Magento 2.0 vs Shopify Plus
If you have been selling your wares over the internet for some time then you have probably researched a number of eCommerce platforms. More recently, Shopify Plus has become a popular platform for online retailers with many others such as Magento 2.0 following close behind. Knowing the difference between these platforms is hugely useful at a time when technology is evolving at a fast rate.
Magento is written in PHP and was designed in California. Now in its 12th year it has more than 100,000 stores using its platform (including Harvey Nichols), and the code has been downloaded more than 2.2 million times with $155 billion worth of products sold through its systems. Three years ago, 30% of the total market share came from Magento. Nearly five years ago Magento 2.0 was released smoothing out some of the issues from its first version.
While Shopify was initially developed for small to medium-sized businesses, the next platform version, Shopify Plus, was designed for larger brands like Fashion Nova and Kylie Cosmetics. Managing more than 10,000 transactions per minute, its online stores have generated approximately $55 billion in sales.
Updated sales and transactions per minute: https://www.shopify.com.au/plus
Both platforms offer different feature plans to suit a variety of retailers. We'll now take you though features for both including storage, reporting, integration, functionality and speed, to name a few. So make sure to keep reading!
Introduction
Magento 2 is the larger e-Commerce platform out of the two and services a large portion of retailers in the US. Shopify Plus provides a fully-hosted SaaS platform and although it has a smaller share of the market, it is growing fast and with recent launches of larger retailers such as JB Hifi. While Shopify Plus offers lower customised plans than Magento 2, the latter's platform is open source which can be easily modified.
Licence and hosting costs
The licensing and hosting costs for Magento 2 can be more expensive than Shopify Plus. Magento 2's pricing increases are relative to how much the business' profit is turning over. Shopify Plus has a base rate included subscription per month which increases from this price. So as a comparison, for a retailer that spends $24k - $36k USD on licensing and hosting with Shopify Plus, the same retailer would be spending $50k - $100k USD per year with Magento 2.
Payment Gateway
Magento 2 provides many choices in this area integrating with Ayden, Braintree and Stripe. The other top payment gateways options for Magento 2 are CartaSi, SagePay, WorldPay and 2Checkout. Shopify Plus has up to 70 payment gateway options as well as its own Payment Gateway Shopify Payments which is reasonable in price compared to others in the market. Examples of retailers that integrate with Shopify Plus are Braintree, PayPal and Wordplay and this platform works with most third-party payment gateways for an extra fee.
Storage
Magento 2's file storage depends on who you choose as your web host while Shopify Plus offers unlimited bandwidth and file storage.
Multi currency
Magento 2 is strong in this area because it has a great multi-store infrastructure, which accepts multifaceted international requirements. It has proven itself with stores globally because it allows local payments methods and understands localised pricings and shopping options. Shopify Plus can easily add and remove currencies based on market changes. The international setup on Shopify Plus means that you can work with multiple stores.
Support
Shopify offers 24/7 email, chat and phone support is easily accessed and also offers community forums. Magento 2's support comes from a community of Magento developers which solve problems for user needs. If users go through Magento they will be able to access assistance through outside developers.
Reporting
Magento 2 offers basic reporting including when working with third-party modules. Shopify is known for its dashboard reporting which can be seen as a cleaner system, and if there are any gaps you can use third parties like Elevarm Excelify and Glew.
Integration
Both platforms have good integrations systems and marketplaces for third-party extensions and applications. Shopify use its own API and its technology, in this respect, is pretty strong because it has a multitude of apps that have been pre-tested and work well.
When it comes to connecting to a third party Magento has an open system which it hosts, so you can modify the code. Shopify Plus is a tightly controlled platform which no one can access instead customisation happens via apps which then connect through its API.
Functionality
Shopify Plus' platform involves managing more than 1500 plus stores under the one account and Magento 2 has a multi-store architecture that lets you manage multiple stores from one system.
Security
Magento 2 requires a developer and paid maintenance while Shopify Plus remains secure in its cloud-based solution, which requires zero updates and time invested.
Speed
Shopify Plus 2 is a fast service delivering 99.98% uptime and Magento 2, although faster than Magento 1, is a lot slower than Shopify 2.
Marketing and SEO
In this realm Magento 2 is very flexible around SEO allowing for full customisation and retailers experiment openly with the platform without restriction. Alternatively, Shopify Plus is locked down around SEO and doesn't allow for much editing of robots and URLs. Users are able to amend logic around things like canonical URLs, hreflang references and noindex tags.
User experience
Magento 2's installation setup is complex and requires a developer. This platform has advanced features that can be modified or built in to fit different needs giving a more lavish shopping experience. However, this can be expensive to achieve. Alternatively, Shopify Plus has a more user-friendly easy to use interface that boasts robust features, which requires less development work.
Shopify Plus features:
• Wholesale channel
• A Facebook communityand Partners directory
• A multi-store dashboard
• Access to Shopify’s Liquid theme language for code-level changes
• Shopify Scripts editor which allows you to customize checkout
• Shopify Flow (Shopify’s eCommerce automation platform, which uses a visual builder)
• Shopify Launchpad — a tool to automate sales campaigns and product launches
• Bulk customer data import tools.
Magento 2 features:
• Multiple brands• Multiple vendors
• Stores across multiple countries
• Promotions and discounts using a built-in promotions engine
• Bigger product catalogs with complex attribute combinations
• Different product types (Magento supports 7 core product types while Shopify has 2)
What are the 2 product types we support?
• Native handling of product bundles and product attributes
• International currencies and global shipping
Development cost
You are looking at around $50k to $150k USD for Shopify Plus compared to Magento 2's $150k to $300k USD.
Maintenance costs
Shopify Plus has a monthly fee of $2000 USD and Magento 2's costs vary according to the chosen hosting and developer.
Retail and online
Magento 2 has a web-based point-of-sale transformed with PWA technology and Shopify Plus already has what is known as an 'omni channel' capability.
Wholesale
Currently there are three ways of managing wholesale on the Shopify Plus platform. The first is the Shopify Wholesale Channel just for selling products via wholesale, the second is by adapting the overall experience for logged in customers assigned to a wholesale group and the third is a by creating a standalone online whole store.
Magento 2 has a 'wholesale fast order' which has been developed by an independent which makes any purchasing process simple. The feature reduces the time spent searching and choosing items making for a quick order chain of events. The other strong features include managing quotes, assigning budgets to users and companies, setting up credit limits etc.
Summary
It is clear these platforms are two of the eCommerce giants of late. Shopify Plus' offering is one that is speedy, very user-friendly and doesn't require a developer to setup while Magento 2's offering is one that will cost you more to set up and to learn but it is a good platform for retailers that are more complex and require multi-store customisation.
If you are choosing, it will all come down to what you specifically require around functionality and in-house resources.
