible. They can handle catalogs of over a million SKUs if necessary. On Shopify, growing your store to such a size would require you to switch to the Shopify Plus plan.

Plus, Magento has efficient caching capabilities to optimize performance for large stores. So, when set up correctly, Magento stores can fly, even with a million entries in the product catalog.

Shopify, on the other hand, is more lightweight on its own: it can fit more SKUs on the same hardware than Magento. However, since you choose where to host your Shopify store,, you’ll have to migrate it to another platform if you’re not satisfied with server performance.

Plus, Shopify stores tend to see a dip in performance as they grow bigger, especially if that concerns the number of apps and SKUs. And once they do, there’s little you can do on your end to optimize the performance, whether you have the coding skills or not. (Apart from going headless, again.)

Verdict: Magento wins this round of the Magento vs Shopify comparison thanks to its expansive performance optimization features.

Themes

At the time of writing, Shopify has 12 free themes and 125 paid ones in its official store. You can find themes for various industries (from electronics to restoration) and catalog sizes (from 1-9 products to 200+).

The price tag for paid themes ranges from $180 to $360. Third-party themes can cost even less, from $30 to $100, on marketplaces like ThemeForest and TemplateMonster.

Magento’s official theme store is somewhat sad to visit. There are only nine themes, including three free ones. The paid ones range in price from $150 to a whopping $500.

Third-party marketplaces have more diverse offerings. Popular ThemeForest’s themes cost from $69 to $129, while TemplateMonster’s ones cost between $100 and $200.

Note: Shopify’s main plans—Basic, Shopify, and Advanced—allow only one storefront. If you plan to manage several separate storefronts (e.g., if you operate in multiple markets), prepare to either switch to Shopify Plus or pay for several subscriptions. Magento allows for numerous storefronts out-of-the-box, in contrast.

Verdict: Shopify wins this Magento vs Shopify round with a slight margin, thanks to its robust drag-and-drop editor and more themes, both free and paid but affordable, available.

Customization

When it comes to changing the look of your online store, Shopify allows you to do it using an intuitive drag-and-drop builder. Although it comes with some not-so-obvious workflows, the Shopify theme editor allows you to make edits without any coding involved. It also has handy features like a preview inspector and pre-built sections and blocks.

Magento, on the other hand, may require coding to customize the appearance and functionality of your website. While there is an open-source page builder that integrates with a Magento store, it’s not as versatile as Shopify’s editor.

However, you may need the developers’ expertise to build or modify both Magento and Shopify stores’ frontend.

Working with Shopify’s frontend code requires knowing its own open-source Ruby-based language, Liquid. Liquid developers are rare: Liquid doesn’t even appear on the list of popular technologies in Stack Overflow’s 2022 Developer Survey. Ruby, on the other hand, is used by 6.72% of professional developers.

Magento, in contrast, relies on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to render the frontend, as well as PHP for creating dynamic content and interacting with databases. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are the most popular technologies out there, with PHP being the ninth (21.42%) – but well ahead of Ruby.

Verdict: it’s a tie. If you’re not a developer, it’s easier to make changes with Shopify’s theme editor. But Magento provides limitless customization capabilities for those with a development team.

Integrations, Apps & Extensions

If the out-of-box functionality isn’t enough for your needs, Shopify allows you to expand it with any of its 8,000+ apps – free, freemium, or paid. Many essential tasks like Facebook integration, multi-language translation support, or GDPR compliance can be accomplished for free.

Adding and removing Shopify apps to your online store requires a couple of clicks in most cases. You can also disable them temporarily. However, having too many apps is not recommended because it can slow the store down.

Magento, on the other hand, has 3,800+ apps in its official store as of writing – fewer than Shopify. Many of them are free to install, including the ones from Adobe itself (e.g., Adobe Commerce Payment Services). Others are paid and can cost you up to $2,000.

Installing a Magento extension is likely to require some coding. Unlike in Shopify, you can’t get some essentials, like Facebook integration, for free with an existing extension. However, some integrations, impossible to implement with an extension, can be developed manually.

Verdict: Shopify wins this round of the Magento vs Shopify comparison thanks to its larger app store and easier install process.

Payments & Transactions

Shopify takes a cut from every transaction you make – unlike Magento. And if you don’t use its Shopify Payments gateway, you entail extra fees. So, Shopify incentivizes you to put yourself into a vendor lock-in willingly.

	Basic	Shopify	Advanced
Credit card rates (online)	2.9% + 30¢ USD	2.6% + 30¢ USD	2.4% + 30¢ USD
International/Amex credit card rates (online)	3.9% + 30¢ USD	3.6% + 30¢ USD	3.4% + 30¢ USD
Credit card rates (in person)	2.7% + 0¢ USD	2.5% + 0¢ USD	2.4% + 0¢ USD
Transaction fees if not using Shopify Payments	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%

Magento, on the other hand, gives you the freedom to choose your payment gateway with no strings attached. So, you can select the gateway with the pricing structure and supported currencies that fit your needs best.

At the moment, Shopify supports over 100 gateways, while Magento has 360 extensions for payment integration to choose from.

As for international payments, Shopify Payments supports only a handful of countries (23 at the moment of writing, all of them high-income countries). So, if you operate in other locations, you’ll have to incur those pesky additional transaction fees.

In contrast, Magento allows you to stick to one payment gateway and pay fees only to it, making the whole ordeal easier on your pocket. You just need to make the right choice vis-à-vis the gateway.

Verdict: Magento wins this round of the Magento vs Shopify showdown as a gateway-agnostic platform with great support for multi-currency ecommerce businesses.

Updates & Upgrades

Since Shopify is a SaaS product, maintaining and updating it falls under the vendor’s responsibility. You don’t have to touch the code or worry about implementing the latest Ruby security update. Shopify’s in-house team takes care of it all.

And what if you outgrow Shopify’s functionality on your current plan? Not a problem: you can update your plan anytime in the admin panel. You can scale both up and down. Or, if the necessary functionality can be added via an app, install one instead of switching to a more expensive plan.

Magento is also continuously maintained and updated by its community. Its members regularly roll out new Magento versions that fix issues, upgrade security, and improve performance. However, keeping your store up-to-date is done manually and requires some coding skills.

As for upgrading your Magento store, you’ll unlikely outgrow the platform itself, thanks to its flexibility and adaptability. However, optimizing the store for high traffic and transaction volumes or adding new functionality may require a development team.

You may also outgrow your web hosting vendor. If that happens, you’ll need to migrate your store to another provider with better computing resources.

Note: if you currently have a Magento 1 store, you’ll have to migrate it to Magento 2 as Magento 1 is no longer supported.

Verdict: Shopify takes the lead in Magento vs Shopify comparison with its seamless platform maintenance and updating. Meanwhile, Magento wins in the ‘upgrades’ category as it doesn’t require switching plans.

Support

As a SaaS solution, you can count on Shopify to provide support via its online ticketing system, by phone, on social media, or via live chat. Shopify’s support is available 24/7 for clients on all of its plans. It also has various other support materials:

• Business courses
• How-to guides
• Video tutorials
• Community forums and events
• Webinars

In contrast, Magento doesn’t have customer support per se – unless you’re on one of those Adobe Commerce paid plans. Existing learning materials aren’t that abundant, either.

On the other hand, Magento is a community-driven project. So, if you run into issues, you can always turn to the community behind Magento to resolve them. There’s also a DevBlog, a Slack channel, and a Stack Exchange forum.

Verdict: Shopify wins this round of the Shopify vs Magento showdown with its diverse learning materials and 24/7 customer support.

Search Engine Optimization

Shopify’s SEO features are quite basic out of the box. You can easily edit the metatags, for example.

But if you want advanced features, like tips on optimizing your page content for search engines, you’ll need an additional app (e.g., Yoast). Most SEO apps aren’t free, so the subscription fees can quickly stack up.

Magento, on the other hand, boasts a wider range of built-in SEO capabilities, although some of them require coding skills to set up. For example, you can customize URLs any way you want without additional extensions.

However, Magento requires some setting up to make the most out of its capabilities. This means you’ll need developers to take care of it.

Verdict: Magento wins this round of the Shopify vs Magento comparison thanks to the wider range of SEO features.

Magento vs Shopify: Pros and Cons

Now, let’s compile our findings from the Shopify vs Magento comparison into the pros and cons for both ecommerce platforms.

Shopify

Pros	Cons
Beginner-friendly admin panel and store management workflows	Limited customization capabilities
A variety of pre-built themes, including free ones	Transaction fees, whether or not you use Shopify Payments
24/7 customer support	Risk of vendor lock-in
No substantial upfront development and design fees – you can design your online store yourself	Some features possible only with paid apps
More predictable cost structure

Magento

Pros	Cons
Advanced features across the board	Requires development skills to launch, maintain, and upgrade
Full control over the look and functionality of the website	High upfront costs even if you choose the open-source version
Free and open-source	Self-hosted, meaning you have to take care of web hosting
Unparalleled flexibility, adaptability, and scalability
High customizability for frontend and backend

Magento and Shopify: Final Scores

We’ve assigned scores to Magento and Shopify in every comparison aspect. Here’s how they stacked up on a five-point scale:

	Magento	Shopify
Ease-of-use	2.5	4.5
Features	5	4
Performance	4.5	4
Themes	3	5
Customization	4	4.5
Integrations, apps, and extensions	3.5	5
Payments and transactions	4.5	4
Updates and upgrades	3.5	4
Support	3.5	4.5
Search engine optimization	5	4

So, Which One Is Better, Shopify or Magento? GetTrusted’s Verdict

By this point, you might realize that the answer isn’t as clear-cut as you might like. In reality, which platform is better for your ecommerce business depends on your goals, needs, and resources.

In our experience, Shopify is the more suitable choice for you if you:

• Want to launch your online store as soon as possible
• Are a small or medium-sized business – or just starting out in the industry
• Don’t have the resources to hire a development team
• Want to keep your pricing structure simple and predictable with one monthly payment

And Magento is a good option for those who:

• Are medium and large ecommerce businesses that have aspirations to become big players in their niche
• Need the flexibility, performance, and scalability Magento provides
• Want to avoid vendor lock-in and retain the creative freedom
• Operate (or plan to operate) on an international scale with multiple storefronts
• Have resources to invest in hiring a Magento development team

In both cases, you may need developers to get your online store up and running or adapt it to increasing sales volumes. If you opt for Shopify, you may need Shopify developers to create a unique storefront or migrate to headless commerce. If you choose open-source Magento, you’ll need developers to create and maintain your store and deal with web hosting.

In either case, GetTrusted can rid you of the headache that looking for a development partner usually entails. We’re here to discuss your project, prepare an estimate within 48 hours, and connect you with the top three verified vendors that best match your needs. We also provide escrow services to ensure your collaboration is smooth.