Magento and Shopify, both come with excellent features. Before opting for anyone, understand your company’s requirements, only then you will be able to make a clear choice.

1. Comparing the Benefits Between
Magento and Shopify
Location, as we know, have always played a major role in determining the success of any
company. Nobody wants to set their shop in a secluded area devoid of any customers.
Similar logic applies while you try to set an online store but with a minor difference, you
have to choose an e-commerce platform rather than an actual location.
Choosing an e-commerce platform may appear to be a minor difference but in no way, it is
to be mistaken as a minor problem. What’s the point of establishing a nice-looking online
store brimming to the top with a variety of products where customers cannot find you. It
gets even tougher due to the vast majority of options available (each claiming to be no.1) to
pick from.
But if you look at things more closely, you will realise that there are very few platforms on
top such as WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Big Cartel etc. among which
the main competition is actually between two e-commerce giants namely Magento and
Shopify. Let’s learn a bit more about them.
Magento, originally developed by Varien Inc. in 2007 and currently owned by eBay, is an
open source e-commerce platform written in PHP. Magento development services are
currently available in two versions namely Community (which is free with basic features)
and Enterprise (which is paid with advanced features) edition.
Shopify, on the other hand, was launched by Snowdevil founders in 2006 by Daniel
Weinand, Scott Lake and chiefly Tobias Lütke as an API (or Application Programming
Interface) platform. It is basically a cloud based e-commerce store platform written in
LIQUID which enables the Shopify web design and customization to be extremely user-
friendly.

2. Now that you are aware of them, let’s dive in a bit deeper and learn about their various
benefits and what distinguishes them.
1. Popularity Ratio
The first thing any client will look for is the popularity ratio and here Shopify seems to hold
an upper hand by hosting more than 2,40,000 websites on its domain with Magento slightly
behind with 1,60,000 sites to claim its own.
But this tells more about the businesses that own them, not efficiency ratio as Shopify is
mostly popular among small businesses whereas Magento is more suitable for medium or
large companies.
2. Web design/Customization
Both Shopify and Magento provide you with the facility to build your websites from scratch
choosing from various themes available which are highly responsive with robust
customization capabilities.
The difference lies in the usability, where Shopify works on drag and drop philosophy
enabling easy theme customization, Magento with the help of Bluefoot (a CMS and page
builder module) enable clients to build a uniquely designed website.
3. Apps and Add-ons
When it comes to flexibility, Magento is the clear winner. Shopify with a little over 100 apps
and Add-ons comes nowhere near Magento which provides more than 5000 extensions to
its clients owning no doubt to the open source nature of the platform.
4. Expenses
Since it’s an open source network, the Community edition of Magento is completely free to
use and its enterprise edition costs vary according to company’s needs. However, hosting
3rd party services may cost a little.
Shopify, on the other end, works on SAAS (software-as-a-service). Initially, you get a free
trial period of 14 days after which it ranges between $29 to $179. Though you may save on
hosting as Shopify is self-hosted.
5. Payment Getaway Options

3. Shopify offers its users a smooth experience when it comes to payment options. With 70
payment getaways, Shopify clearly holds a major advantage here over Magento which offers
far less to its users though it can be increased via 3rd party add-ons.
6. Inventory Management
Here you will have to choose according to your requirement as both offers bulk upload
features with add and edit options. You can add unlimited products on Shopify with its
monthly plans with only one exception i.e. starter pack, which costs $14 and will limit your
stored items to 25 only.
With Magento you don’t have to worry about product management as it allows virtually
unlimited products but faces another issue, it weighs down your site’s loading time which
you won’t find in Shopify.
7. SEO Management/Driving Traffic
When it comes to generating traffic, SEO plays a very important role as it drives more
organic traffic to your stores via search engines. Both platforms are extremely SEO friendly
and provide extensive SEO capabilities, however, Magento ranks slightly higher in a study of
SEO scores with Shopify closely behind.
8. Speed and Performance
The speed with which any website loads determines its success rate. If one compares
Magento 1.0 with Shopify, Shopify is the clear winner, but things have changed with the
coming of Magento 2.0 which is incredibly fast compared to its earlier version.
9. User experience
When it comes to user experience, a lot of people seem more satisfied with Shopify than
Magento. Even the admin panel of Shopify requires no advance knowledge and easy to
maintain whereas, with Magento 1, clients need professional help due to its complexity of
setting up their store. But Magento 2.0 with its user-friendly admin panel and readymade
extensions have resolved that issue which Magento 1.0 had.
Conclusion
It’s hard to make a clear assumption as to who should be the winner as both have their
advantages and disadvantages. But what we can gather from the available information is
that both Shopify and Magento provide excellent hosting platforms best suited according to
the customer’s needs. So choose wisely.