Magento vs Shopify

Over the last few years, it has been noticed that selling goods online is much more efficient as compared to traditional selling methods, so small startups, companies, merchants etc are interested in selling goods online. Online selling and purchasing can be done using an e-commerce platform but it is really difficult for individuals to make e-commerce stores as it requires a lot of skills and resources. Hence to solve this problem, many organizations have provided e-commerce building platforms which make it easy to create e-commerce stores with advanced functionalities. Two such platforms are Shopify and Magento which provides different services to build e-commerce stores for selling goods online.

Magento can be understood as an e-commerce platform which helps its users to create online stores for selling their products and services. It was founded by Roy Rubin and it was initially launched in 2008. It was built using the PHP programming language. It is an open-source platform. In 2018 Adobe Incorporation purchased it for $1.68 billion. MySQL and MariaDB are used as databases to store information.

Advantages of Magento

• It allows to create applications which are responsive on various devices are android, iPad etc.
• It is SEO friendly means it is easy to optimize websites to increase ranking for SERP.
• Has a lot of performance tracking tools to evaluate results.
• Loading speed is good.
• Easy integration with third-party plugins.

Disadvantages of Magento

• Setup and configuration are difficult as compared to Joomla.
• Hosting requires large space which slows down the website speed.
• It is costly as compared to other platforms providing similar services.

Shopify can be understood as an e-commerce platform which is used to provide customers services to sell their products online without creating their own store. It is a paid platform where users can make their accounts and choose from a number of templates and can build their e-commerce website to sell their products. Shopify provides all the necessary tools and equipment needed to build an online store.

Advantages of Shopify

• It provides an easy interface to build e-commerce stores.
• Setting up and configuring Shopify is very easy and fast.
• It comes with robust tools for customizing templates according to the user's needs.
• It has advanced SEO features which increase the indexing of the e-commerce store.
• It provides an in-built payment gateway.

Disadvantages of Shopify

• It does not provide free plans, everything is paid.
• It charges a transaction fee if used a payment gateway other than provided by Shopify.

Below is a table of differentiation between Magento and Shopify: