Adobe Commerce (Magento) Vs Shopify

Adobe Commerce (Formerly known as Magento) and Shopify are two of the biggest eCommerce platforms. When it comes to deciding which is most suitable for your business, there are a number of factors which should be considered. Below we will give a detailed overview of each of the platforms and an in-dept comparison to give you a better insight. 

What is Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce is one of the world’s leading digital commerce solutions for merchants and brands. Magento had a rebrand in April 2021, where Adobe decided to rebrand the platform to Adobe Commerce. Although the rebrand took place in 2021, Adobe had already been running the platform for a few years prior to this, were they acquired Magento in May 2018. Magento was initially released in March 31 (2008); In June 2020, Magento 1 reached end of life, were Adobe had officially announced they will no longer support the software. Prior to this date, they had been providing quality fixes and security patches for the platform, giving merchants plenty of time to upgrade to Magento 2, which was released in November, 2015. Magento 2 was introduced in order to provide significant performance and security improvements, as well as other feature-rich enhancements.

This featured-rich, highly advanced eCommerce platform is intended for businesses that want to expand their growth and deliver an extraordinary customer buying experience. It has multiple features for providing a seamless customer experience. It has become an omni-channel solution for Business-To-Consumer (B2C) and Business-To-Business (B2B) merchants looking for an enterprise edition.

Some popular features of the platform include:

  • Order and product management
  • Content management made easy with Pagebuilder
  • Marketing Tools
  • Business intelligence dashboards
  • Customer segmentation
  • Unlimited customisation
  • Ability to integrate many 3rd party payment solutions
  • Customer loyalty tools
  • Related products, Upsell and Cross-sell functionality
  • B2B features and many more

What is Shopify?

Like Magento, Shopify has also been around for many years. Shopify was first launched in 2006, being in the eCommerce world a similar length of time. Shopify is a Canadian multinational subscription based eCommerce platform, headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.

Shopify is intended for any size business who want to increase there business presence and drive more sales online. Shopify is best known for it’s easy of use. It’s an easy-to-use application which even non-tech savvy users can use without difficulty. Maintaining a Shopify store doesn’t require any coding knowledge and requires no software installation or hosting services as this is provided as part of the Shopify package.

Some popular features of the platform include:

  • Order management
  • Domain/Hosting Plan & Support provided
  • Content management maintainable with ease
  • Basic theme customisation
  • 70 Payment Gateway options out-the-box
  • Ability to sell in 133 currencies
  • B2B features and many more

Adobe Commerce Vs Shopify

Both platforms are leading eCommerce platforms which both offer B2C and B2B solutions for online sales. When deciding between the two platforms, it’s important to take some of the below factors into consideration.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, Adobe Commerce has three options:

Open Source – This doesn’t require a monthly subscription; it’s completely free to download, install and setup. The only costs involved in this will be for the domain, domain name, SSL certificate, development time and extensions (optional).

Adobe Commerce Enterprise – This includes the cost of everything mentioned above in the open source option, although a yearly license fee is also acquired. The license cost depends on which additional features are included.

Adobe Commerce Cloud – As the name suggests, this is a cloud based package, which is the more pricey option of the three. This package makes use of all Adobe Commerce Enterprise features, but also benefits from Adobe’s cloud-hosted deployment model, meaning that you won’t have to look elsewhere for hosting as this is provided.

Unless you’ve chosen to go with Adobe Commerce Cloud, due to the scaleability of Adobe Commerce, it’s recommended to purchase a good hosting package to ensure the website has sufficient resources in order to get the best performance possible.

Unlike Adobe Commerce, Shopify has no options; It’s an all-in-one package which comes at a monthly cost being subscription based. The cost of this depends on the business needs; Shopify offer different pricing packages. These packages do all come with both domain and hosting fees included, compared with Adobe Commerce Open Source and Adobe Commerce Enterprise were you would need to look into purchasing the domain and hosting service separately.

Set-up

Shopify is very much known as a Plug-and-play solution. A Shopify store can be setup very easily. Meanwhile, Adobe Commerce can be quite difficult to get setup and will require experience developers.

Customisation

When it comes to customisation, Adobe Commerce has much more to offer. Adobe Commerce is fully customisable, allowing developers to customise every aspect* of the store. Shopify on the other hand, although some areas are customisable, it’s limited to which areas can be changed. Adobe Commerce also have many 3rd party extension providers who actively develop and maintain modules to work with Adobe Commerce. Most of these come at a cost, although these provide a nice way to add additional features to the website to help drive more sales.

Themes

Out the box, Shopify has many free/purchasable themes which can be downloaded and applied to your store. Adobe Commerce comes with much fewer theme options, although there are a number of 3rd party theme providers who sell customised themes that are designed for quick installation. Adobe Commerce does however allow you to create a theme completely from scratch, allowing for full customisation of how the store will look.

Ease of Use

When it comes to usability, Shopify has got a slight edge over Adobe Commerce being somewhat for user-friendly. Non-tech users may have a slightly steeper learning curve to finding there way around Adobe Commerce’s features, although the platform does grant users with complete control over their website.

Security

Both the platforms offer a high level of security to ensure customers can safely purchase from any stores using the platform. Adobe Commerce and Shopify both release frequent security updates every year. However, Magento has an edge over Shopify here, offering more advanced security features, dedicated patches to close any vulnerabilities that arise, as well as additional optional features such as Recaptcha and Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA).

Support

Shopify offers dedicated help and support via phone, email and live chat, with a professional team available 24 hours of the day. Adobe Commerce on the other hand (Unless you are registered for the Adobe Commerce Cloud Plan) doesn’t have any dedicated support contact of such, although with the platform being open source, it has an excellent user community via online forums. Typically Adobe Commerce solutions would be developed by an experience team of developers or hosted with an experience hosting service who could also offer great support if any issues crop up.

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) allows you to optimise your website ranking. SEO plays an important role within the website as this will be one of the leading factors to getting customers onto your website. Both of the platforms offer similar solutions, allowing you to easily edit each web page title, description etc.

Multilingual & Currency Support

Both of the platforms offer Multiple language support and multiple currency support to allow you to sell internationally. Shopify however does not offer full multilingual capabilities by default; third-party/paid apps are available for this. Whilst Adobe Commerce supports currencies from 200+ countries worldwide; Shopify stores are capable of selling in 133 currencies.

Payment Gateway Options

Shopify has a major edge over Adobe Commerce here when it comes to the number of out-the-box payment gateways it supports; supporting over 70 different payment gateways. Adobe Commerce on the other hand has support for much fewer, although there are a number of 3rd party extension providers which have provided support for numerous other payment gateways. Shopify nonetheless forces you to choose one of the available options it has built-in; Adobe Commerce quite the opposite, allows you to make use of any additional payment gateways which have been developed as 3rd party solutions.

Summary

Above we have highlighted some of the key aspects which are worth considering when choosing between the two platforms. As previously mentioned it’s important to first determine the main purpose and goals you want to achieve from having an online store. Shopify is a subscription based product which you need to pay monthly for, whilst Adobe Commerce is open source (Free software other than Domain/Hosting fees). Whilst Shopify is a great plug-and-play, which has a simple user interface solution to get your online business up and running in a timely manor, Adobe Commerce is much more advanced and offers more customisations to really make your business’s online presence stand out.