Fiercely competitive field of ecommerce presents businesses with plenty of options all along the way. Beginning from the very first stage, a business needs to decide which platform would best suit their requirements. Ecommerce platforms are many – Magento, BigCommerce, Prestashop, Shopify and more. Amongst these, Magento and Shopify have risen as the ultimate solutions when businesses think about ecommerce. Going online is a big decision, getting it right the first time is essential. Ensure that the ecommerce platform you choose will provide for all the features and functionalities that your business would require. Also, ensure that it scales as your business grows.
Magento Development has been a growing field and today core Magento can be modified into almost anything your business wants – be it social media integration, products and category features or marketing functionalities – anything.
Shopify is also equally aggressive when providing customers with what they want is concerned.
Well, let’s take a look at how the two ecommerce platforms compare – how similar or how different they are:
Ease of use and customization
Shopify is user friendly out of the box. It does not require too much of learning. There are ready instructions you can use to set it up and the process automatically helps you create designs, set up payment and shipping methods and the rest follows.
Magento is user friendly too. It allows a new user to easily set it up. But, it requires some technical expertise to get it up and running for you. But this is not as much of a concern, as Magento developers can easily set this up for you and the good news is these days finding a good Magento developer is pretty easy and affordable too!
So, if you are a small business or starting out on a small budget, Shopify is for you. Well, if your future plans are big, Magento is definitely the answer.
Scalability
Businesses definitely aim for growth. But as businesses grow, the infrastructure that supports the business should also accommodate the changes. Scalable platforms are definitely the solution.
Magento is a platform that is built for scalability. It can handle huge traffic and the databases are robust. Shopify on the other hand is built to handle mild loads.
Extensions and Functionality
Magento development has seen great success in the past few years. Being open source, many developers and open source enthusiasts have added to functionality and have helped create a rich extension base for Magento. These extensions can be easily installed and features can be easily added.
Hosting
Shopify is a hosted ecommerce solution. You need not go out researching the best host and best environment to set it up.
Magento however allows you to find the environment and hosting options that are best suited for your business.
On a closing note…
Both Magento and Shopify are great! It depends on what your business requires and what your feature requirements are. It’s not about one being better or lesser than the other, it’s about which will take your business online and help it grow!
