This article came about as a result of a lively discussion in a Facebook group.
TL;DR - I think Shopify is the best, and some professionals disagree.
That's fine! Disagreement is the gateway to fascinating conversations where people can genuinely share their personal experiences.
Let me walk you through what happened.
Someone shared a blog post about reports that Shopify's checkout is the best in the world:
The phrase used was:
Shopify confirms it is the best e-commerce solution. An opinion I share, as you already know.
However, an experienced professional in the world of e-commerce tried to burst my favourite bubble.
It's not a good way to say it — the fact that they have the best checkout doesn't mean they are the best solution.
A perfectly reasonable statement. But... I was, as usual, a Shopify fan and I defended it.
A 19-message conversation followed about why we disagree. I won't copy the entire discussion here. If you'd like, you can read it here (in Czech):
Here I will break down the main 7 points of contention and present my perspectives.
1. Price
At first glance, Shopify may seem like the more expensive solution: with Magento Community (as opposed to their enterprise custom plans) you only pay for hosting, while on Shopify you have a clear pricing structure as you'd expect from any SaaS. On top of that, there are those annoying transaction fees on Shopify, the costs of themes and apps, etc.
Why do I think Shopify is still the economical solution for small businesses and large corporations alike?
- Shopify is cheaper to maintain — no army of developers is needed to keep it running.
- Shopify is easier to manage — your marketing and design teams can make the changes they need much more easily and quickly.
- Shopify doesn't require expensive tool upgrades every X years (for example, the migration from Magento 1 to 2).
2. Partner Network
On this point, we're genuinely at a draw: both Shopify and Magento have very strong communities of experts ready to help with whatever you need. However, from my very biased perspective, I see our community flourishing and growing at an incredible rate.
Both of these networks are certainly a huge advantage compared to smaller and entirely proprietary e-commerce systems.
3. Localisation
On Shopify, you can translate absolutely anything you want for your customers. I'm still waiting for someone to convince me otherwise and show me limitations I might not be aware of. Of course, in the interest of transparency, I must mention a few disadvantages of Shopify in this regard:
- Support for Shopify is not available in all languages, but they do cover the most widely spoken languages around the world.
- The Shopify admin (the merchant interface) is available "only" in these languages:
- URL segments cannot be translated (except with a headless solution). So certain words like "collections", "products", and "blogs", which are part of the URL structure, cannot be changed for now.
For more information on localisation and development with Shopify, check out this article (in Czech) by my colleague Jakub Liška from Sounds Good Agency | Shopify Experts:
4. Advanced Marketing Tools
It has been claimed that Magento has much better integration with advanced marketing tools. Unfortunately, no specific examples were given, so I can't present any here. I'm sure someone will add some in the comments. What I can say, however, is that Shopify has more than 12,000 plugins in its App Store, and a large portion of them are dedicated marketing tools. I don't think you'd find any shortage in this area.
5. Security
Shopify is a very secure platform. Magento is not a platform — you have to take care of all the security yourself. Here you can find some of the current Magento security issues:
I received the response that it depends primarily on the implementation carried out by the company building it for you. Either way, with Shopify you don't have to think about security at all.
6. Scalability
Shopify can handle tens of thousands of checkouts per minute on its Shopify Plus plan. Regardless of how much bandwidth you need or how much your traffic fluctuates, Shopify has you covered. With Magento, it depends on the quality of the hosting solution and its implementation. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but again, it's a concern that Shopify doesn't want you to have. That's why they even built their Oxygen hosting solution for headless e-commerce.
7. System Integrations
Shopify is an API-first platform. You can truly integrate it with any modern system you wish. It's not rocket science and it won't break your budget. My colleague in this discussion claimed that their APIs are confusing and developers waste too much time achieving their goals. My agency has a completely different experience. We have been working with Shopify for more than 7 years and have built many integrations and solutions, utilising nearly all the APIs that Shopify offers. And we do it efficiently and more cost-effectively than other agencies do with custom solutions.
Conclusion
We ended up connecting on LinkedIn and may collaborate in the future. The conversation was great and nuanced. It allowed us to reach several agreements:
- From my personal perspective, having worked with Shopify for more than 7 years, I generally think they are the best, even though there are always aspects that can be improved.
- From his personal experience working with large brands for many years, Magento is the most robust solution, though not for everyone.
- For the Czech market, where we both operate, Shopify does appear to be the best choice for the majority of mid-sized and large businesses.
For more details, check out this excellent comparative analysis between Shopify and Magento:
Draw your own conclusions and let me know what you think in the comments.
And if you want to see the personal experience of someone who switched to Shopify after 12 years of using Magento, you can read this post:
agency in CZ and SK
