Magento and Shopify : What are their Pros & Cons?

Choosing the right platform for your online store is incredibly important. The platform plays a decisive role to identify if your eCommerce business is going to be successful, or unsuccessful. 

We will discuss the pros and cons of Magento and Shopify, along with an in-depth comparison of their specific features.

Shopify: Pros and Cons

Shopify Pros

There are almost 60 stunning, mobile-ready themes available for the storefront.

The online store optimizes itself automatically based on different devices and screen sizes. That’s great because mobile shoppers have increased more than ever!

In fact, almost 69% of consumers who are aged between 18-39 years use their mobile phones for doing research about the products before they buy. Even if a desktop is then used to complete the purchase. This means that the products must shine on mobile also to push your customers to convert.

Comprehensive eCommerce website builder having a large App Store for extending the functionality of your site.

For taking your store to the next level as well as boosting your bottom line, Shopify is a great option. Consider the Apple App Store, how it allows you to do so much with your smartphone. Shopify’s App Store works just like that, but for websites.

Has 24/7 support, Therefore, easy to use.

If you get stuck, Shopify will always be there, to help you resolve the problems quickly and focus on sales only.

24/7 phone support, live chat, and email functionality are available to suit everyone’s schedule.

Shopify comes with a forum for discussing website building and general business tips with other users.

Shopify Cons

The number of free themes available is 10.

If you like a free theme, this may narrow your choice, somewhat. But, if you want to provide the store, that looks you really wanted, and your customer, the shopping experience they’re really looking for to engage them in the purchase. For this, their premium themes are worth investing.

Your store becomes more complex to deal with lots of integrated apps.

If you’re worried about increased complexity, then you just need to be really choosy regarding the apps your store can get benefit from. You may get excited about the wide range of apps available but choose wisely for a better result.

You may integrate your Instagram feed for showing off your products which is very quick and easy to do.

With the growth of your store, adding an email marketing app is recommended to help you grow your sales as well as maximizing your customers’ buying potential.

Charging transaction fee per sale.

The transaction fee decreases each month as you pay more i.e. when you are investing in a more inclusive plan. Shopify reward its Users with lower transaction fees so that you can make more money comparatively on each sale.

Alternatively, to get rid of all transaction fees, you may utilize Shopify’s own payment procedure i.e. Shopify Payments.

Magento: Pros and Cons

Magento Pros

Big support Community for Users.

Magento Forum is there to help you if you get into any trouble. You can get help for everything to get online as soon as possible.

You can search for your query with the help of the huge database which consists of user-generated content. In the usual conditions, you may be able to find a comprehensive, but simple to understand, explanation to whatever query you’re looking for.

If you have any problem regarding Magento, you may consult other Magento users to solve your issues as they’ve been in the same position as you earlier.

In short, they are aware of what you want to do and how to do it. And it can be explained in the easiest way.

It is a very flexible platform which provides you with complete freedom.

Magento doesn’t impose any limitations on how you may design your store (as long as you some knowledge about code, or are willing to hire someone to do so).

To stand out from the crowd, you can make it personal as well as original. This little step will help customers remember you and also come back to your online store time and again.

But if coding is not your cup of tea, and there is no budget for a developer, then using Shopify may be you’re best off, as similar results can be achieved in (at least) half the time.

Cost

Magento, being an open source platform is available in the public domain and therefore free to use.

Remember that while using Magento, you’ll have to pay for your own hosting.

Magento Cons

It requires coding knowledge and is difficult to get to grips with.

Magento can be a very intimidating platform and comes with a steep learning curve, especially for the non-technical person.

The relevancy comes into picture while comparing it to Shopify. As it makes for a much straightforward website building experience as compared to others.

with Shopify what you can achieve will pleasantly surprise you with little or no problems at all even if you’re not technology-confident.

While using Magento, you’re more likely to run into difficult situations.

To get your store up and running, the significant time investment is required.

To familiarize yourself with Magento’s interface is a very time-intensive task. It may look a little intimidating to the first-time user. So it is advised to set aside some time to get familiar with the platform before getting stuck into building the site.

While using Magento, you may need to be prepared beforehand to spend a good amount of hours to adapt lines of code to get your site look exactly how you wanted it to look.

If you’re looking to get online quickly, it may not be the platform for you.

Cost

Despite being an open platform, you need to spend on hosting as well as app costs, which becomes a bit pricey.

With the growth of your store, you’ll need to pay more for the hosting purpose. Shopify can be your way forward if you are looking for an e-commerce platform that allows your store to grow without any worries about increasing hosting costs.

Some of the Magento’s apps can be used for free, but others may come with an installation or yearly fee. This often goes around $100 mark per app, which means it can gain up very quickly if you want to integrate advanced functions into your online store.

With Magento, you may also need to consider the potential of hiring a developer, which is a pretty hefty financial investment.