A compare pitching 3 eCommerce platforms against each other. Magento, Shopify and BigCommerce compared side by side on several factors.
- Magento launched in 2008
- Shopify launched in 2006
- BigCommerce launched in 2008
Basic Differences between Magento, Shopify & BigCommerce
The table below spills out the primary differences in a Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison:
| Feature | Magento | Shopify | BigCommerce |
| Coding | PHP | Liquid | PHP |
| License | OSL 3.0 | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Developer | Varien Inc. | Shopify | Bigcommerce Inc |
| Web application framework | Zend framework | Ruby on Rails | HTML |
| Popularity | 250,000+ Magento stores | 200,00+ Shopify stores | 98,094 BigCommerce stores |
| Community | Thriving open source community with expert presence | Shopify Encyclopedia, Forums, Free tools, Experts, Podcasts, Guides and Tutorials. | BigCommerce University for user awareness |
| SEO | Ranks as the first eCommerce platform for SEO friendliness | SEO friendly with SEO URLs for sellers and product pages | Ranks 4th in SEO friendliness |
| Capabilities | 5,000+ add-ons for improving productivity, selling and store management | 100+ apps and add-ons | |
| Pricing per month | Community Edition: FREE
Hosting: $4-$100 |
-Basic $29
-Pro $79
-Unlimited $179 |
Standard – $29.95
Plus – $79.95 Pro – $199.95 Enterprise – On request |
| Branding and Design | Drag and drop visual editing | Limited tweaks since it is a proprietary platform | |
| Support | 24/ support via mail, phone and instant chat | ||
| Security | + Access control list + Form CAPTCHA, + Staff action logging (for enterprise edition),+ PA/DSS certified or Magento Payment Bridge |
+ Access control list + Form CAPTCHA, + Staff action logging (for enterprise edition) |
+ Access control list + Form CAPTCHA, + Staff action logging (for enterprise edition),+ PA/DSS certified |
How Magento 2 Stacks Up against its rivals?
Post its 2.0 release, Magento is riding a high wave. The eCommerce platform has ousted most of its rivals with its new feature editions that eliminate every single drawback of the previous versions.
Within a quarter of release, Magento 2.0 became the default platform powering more than 17% of first 200 ranking Alexa websites.
Magento has always been popular amidst rapidly growing online enterprises for its scalability. Be it a small store expanding business or an established business exploring new product lines, Magento always supports scalability with great ease unlike its rivals, including Shopify and BigCommerce.
More staple for branding & Design
Shop owners will find more reasons to cheer for Magento with its branding and design tweaking abilities. If compare Magento and Shopify, Magento is the only platform which enables high-level brand promotions and in-store designing facilities.
No wonder that global brands like Nike, Olympus, Rosetta Stone, etc. rely on Magento for the eCommerce operations.
In a Magento vs Shopify page loading speed race Magento will be the undisputed winner. Magento 2 can load store pages under 3 seconds, something which will be an awesome push for higher search engine ranking as well for rendering better user experience.
Related Read: Magento 1 Vs Magento 2: Which of the Duo Is Best For Building Online Marketplace !
Furthermore, the primary point of difference between Magento and Shopify is the endless customization which Magento provides compared to the tight and limited customization that Shopify provides.
Even on a Magento enterprise vs shopify comparison you will notice that Magento is more advanced in terms of security (Magento Payment Bridge) and performance. The abundant availability of plugins also puts Magento on the forefront as an ideal ally for building online stores.
Perfect ally for building modern marketplace websites
From the above it can be well inferred that Magento 2 is nothing but the best ally to build a multi vendor eCommerce store that can withstand competition and drive massive sales volumes. Magento offers multiple promotion channels which are limited in Shopify. Managing multiple stores from a single console is a task easily done through Magento 2.
Also read: Migrate from Shopify to Magento with an automated migration tool
Parting thoughts
There is never a winner in any comparison. But on an overall basis, it can be concluded that Magento does provide eCommerce store owners an upper hand compared to several other platforms existing in the market. Magento is jam packed with sales boosting features, can trigger quick scalability, is easy to use and gives admins several flexible options.
With so many enterprise ecommerce platforms in the market, there is never a winner in any comparison. But on an overall basis, it can be concluded that Magento does provide eCommerce store owners an upper hand compared to several other enterprise ecommerce platforms existing in the market. Magento is jam packed with sales boosting features, can trigger quick scalability, is easy to use and gives admins several flexible options.
(Disclaimer: This is a guest post submitted on Techstory by the mentioned authors. All the contents in the article have been provided to Techstory by the authors of the article. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any content in this article)
About The Author:
Bharath Kumar – Contributing the new content marketing strategy in eCommerce field and execute the marketing plan to increase brand strength, leads and sales in terms of SEO/SEM/SMO Strategies.