Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus – Which one is better for your Business and Why?

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Magento Enterprise vs Shopify Plus

No two businesses are the same, and due to this, every website must be equally specific and unique.

This article will walk you through the most popular two best eCommerce systems that are clear market leaders – Magento Enterprise and Shopify Plus. Starting from the core differences and similarities, you will find their advantages and drawbacks also.

The eCommerce genre is booming fast. As per Statistic, international retail eCommerce sales is about to touch the graph of $4.9 trillion in this year i.e. 2021, from the $1.3 trillion which was established in 2014.

Shopify Plus

Shopify released its enterprise version “Shopify Plus” in February 2014. It was meant for large e-commerce companies with a great range of added features and support. It is the answer to big brands selling in large volumes. They can concentrate on expanding their horizon with Shopify’s enterprise-great solution.

Magento 2 Commerce

This ‘Enterprise’ version of Magento development is a known and popular e-commerce solution taken over by Adobe way back in 2018. It is great for fast and inexpensive innovation, clubbing out-of-the-box features, increasing the business performance, and scaling its usability which robust business systems to stay ahead of seemingly complex eCommerce business.

Importance of eCommerce Platforms

An electronic ground is a digital app that helps the smooth management of online invoicing, CMS, and sales functions. These are virtual platforms where consumers can buy any product or service of their choice. Using these platforms, eCommerce companies can host and build their website, organize their product, prices, and promotional campaigns, interact with their customers and also tailor-make their sales. On the expansion of business; to manage higher volumes of sales and customers; a solid eCommerce platform becomes necessary.

Here are the basic functional comparison between Magento Enterprise and Shopify Plus platforms:

1. Multi-Store System

Magento development is capable of handling multi-store. This is one of its key driving forces, as it allows businesses to organize various brands along with B2C and B2B stores from a single Magento interface. In easy terms: it can handle more than one website using various domain names and languages.

In Shopify Plus you have to “clone” your website to make it multi-store functional. Up to 9 times you can use this platform to create clones. You may have to require an admin per clone and a complex integration process. Of course, it is technically possible to have a multi-store using Shopify Plus also, though not quite as easy and decent as Magento. You should hire professionally run Magento development services providing company for this.

2. Hosting & User- Friendly Personalization

Shopify is a full-range hosted cloud system Software-as-a-Service. SaaS provides remarkable savings as it cuts the upfront cost of purchase and installation, and also the on-going expenses like upgrades and maintenance.

It also means you cannot have access to the code that is the foundation of your site and thus you have reduced flexibility in terms of customization.

Whereas, Magento is a self-hosted tool with a robust server to manage Magento’s large repository of resources, which can add complexity and operating costs. Still, the ease of customization is a great plus. You have the code, which means you can change anything and everything anytime you wish. You have full control over your website, though at a cost.

3. Scalability

Magento Enterprise is more flexible compared to Shopify. Magento development uses PHP (one of the most popular and the oldest yet upgraded programming languages) which is an open-source and self-hosted system also. You can have access to a complete technology stack, to set up various languages and multiple currencies. There are plenty of options available that are quite tough to navigate.

On the other hand, Shopify is more popular for its simplicity and user-friendliness. It offers an ergonomic interface and a rapid turnaround time, but not without some limitations in features.

4. Pricing

When it comes to costing, Shopify will cost you only $2,000 per month. This costing will include the license, support, and SaaS hosting. Although the fees do go up once you start making over US$9.6M p/a. The expense to build and maintain a website on this platform is usually half the cost of Magento. Hence, you can see Shopify Plus is the winner on the costing part as Magento is a little costly.

The licensing of Magento Commerce Cloud starts at US$40,000 per annum or on-premise cost might start at US$24,000/year. This cost might go up depending on the specific need or merchant turnover (tier-based). In short, you will not pay the same amount as an eCommerce company. You do not have to pay the hosting costs for the “on-premise” platform as it depends on the size of the website.

5. Apps and Extensions

Both systems have well-established ecosystems for apps and extensions. These apps and extensions expand the functionalities so your business website. Added features are essential for any fully functional website for expanding the functionalities of the portal in multiple ways.

Shopify features many apps with varied functionalities to support businesses at a small cost. Some of such extensions include Launchpad, Shopify Flow, Transporter, etc.

Whereas, Magento Enterprise does not create any exclusive apps for big brands and users. Although, you can select from the third-party extension apps available on Magento Marketplace.

6. B2B/ WholeSale Features

Shopify provides you a wholesale section in the dashboard. Although, this feature is quite restricted for sellers and not all are customizable.

Magento Commerce scores better in this area. It offers very advanced native and smart support to B2B ecommerce merchants. The new B2B suite of Magento development service is paced with a lot of robust features which includes:

  • Build customer-based catalogs
  • Manage quotes
  • Handle many settings against customers
  • Allot budgets to vendors and users
  • Assign roles to users
  • Define credit limits
  • Multiple approval workflows

This is a great strength of Magento over Shopify’s advanced version.

Now, What to Select

The fact is, in case you do not need a multiple store configuration, advanced customization/integration, B2B functionality, better to go with Shopify Enterprise system. As it will suit your needs as it has fewer features than Magento hence the costing.

But if you are planning to launch a large setup of business or want to expand your business heavily in terms of complexity, customization, and integrated solution and also have a big budget then Magento Enterprise is the best bet.

Now it is up to you to select the best fit as per your business needs and budget constraints. Obviously, the more tailor-made and flexible a platform is, the more complex and less cost-effective it is to develop and maintain.

If you are still not sure which way to go, contact us now for a free consultation. You can hire our services as we are one of the leading Magento development companies with years of cumulative experience.