With small businesses and startups, you are satisfied with doing business through free plan eCommerce solutions that have few choices and customized options.
But as your business grows, you would likely be thinking about investing in an enterprise-level eCommerce platform for your website. Shopify Plus or Magento 2 Commerce will be the two choices that businesses often weigh against each other.
This blog will compare Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus to help you assess the two platforms on their strengths and weaknesses in several areas, then evaluate to see which platform works best for your business.
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Magento 2 Open Source vs Magento 2 Commerce
Table of Contents
Magento 2 Open Source was known as Magento Community before, it is a free download version of Magento that can be downloaded, customized, and self-hosted. Aside from what’s provided on Magento Default, there is also a marketplace of modules, which customers can implement in their system to make it highly customizable.
Magento 2 Commerce comes in two versions, Magento Enterprise, and Magento 2 Commerce Cloud. Magento 2 Commerce’s price range started at around 22K/ year, but the features and functionalities it provides are much more than the Open Source version.
The exclusive Magento 2 Commerce features are:
- Improved marketing abilities which include displaying specific content to customers based on their address, gender, order history, etc; targeting customers depending on which products they’ve viewed or added to their cart; automating emails, and creating time-limited sales.
- The admin functionalities also is an upgrade from the open-source version; customers have now added the ability to control their site’s page hierarchy, which would enable the admin to organize content pages and add pagination and menus. Content staging also allows users to create, preview, and update content by admin; and the Action Log function helps them check the activities by the administrator.
- Other enhancements features include customer and order management, analytics, and reports; B2B functionality like fast checkout, requisition list, or detailed reports to analyze sales, customer, and product data; as well as the support for the Magento 2 Commerce platform 24/7.
If you are interested in reading more about Magento Open Source vs Magento Enterprise Edition, then:
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Shopify vs Shopify Plus
The same as for Magento, Shopify Plus is the paid version of Shopify, which comes with much more features and integrations, and dedicated support activities.
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There are a few main highlight differences between the two:
- Shopify is supported through phone, live chat, and email. But when moving to Shopify Plus, there will be a manager engineer who personally walks you through the steps needed to set up, customize, and migrate your web store. This person will stay there to help you with any problems you might encounter related to the platform.
- Shopify Plus allows you to have greater control over the codes of your themes as you can access the Liquid theme language and edit your themes to your liking.
- Shopify Plus also allows unlimited staff accounts, which is suitable for you to assign staff accounts to your team, and that’s why the option would be the best fit for enterprises.
- The checkout configuration of Shopify Plus is also much more customizable from cart values or other conditions. Customers using Shopify Plus get to work with the Script Editor. which gives you control over shipping methods, customer fields, and payment options.
- Integration APIs and existing platforms also are enhanced and expanded, not to mention that Shopify Plus users get to work with exclusive resources that are not available for Shopify.
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Overview of Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus
Magento has shown itself as the leading provider of eCommerce platforms, with its larger average retail size and presence in the eCommerce market. Magento is also on the top IR1000 merchants, which is an impressive result. Many brands that are using Magento currently turn over a number of over $1 billion online.
With the recent acquisition of Adobe of Magento, users can expect more advantages in designs on future versions of both Magento 2 Open Source and Magento 2 Commerce.
Shopify Plus’s mid-market and market shares enterprise is growing rapidly, and their customers include Staples Canada, JB Hifi, Decathlon US, Missoma, Protein World, APC, Color Pop, as well as other brands like Fashion Nova, and Kylie Cosmetics are cited as stores turning over more than $ 1 billion per year online.
Both e-commerce platforms have standout features that focus on different and the same players in the field. Therefore an article about Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus will be the advice for you, business owners, to make a decision at the enterprise level. Depending on your company characteristics, and your company’s needs, Magento 2 Enterprise or Shopify Plus can be the most suitable choice for you.
The table below lists an overview of the differences between Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus.
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Cost and Pricing Plans
A business consultant to apparel companies, Kathryn Valentine has said: “Shopify is the Honda; Magento is the Ferrari.”
Just like some people can afford a Honda while others want a Ferrari, Magento 2 Commerce, and Shopify Plus also aim to enterprise with different growth rates.
For firms with business growth under $25M, even $50M will see that Magento built and maintenance costs are too expensive for their budget, and Shopify Plus is a more suitable option. Enterprises with higher growth rates, however, would prefer Magento because of its advanced customizations.
Shopify Plus
- License Fees: Shopify Plus costs a flat $2,000/month, and adds 25% of the average revenue after the company reached $800K in revenue.
- Transaction Fees: For Shopify Payment, the main payment method of Shopify, you will be required to pay 2.15% + $0.30 for each transaction on Visa and Mastercard. If you use a third-party payment provider, you will have to pay 0.15% transaction fees on top.
- Hosting Costs: Shopify Plus doesn’t require hosting costs, as it has been already covered in the license fees. The license fees package also includes security, upgrades, maintenance, security and SSL certificates, PCI compliance, and technical support.
- Migration and Build cost: In principle, your costs for building a website on Shopify Plus are zero to $180 if you use built-in Shopify themes. However, if you demand customization features in your store, the costs can vary from $30,000 to $250,000.
Magento 2 Enterprise
Magento 2 Commerce prices are also divided into License Fees, Transaction Fees, Hosting, Migration, Build, and Maintenance costs.
- License Fees: While Shopify requires license fees monthly, Magento has an annual license fee system based on the size and gross revenue of the company. Licensing Fees started at around $22,000 / year.
- Transaction Fees: Magento gives the retailer total ownership of their operations, which means there are no transaction fees except the ones from processors of your choice. With Magento, you also have the choice of setting your own payment gateways.
- Hosting: You can host Magento on any server you want. You can choose a third-party hosting for $1000/ month, or using Magento 2 Commerce Cloud Hosting for the price of $3,333 per month for both hosting and platform fees combined.
- Migration, Build, and Maintenance: Magento 2 Enterprise Edition building costs vary starting from $100,000. You will need to pay developers for patches, upgrades, module installations, and other maintenance needs.
If you wish to have a detailed roadmap on costs needed to build a website on Magento 2 Enterprise, then:
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User-friendliness and Support
Shopify Plus is a fully hosted website, which means your site is run from someone’s server, and that server is managing the layout on your website.
This gives Shopify a big plus in being user-friendly because it provides you with the web interface without having to deal with endless lines of code. This will lessen your worry about your updates and maintenance of your website because the external server will do it for you.
But the downside of this convenience is limitations on your customizations, as you can’t access the source code to increase flexibility to your website.
Magento 2 Commerce, on the other hand, is used for experienced developers with experience, which means users must have a few years of developmental coding to be able to master the platform.
Aside from the features that Magento Commerce got out of the box, users can customize it to fit their specific needs. The trade-off of this is your business will have to have a team of developers dedicated to building additional features for Magento.
Features
We’ll present to you the features that stark the strong points of Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus. Because some of the features have been covered in the section above, so you can go back up to see more details about these features.
On Shopify Plus, you will get to use:
- Shopify Plus account managers (Magento also offers support, but you have to have experts on your team already to deal with the platform complexity);
- A multi-store dashboard (this dashboard does give you control over some stores, but unlike Magento, there is limited access to your stores’ structure;
- Shopify Flow (Shopify website visual builder, which could be compared to Magento Page Builder);
- Shopify Launchpad – automate sales campaign & product launch;
- Multiple customer’s data import tools;
- B2B features.
Magento 2 Commerce, provide these features to its users:
- Multiple brands and vendors (Shopify Plus is limited, you can only create 10 clone stores);
- Stores in different countries(Shopify Plus doesn’t support multi-language, currency stores, and global shipping systems);
- Promotions and discounts using a promotion built-in program;
- Magento Page Builder serves as a website builder that gets design enhancements from Adobe;
- More variants in product types (Magento supports 7 core product types while Shopify supports 2);
- Magento 2 B2b features.
B2B Features
Fully aware of the huge shift from B2B offline to B2B eCommerce, we separate B2B features into one section for deeper analysis. We compare the merchant servicing capabilities of Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus so you can choose the best platform for your business.
Shopify Plus
B2B features included in Shopify Plus allows users to:
- Create custom pricing, percentage discounts, and volume-based pricing for customers/ customer groups;
- Review wholesale customer registrations;
- Enable B2B customers to track and easily reorder products;
- Sync inventory, orders, and customers with your existing Shopify store or third-party software;
- Review wholesale orders before invoicing.
Magento 2 Commerce
Magento Commerce B2B features cover all steps of a typical B2B buying journey. Leveraging this platform, you’ll be able to:
- Restrict access to valuable categories/ CMS pages from specific customer groups;
- Create a unique B2B registration form to get more customer details and review sign-ups;
- Allow corporate customers to involve multi-users by sharing a company account;
- Assign sales reps to each customer;
- Create custom pricing for different customers/ customer groups;
- Facilitate negotiation process with the request for quote feature;
- Offer a quick order form and reorder product lists to fasten order placement of customers;
- Support interval purchasing plans with requisition list;
- Accept purchase order (PO) as a payment method when people check out.
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Even for those who can’t afford Magento Commerce, you can still use the Open Source edition equipped with high-quality Magento 2 B2B extensions. This way still ensures the quality of customer service, and site performance, but at a much more economical level.
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Put all features in perspective, Magento is clearly the winner for its diversity of features, and the advances in Magento 2 Commerce options. If you want to reach your customers in many countries and use multiple languages in your store, then Magento would be a clear choice for your business.
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SEO Optimization
Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus battle in SEO is also similar to comparison in other aspects of the two platforms.
Shopify Plus is very limited in terms of SEO, it relies on its built-in tools and extensions. Don’t get me wrong, the platform SEO is powerful on its own, with functions like custom page URLs, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and more. However, Shopify Plus doesn’t allow ‘deeper’ SEO techniques, which leads to users having a hard time finding ways to increase organic traffic volume. And due to its locked-down nature, Shopify made it impossible to
Magento has its downside as users have to work to prevent some issues, and is not as strong as Shopify when it comes to technical SEO platforms out of the box. But the platform provides more flexibility as the source is open, and it has features that are suitable for current engine trends like creating rich snippets, manually organized markup data, and fine-tuning a website robot.txt file. The feature is possible in Magento due to the depth that you can access in your website structure.
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Multi-store Management
Multiple store management is the key selling point of Magento 2 Commerce to Shopify Plus. The platform allows users who wish to manage their product catalogs across brands, regional stores, and B2B/ B2C stores within a common interface. Magento allows you to set product attributes from scope global to the local level, and define the price differently at the website level.
This unique point of Magento Enterprise was used by many large and multinational brands, as I have come across companies that manage large product catalog in different regions. The brands that are using Magento Enterprise to manage their stores are Ford Accessories, Ahmad Tea, Nestle, Rubie’s, and more.
While Shopify Plus does allow multiple store management ( up to 10 clone stores with the Plus license), it is absent the store architecture, which is the reason many retailers hesitate when it comes to using Shopify Plus.
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Wrap Up
After the comparison of Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus in certain aspects, we can draw the following conclusions:
Magento is robust in features and full of flexibility in SEO and Multiple-store Management, but the platform is complex to use, and unless you have experienced developers in your hands, you should not jump head first in the Magento Enterprise version. The cost for the license, hosting, and building is also quite expensive for small-scale businesses, so if your company doesn’t have enough budget, we suggest using the Magento Open Source version instead.
On one hand, Magento is a fit choice for enterprises that are looking to build a portfolio on a large, international scale, and has revenue of over $5 million / year already. This will afford them to pay for the costs and hire the necessary professionals to maintain their sites.
On the other hand, Shopify Plus is a more suitable choice for growing firms and less complex, without the need for advanced developmental configs, but which also means store owners will never be 100% in charge of every single aspect of their website.
Therefore, let’s consider your business size, long-term goals, and financial status, after reading our comparison of Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus.
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