Magento and Shopify are two of the most popular e-commerce platforms on the market today! They’re often countered against each other when in reality, they are very different. Deciding between the two is highly time-consuming and frustrating. But you need not worry, since we got you covered there! This article is put together to help you understand the pros, cons and mobile commerce expansion.
Overview
- Why Choosing the Right E-Commerce Platform is Crucial?
- Major Factors
- Magento: Intro
- Pros
- Cons
- Magento E-commerce Expansion into Mobile App
- Shopify: Intro
- Pros
- Cons
- Shopify Expansion into Mobile App
- Who Wins The Battle?
Why Choosing the Right E-Commerce Platform is Crucial?
In order to build an e-commerce business, you need to leverage a third-party platform like Shopify, Magento OpenCart or WooCommerce. You can sell products independently through a custom-built website, but in order to really scale your operation, at a certain point you’re going to need one of these platforms. Choose the solution that meets your needs and your customer’s needs from day one and proves beneficial for the long term.
But any e-commerce entrepreneur will tell you that the biggest drawback in e-commerce is dealing with the limitations of various platforms. Finding the right digital commerce platform for your business can bring sweeping change. A flexible, solution gives you the power to deliver compelling customer experiences, bring your visions to life, and promote remarkable growth.
Major Factors You Should Be Looking At
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Extensibility
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Ease of Use
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Adaptability
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Business Management
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International Expansion
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Multi-store management
These are major factors depending on your business size. For example, Shopify Plus’s total costs are a little less than Magento Enterprise, making it more affordable for medium-sized businesses.
Now, you must also consider the mentioned costs of the service you wish to use
- License Costs
- Build Costs
- Maintenance Costs
Magento E-Commerce
Brief Intro: Magento has been steady in its growth since being founded in 2008 and it was the second most used platform in 2017. Magento Commerce (On-Premises), formerly Magento Enterprise Edition, includes many more features and much more functionality than Magento Open Source and is designed for medium to large enterprises in need of advanced configuration, usage, set-up, and technical support.
Magento Pros
- Optimizations and integrations can be customized to the specific needs and business goals of individual store websites
- Magento has an extensive suite of SEO so Index management allows the store owner to control the links that get passed on to the Google or other search engines.
- Magento’s Global cloud foundation and services ensure the maximum of operational uptime and scalability regardless of the user’s geographical location. You can deploy your sites as per your business location.
- With more than 260,000 developers worldwide, You may find resources to help with projects of small to large sizes.
- Magento provides high quality, audited extensions that enable the merchant to quickly add and expand store capabilities with ease.
- Tends to be a flexible, highly customizable platform that does not limit what features and functions you can add in the future when you eventually decide to expand.
- It integrates with a wide variety of third-party solutions, allowing the user to integrate other digital tools to elevate the customer experience.
- Magento is made to support your business demands. Its easier to start with one channel and expand into the others without re-platforming.
- Pre-integrated modules from technology providers, like payments, tax, shipping, activate with a single click. It Offers over 3,600 extensions in their marketplace.
Magento Cons
- Magento stores need time! You cannot expect it to go live in a few days or as soon as possible. If you’re launching a store from scratch just to test your business idea, Magento is not your best bet.
- Requires advanced technical skills, understanding of the code, constant memorization of the extensions and a basic understanding of how everything connects together.
- If your developer gets even one complex coding wrong, your site ends up being down.
- It is not cheap! If you are managing Magento already you know that you need to shell out bucks to stay updated in this platform. This factor doesn’t make it a good choice for small business owners.
The Journey from E-commerce to M-commerce
Very few visionaries decide expansion in advance and you want to be one of the leaders not followers. While having an e-commerce store expands your physical presence, having a highly functional mobile app further connects you to your audience. The ease of accessing your store through a mobile app further boosts your revenue and market presence.
It is wise to plan your mobile app builder in advance that can give you maximum features. Magenative is one such solution that liberates you from the technical expertise required to develop a native app and lets you focus on your business activities! It offers you a free 30 days trial when you sign up for Magento Mobile App. No payment required upfront.
MageNative – Mobile App Builder
Enhanced features, native capabilities, free trials, and affordable payment plans are some of the key features of Magento Mobile App. For more connect here. Be wise and have a plan in regards to your online business expansion.
Shopify
Brief Intro: Shopify is a web-based application that allows you to create your own online store. It gives you a wide range of templates that are easily customized to meet individual’s requirements, Key idea behind Shopify is the creation of a solution that requires the least number of technical and coding skills.
Users who do not wish to invest in expensive site development may choose Shopify over Magento, however, site owners who are familiar with HTML and CSS will be happy to learn that Shopify allows you to edit both, giving you a lot of control over the design of templates.
Pros
- Unlike Magento Shopify is a hosted solution, you don’t need to worry about buying web hosting or installing software anywhere.
- Shopify has nice, clean and easy to use modern interface that needs a minimal amount of basic website operation knowledge
- Shopify is a software as a service (‘Saas’) tool – this means that you don’t own it but rather pay a monthly fee to use it instead of investing lump sum amounts. This is beneficial for many small to medium size business owners.
- According to Shopifyandyou, Last reported in February 2019, the figure quoted was more than 800,000 merchants are now powered by Shopify. 2017 saw an increase of 200,000+ new merchants.
Here is what Shopify has to offer you in regards to pricing plans
- Shopify Buy Button allows you to integrate Shopify into an existing site built on another platform, this is a useful feature for users who satisfied with their existing website (WordPress, Wix, etc) but wish to integrate some Shopify e-commerce functionality onto it.
- Shopify’s SEO feature set is generally good and compares favorably with other platforms, the building blocks of on-page SEO in Shopify are very easy to understand and manage.
- Shopify’s support is comprehensive – you can contact them 24/7 by email, live chat or phone.
Cons
Shopify Payments is available only for users based in certain countries.
- Australia
- Canada
- Germany
- Hong Kong
- Ireland
- Japan
- New Zealand
- Singapore
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Shopify provides only 10 free e-commerce templates (or ‘themes’)
- Any premium template might require a third-party developer for assistance
- Shopify-Facebook integration might not suit every seller. Since you don’t get ‘add to cart’ option, your customers can only purchase one item at a time.
- Migrating from Shopify to another online store may not be a very smooth journey!
- Shopify ‘Lite’ plan does not actually allow you to build a fully-functional, standalone online store: what you can do is
- You may use Shopify in a physical location to sell goods and/or manage inventory
- You get Shopify’s Buy Button, which allows you to sell goods on an existing website or blog
- sell via your Facebook page
Getting a Mobile App for your Shopify store
Regardless of what platform your website is based on. You can order a highly functional mobile app for your store and increase your client base and your market appearance. Give your customers another reason to come back to your store. It is best to retain your existing customers than to put in the extra marketing budget for new ones.
Explore Software Development Companies For Small Businesses
Here is a good read for you if you are planning to convert your Shopify store into an app. MageNative offers features and an amazing 14-days free trial. This mobile app offers push notifications, RTL language supports that further connects overseas clients to your store, apple pay integration, analytics, real-time syncing and many other features to enhance your e-commerce.
To Conclude
In conclusion, each Magento and Shopify have benefits and drawbacks! Choosing one should depend on your current company size, budget, revenue, and your long term goals. Now, If you’re just starting out in the business world you want to play safe and take fewer financial risks, however, if you are a big name in your city or country already you’re probably better off with Magento.
If you’re doing less than $1 million of business and don’t plan on adding too many more stores to your portfolio and want to keep costs and design simple, Shopify’s medium to advanced versions can be employed for your use. If you are looking to build your portfolio on a large, international scale and are close to generating more than $2 million in revenue per year, Magento Enterprise would offer you more flexibility.
About MageNative –
MageNative, child company of Cedcommerce, offers a variety of mobile solutions and has a vast, global client base. The company has been heavily involved with customized m-Commerce developments.
We at Magenative continue to work towards advancing our services, to support our clients! MageNative Mobile App Builder is the one-stop solution for all your mobile native app-building needs. We serve various platforms like Magento, Magento 2, Woocommerce, OpenCart, Magento Delivery App Magento2 Delivery App & Multivendor Marketplace Apps. We look forward to serving you!
The company has a full-fledged research division, which constantly strives to create state-of-the-art solutions for eCommerce store owners looking to expand into mobile commerce.