Shopify Vs Magento for ECommerce Website

With a number of platforms for you to design your e-commerce website, Shopify and Magento are claimed as the most common and widely used software. Both of the software offers a flexible shopping cart, and a user interface design, content, and functionality of the online store. While both of the software allow embedding of page URLs, meta-descriptions, page titles, independent links and other similar functions, it gets difficult for you to decide which is the best for you. However, we are here to help you with the pros and cons of both the software to decide the right one for your website.

1. Be wise with the price
Cost is the most important factor to consider while choosing a platform for your website. You have to keep a track on how much you are spending and what are the benefits it’s reaping. Magento is open-source software for one to build an e-commerce site whereas Shopify has different packages for its clients. Hosting server is included in the Shopify package for your website, while you may have to pay hundreds of bucks to a third party hosting platform with Magento. Shopify supports some external payment processors with its own Shopify payment processor. You will have to pay a minimum transaction fee if you use any other processor except Shopify’s own. Magento has 148 payment integration apps for the international users to pay in their language.
The host server and payment integration help to boost your page’s dwell time.

2. Add the add-ons and apps
With both of these websites having a huge app store for you add features in your website, they have the most advanced tools to broaden the functionality of your e-store. Even though, Magento has fewer sites powered it has more apps and add-ons to provide the client. Magento allows you to add more complex functionalities in the website like adding multiple discount coupons on one order, pre-order of a new product, and e-mail marketing of a product. However, Shopify integrates similar features like email promotion, social media feed, tracking feature, and a few more.
Adding complex features on your e-store will lower the ranking of your website since it will be difficult for the customers to understand.

3. Make it beautiful with a customised theme
Shopify has more variety of free themes than of Magento, but it has no limitations on how you design or customise the theme. You can create a new theme from scratch with Magento, depending on the layout and type of theme you desire for your website. Both of the software has mobile optimised themes which automatically optimises the website according to the device and its size for easy navigation for the user. The customisation allows you to add new pages, change the colour of the palate, add/move or remove page elements. The problem with customising the theme on Magento is that you must have a lot of coding knowledge to tailor nearly anything on this software.
With the right customisation and theme of your e-commerce website, your users will love to invest time on your website.

4. SEO-proof it
Search engine optimisation of your website the basic requirement for your website to reach the right audience. If you choose Shopify as your e-commerce platform, you will be provided with 24/7 customer support either on live chat, emails, or calls. Shopify also has its forum and blog for users to exchange tips. Even Magento has a complete forum guide for the users, which have the answer for every possible question. You will get unlimited storage and bandwidth in your Shopify package with a free SSL (Security-socket Layer) certificate and fraud analysis feature to track if anybody is hacking your website. On both of the software, it is easy to make the search more user-friendly. You can edit the meta-title, and meta-description for the search engine result pages, add alt text to images for an easy search of the website images and scan the loading speed of the page with the Magento software.
With great SEO functionalities, Magento is a bit costlier than Shopify but helps in ranking your page higher in the searched results.

5. Migrating the URL
To be fair, Shopify has a traffic control, which allows you to migrate your URL and not lose the traffic. The traffic control app manages redirects if you choose to switch on another platform or URL. Unfortunately, Magento does not have a built-in function to redirect the root domain. The 301 redirect function allows Google and e-store to store the cached information and land the user on the website. While sometimes, a website shows that ‘the page does not exist’, 301 redirect doesn’t let that happen.
Therefore, if you plan to migrate the platform for the users, 301 redirects should be opted not to lose your SEO ranking.

Here’s a table to summarise the difference: