Adobe Commerce (Magento) vs Shopify – Which Is the Right Platform for You?

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4.8

out of 5

Can’t decide between Adobe Commerce (Magento) and Shopify? You’re not alone. These two brands are two of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market today.

Shopify is an easy-to-use solution for building online stores. You pay a monthly fee, and it’s capable of supporting both fledgling and high-volume businesses.

Adobe Commerce is an open-source platform which, like WordPress, is free to install onto your computer. However, you’ll need to pay for web hosting (around $10 per month), security, and extensions (they’re like apps), which we’ll explain in more detail below.

It’s a powerful platform, but you’ll find it hard to achieve your ecommerce goals without knowing how to code. It’s more suitable for enterprise-level businesses with their own development teams.

How do we know what’s best for your store? For starters, we’ve run various ecommerce platforms through our extensive research process, which included asking people just like you to try them too. We’ve also calculated scores for each platform in all-important categories like value for money, sales tools, customer support, and more.

In short, we have a comprehensive, crystal clear picture of each platform. Check out our tables below for an overview of each one…

Best for large stores selling 10+ products

4.8

out of 5
Overall Rating

4.8 out of 5 stars

Ease Of Use

4 out of 5 stars

Sales Features

4.7 out of 5 stars

Website Features

4.6 out of 5 stars

Help and Support

3.9 out of 5 stars

Value For Money

3.6 out of 5 stars

Best for enterprise-level businesses

4

out of 5
Overall Rating

4 out of 5 stars

Ease Of Use

2.5 out of 5 stars

Sales Features

4 out of 5 stars

Website Features

4.2 out of 5 stars

Help and Support

5 out of 5 stars

Value For Money

3.5 out of 5 stars

Do you wish someone would just tell you exactly which platform is best for you instead of reading this whole comparison? Well, the good news is, we have a quick and easy quiz for you! Simply answer a few questions to get a personalized recommendation…

What type of website do you want to create?

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What is Adobe Commerce?

In June 2018, Adobe acquired Magento and by April 2021 had rebranded Magento Commerce to Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce is an open-source ecommerce platform used by the likes of HP and Canon.

Shopify: Pros and Cons

Shopify Pros Shopify Cons
Multichannel selling – sell on Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay Transaction fees – only platform to enforce its own fees, unless you use Shopify Payments
70+ mobile responsive themes – 10 free options, plus 64 premium options starting from $140 Cost of apps – it’s easy to get carried away installing lots of paid apps
App store – extensive range of apps to extend the functionality of your site

Adobe Commerce (Magento): Pros and Cons

Adobe Commerce Pros Adobe Commerce Cons
Large user community – the Adobe Commerce Forum has a comprehensive answer for just about anything Unsuitable for beginners – you’ll need to know how to code, and the software uses web developer jargon that isn’t very beginner-friendly
Very flexible platform – there are no limitations to how you can design your store, as long as you know how to code Not easy to install – unlike other open-source software, it’s harder to find a hosting provider that will support Adobe Commerce (SiteGround is one that will)
Ideal for medium to large businesses – an advanced platform suitable for businesses with their own web development teams, or that have money to spend on hiring a developer

Ease of Use

shopify
The Winner

Shopify is easier to use than Adobe Commerce

Shopify wins for ease of use. Adobe Commerce is more flexible than Shopify, in that it enables you to customize your store however you like with code, but it’s much trickier to use overall – which will make it hard for most users to build a store to be proud of.
Visit Shopify

Picking a platform that’s too hard to use will make it impossible for you to create the ecommerce store you want, which could be damaging to your brand image.

Shopify is far easier to use than Adobe Commerce. It’s a fact. Shopify is a one-stop-shop, drag-and-drop website builder, which means you can easily customize your store by moving elements around the page exactly how you want.

In our ease of use research category, Shopify scored 4.1/5, while Adobe Commerce scored 2.5.  In essence, Shopify is suitable for users of all technical abilities, while Adobe Commerce is for web developers only.

With Adobe Commerce, the learning curve is pretty steep compared to Shopify. You’ll have to interpret jargon and use code in order to build the online store you want, or or hire a web developer to build the store for you.

shopify Dashboard setup guide
We found Shopify's helpful setup guide in their backend kept us on track when setting up our online store. Image source: WBE testing.

Further Reading

Shopify Review – our full in-depth review of Shopify

Comparison of Online Store Builders – where we compare Shopify with other online builders

Shopify vs WooCommerce – take a look at how Shopify goes up against another ecommerce platform

Themes

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has better themes

Shopify has a wider (and cheaper) range of themes than Adobe Commerce. You don’t need to use code to customize Shopify’s themes, either, which makes it really easy for you to tailor your chosen template to the needs of your brand.
Visit Shopify

The theme of your online store forms the basis of what your customers will see when they land on your site, and 48% of visitors cite a website’s design as the most important factor in determining a business’s credibility.

With that in mind, you need to choose your template carefully to make a good first impression and inspire trust.

Scoring 3.7/5 in our ‘design’ research category, Shopify offers 10 free and 64 premium themes, which cost between $140 and $180 each (which is much cheaper than the average theme on Adobe Commerce).

All of Shopify’s are mobile responsive, which means they’ll still look awesome when displayed on a mobile or tablet. This is important considering that 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase in the last 6 months.

Once you’ve chosen your Shopify theme, you can then go crazy with customization by adding new pages, changing the color palette, moving and resizing elements, integrating social media feeds, and more. You can do all this without touching a line of code!

magento vs shopify shopify themes
Shopify themes are pre-populated so all you need to do is swap in your content and products and you can start selling in no time!

Adobe Commerce scored 3.5/5 in this category, offering ready-made themes that don’t require any coding customization, as well as custom themes that demand the skills of a professional developer.

The average cost for a ready-made theme is $100, while the custom themes can cost anywhere from $600 to $25,000. Naturally, the custom themes are only suitable for large businesses with chunky budgets.

adobe commerce theme marketplace
Adobe Commerce has a more limited choice of themes compared to Shopify.

Further Reading

3 Criteria To Help Choose Your Theme – 3 essential things to consider when picking a theme for your online store

Winning Ecommerce Product Page Design Part 1 – the best ways to customize your product pages

Winning Ecommerce Product Page Design Part 2 – how to structure your product pages to help you sell more!

Sales Tools

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has a more impressive range of sales tools than Adobe Commerce.

Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms around, offering plenty of built-in tools like multichannel selling – something only available via installing expensive extensions on Adobe Commerce.
Visit Shopify

Ecommerce platforms and sales tools go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other, right? Well, let’s see what Shopify and Adobe Commerce have under the hood.

Shopify scored an impressive 4.7/5 in our sales features research category. Below are some of the best features on Shopify that enable you to sell products and make money:

  • Abandoned cart recovery – recover potentially lost sales by sending automatic emails to customers that left your website before finalizing a purchase
  • Multi-channel selling – sell on Amazon, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram as a built-in feature
  • Sell digital products (as well as physical ones)
  • Partnerships with USPS, DHL Express, UPS, and Canada Post – to save you the hassle of finding your own courier service

Adobe Commerce scored 4/5 in the same category. We’re really impressed with Adobe Commerce’s inventory system, which comes with excellent built-in features such as bulk product import from your database, multiple product variants, total revenue reports, and total visitor count.

We also love these sales tools from Adobe Commerce:

  • Multi-channel selling options –  install extensions in order to integrate your store with Facebook, Instagram, and eBay
  • Checkout customization – create a totally bespoke checkout for your online store
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Set percentage and fixed price discounts

Marketing Features

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has better marketing tools

Both Adobe Commerce and Shopify rely on their respective app markets for the most important marketing features, such as the ability to create email campaigns, but Shopify enables you to advertise on social media as a built-in feature.
Visit Shopify

Having access to powerful marketing tools should help your business reach new customers and improve your bottom line. What’s not to love?

Shopify provides brilliant marketing tools, including the ability to run email campaigns through third party integrations with Seguno, Klaviyo, Constant Contact, and many others. You can also advertise and sell directly on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. We also love Shopify’s ability to support multilingual sites, helping you sell products in different languages.

In the opposite corner, Adobe Commerce relies on its Marketplace for the bulk of its marketing tools. For instance, you’ll need to install extensions, such as Remarkety,  to run email campaigns. What’s more, you’ll likely need to rely on the skills of a web developer to integrate your marketing tools if you want truly bespoke features, whereas Shopify offers plenty of built-in marketing tools to help your store scale.

Shopify email marketing templates
We were impressed with Shopify's email marketing templates that even featured popular holidays. Image source: WBE testing.

Apps and Add-Ons

shopify
The Winner

Shopify has a huge app store

Shopify’s App Market is easier to use and offers more polished apps than Adobe Commerce Marketplace. While Adobe Commerce does have more extensions on offer than Shopify, they require coding knowledge to install, and you run the risk of installing a sub-par extension because anyone is allowed to design the
Visit Shopify

Adding extra functionality to your online store is really important, especially if the platform’s in-built features aren’t enough for your ecommerce desires. Both Shopify and Adobe Commerce enable you to easily install apps, extensions, and add-ons. But which option is better?

Shopify’s App Store contains over 1,200 apps, both free and premium, for areas of business such as email marketing, shipping, social media advertising, and more. Below are just a few of our favorite apps in the Shopify App Market:

  • Trust Hero – display digital security badges to encourage users to finalize purchases. Did you know that 15% of abandoned carts are due to concerns over payment security?
  • MailChimp – integrate marketing email campaigns with your Shopify store and boost your sales.
  • Trackr – costing just $4 per month, installing this app will automatically send your customers updates on the whereabouts of their orders.
  • Analytics Buddy – pulls all your Google Analytics data into your Shopify dashboard, providing useful insights.

Further Reading

  • Discover our full list of the Best Shopify Apps and find out which 15 our experts recommend!
magento vs shopify shopify app store
Shopify’s App Store helps you grow your business and boost your bottom line

Adobe Commerce Marketplace has over 5,000 extensions to choose from, and 1,970 of those are free. 10% of the paid options cost around $30, while other extensions can cost up to $2,000. For example, it costs $199 just to integrate your online store with Facebook, which comes free on Shopify.

The prices will vary depending on the development agency that created them, and whether you’ll need expert help when installing them. A few of our favorite Adobe Commerce apps include:

  • Amasty Multiple Coupons – add custom discount coupons and apply multiple coupons to one order, helping the customer feel valued and encouraging repeat purchases.
  • Product Pre-Order – send emails to customers automatically when a new product becomes available to examine the demand for your latest offering.
  • Remarkety – integrate email marketing campaigns and social feeds with your store.
  • Banner Slider – insert advertising banners with personalized links to create another source of revenue for your store.
magento vs shopify apps
Adobe Commerce Marketplace enables you to add more complex ecommerce functionality to your store, should you wish

Payment Processors and Transaction Fees

adobe logo
The Winner

Adobe Commerce wins for payment options

Adobe Commerce has better payment processor options than Shopify. Shopify has fewer payment gateway options, and it imposes its own transaction fees unless you use its own option, Shopify Payments, which can be quite restrictive.
Visit Adobe Commerce

Payment processors enable your store to accept online payments. Thankfully, both Shopify and Adobe Commerce make it easy to connect your store with a payment processor in just a few clicks. But which platform has the best offerings?

Shopify has its own payment processor, Shopify Payments, which imposes zero transaction fees (aside from the regular credit card processing fees).

Check out our table below for a quick overview of how much you’ll pay in extra fees per transaction, with each Shopify plan, if you don’t use Shopify Payments:

Shopify Transaction Fees

Shopify Basic Shopify Shopify Advanced
2.9% + 30¢ per transaction 2.6% + 30 ¢ per transaction 2.4% + 30¢ per transaction

By using Shopify Payments, you’ll only pay for each transaction fee imposed by the credit card processor, and not Shopify – meaning the above fees would be waived.

Shopify supports over 100 different payment gateways, which, unlike Shopify Payments, all come with a transaction fee imposed by Shopify. These gateways include popular names like PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay.

Adobe Commerce supports over 150 payment gateways, but the majority of them are aimed at large businesses, such WorldPay. In order to integrate your store with the more common payment processors like Stripe or Square, you’ll just need to install them from the marketplace.

What’s more, Adobe Commerce allows you to sell directly through Amazon while using your own Adobe Commerce-based inventory. This is quite nifty, allowing you to reach many more customers via the Amazon marketplace.

Since our last update...

Shopify has changed its default checkout process from three pages to only one page, giving users less time to reconsider converting in your shop. If your customers can complete their conversion journey all on one page, it’ll optimize their shopping experience by making it quicker and ensure they don’t encounter fatigue in their user journey.

If you enable one-page checkout and sell in local currencies, your customers will check out in the currency you’ve selected for the country in their shipping address. That means if your customers shop on your page in a country that differs from their shipping address, the currency will automatically update to match their shipping address at checkout. Your customers will see their total in their local currency, plus currency conversion fees.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

adobe logo
The Winner

Adobe Commerce has better SEO capabilities

Adobe Commerce edges Shopify in the SEO department. It has a wider range of built-in SEO features, such as SEO prompts and the ability to customize URLs. With Shopify, you’ll need to search for and install apps for many of your SEO wants and needs.
Visit Adobe Commerce

SEO helps to increase the amount of visitor traffic from search engines to your website, which means gaining more paying customers and more money in the bank.

Adobe Commerce really excels in SEO, and comes with plenty of SEO guides and prompts to help you get started. You can edit image alt tags (which help Google understand how to categorize an image on the image search platform), and customize URLs to help search engine users find your web pages more easily. All of these are built-in features, too.

On the other hand, Shopify is more reliant on apps for its SEO. While you can edit page titles and image alt tags, you’ll need to search the app store for the majority of your SEO tricks.

Further Reading

SEO Tips – Website Architecture – we help you structure your online store so its search engine friendly

SEO Tips – Anchor Text – to learn about anchor text best practice

SEO Tips – Backlinks – we explain the importance of backlinks for SEO and how you can use them to help your store

How To Add Google Analytics To Shopify – we help you take your Shopify store to the next level using Google Analytics

Help and Support

adobe logo
The Winner

Adobe Commerce offers quality support

Adobe Commerce is aimed at professional web developers, which means the calibre of its user guides is extremely high. You’ll also have access to SiteGround’s superb support. On the other hand, Shopify has great customer support options, but can’t match the level of expertise that Adobe Commerce and SiteGround’s support offers.
Visit Adobe Commerce

The more easily you can fix issues with your online store, the sooner you can get back to making sales and gaining new customers. That’s why the help and support options for your chosen platform must tick certain boxes.  Thankfully, Shopify and Adobe Commerce certainly do tick plenty – we rigorously tested both platform’s customer support options, and liked what we saw.

Shopify scored 4.1/5 in our help and support research, offering:

  • 24/7 phone support
  • Social media support
  • 24/7 live chat support
  • Community forum
  • Email support
  • Help center
  • Video tutorials
  • Advanced specialist support

Adobe Commerce, as a user community-based platform, has excellent user guides that take you through the online store building processes. They can guide you step-by-step, and are filled with useful information from other Adobe Commerce developers.

While you don’t have access to dedicated support via Adobe Commerce, you will have access to SiteGround’s superb help and support team. All in all, Adobe Commerce and SiteGround are a fountain of help and knowledge, with SiteGround scoring 5/5 in our help and support research category for hosting platforms.

Pricing

The Winner

It’s a tie

Adobe Commerce and Shopify offer different pricing models because they’re two very different platforms. Adobe Commerce is an open-source platform, which means the costs will completely depend on your requirements, whereas Shopify has three fixed price plans which may seem cheaper on the surface, but you’ll also need to pay for apps and themes.

The main difference between the two is that Shopify is a hosted platform, while Adobe Commerce is self-hosted. A hosted platform, such as Shopify, takes care of all your hosting worries for you. All hosting costs are included within your monthly plan, with no extra effort or expense required from you. Adobe Commerce meanwhile is free to install, but you’ll need to pay for web hosting, security, extensions, and your domain.

Shopify has three main price plans to choose from, with fixed monthly rates. In contrast, the overall cost of Adobe Commerce will depend on different factors.

To use Adobe Commerce, you’ll need to pay for your web hosting (remember that SiteGround is one of the few providers that supports Adobe Commerce). On SiteGround, you can choose from three hosting plans.

Shopify Adobe Commerce (powered by SiteGround)
Shopify Basic ($29/month) Startup: $9.95/month
Shopify ($79/month) Grow Big: $19.95/month
Advanced Shopify ($299/month) GoGeek: $29.95/month

It’s worth noting that Adobe Commerce offers an Enterprise price plan, aimed at enterprise-sized businesses. This price plan is bespoke to each business, but for now, we are focusing on Adobe Commerce’s ‘Community’ version.

You’ll also need to pay for your domain to use Adobe Commerce, which usually costs around $10-$15 per year. You’ll need to visit domain registrars, such as Domain.com, in order to register your new domain.

Remember we mentioned how costly the Adobe Commerce extensions and themes can be? They can cost thousands of dollars each, depending on the web development agency that created them, so the true cost of your Adobe Commerce online store will vary massively.

You might be looking at spending a few thousand dollars per month on your Adobe Commerce store. However, don’t forget that Adobe Commerce is aimed at large businesses that have big budgets to boot, and are expected to grow quickly.

Further Reading

Shopify Pricing Review – an in-depth review of Shopify’s pricing plans

Shopify Basic vs Shopify – we compare two of Shopify’s most popular plans to help you choose which is best for you

Adobe Commerce (Magento) vs Shopify: Summary

This article has run you through the key similarities and differences between Adobe Commerce and Shopify. Now you know which platform is right for you, let’s quickly recap the main differences between the two.

Shopify is more user-friendly than Adobe Commerce. You’ll be able to get online faster, and have a support team close at hand.

Adobe Commerce is more of a project. It’ll take time and technical know-how to bring your vision to life, and you’ll be largely reliant on a Adobe Commerce forum (or on developers).

You should use Shopify if…

  • You want to get your store up and running as quickly as possible
  • You’ve been using an ecommerce website builder (like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly) and want to switch to something more powerful
  • You’re just starting out in ecommerce, but are hoping to develop a fully-fledged ecommerce business
  • You’d like the convenience of an all-in-one payment, and having a support team on hand
shopify logo ecommerce website builder review

Get $1/Month for Three Months With Shopify

Want to get online quickly? Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms out there.

You should use Adobe Commerce if…

  • You have coding skills, and you want to build an online store for your medium or large sized business
  • You want total creative freedom through coding
  • You already have a global audience, or international aspirations
  • You’re aiming to create a big brand with big revenue, and are prepared to invest time and money into design
adobe logo
Keen to get coding? Adobe Commerce offers unrivalled creative freedom.

That concludes our Adobe Commerce vs Shopify battle royale. Whichever platform you deem the worthy winner for your business, we’re sure that you will build an online store to be proud of. We wish you the best of luck!

FAQs

Adobe Commerce and Shopify are two different tools that get the same job done – so no, it doesn’t make sense to use them together! Think of Shopify as an all-in-one website builder, and Adobe Commerce as a powerful content management system. Either platform is capable of delivering a fully functional ecommerce site, without any help from the other!
A content management system, or CMS, is an alternative to a website builder. A CMS is a more advanced platform that requires some technical knowledge to maintain, and the payoff is that you can store more content and accommodate for more additional features than you could with a website builder. Adobe Commerce is one example of a CMS, while Shopify is an easier-to-use website builder.
We’ve tested the top ecommerce builders ourselves, and spoken to real store owners about their experiences. In our final ranking of the best ecommerce website builders, Shopify is the best builder for large stores – but Wix is actually the best ecommerce builder overall.
Written by:
I used to think website design was just for professionals. Because maybe like you, I have no coding or design experience. But, with the help of our expert researchers (and after testing every website builder myself), I can confidently guide you through on how to get the most out of each one.

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