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Compare · Shopify vs Magento

Shopify vs Magento, honestly compared.

We replatform brands from Magento to Shopify for a living, so we are biased, but here is the honest version. Where Shopify wins, where Magento and Adobe Commerce still earn their keep, and how to decide between Shopify or Magento for your store.

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The short answer

For most mid-market brands, Shopify is the better choice: it delivers the same enterprise capabilities (B2B, multi-region, custom checkout logic) without the six-figure hosting, licensing, and dev-team cost that Magento carries. Magento, now Adobe Commerce, still makes sense for large enterprises with deeply custom requirements and a dedicated in-house team to run it. If you are on Magento and paying enterprise prices for problems you do not have, that is usually the signal to move.

Head to head

Shopify vs Magento, compared.

Dimension Shopify Magento
Hosting & maintenance Fully managed by Shopify, including servers, security, and upgrades. Self-hosted or on Adobe Commerce Cloud, and it needs a dedicated ops and dev team.
Total cost of ownership Flat Plus license plus apps. Predictable, and it scales without a surprise. Hosting plus Adobe licensing plus extensions plus a PHP team, often $80k to $150k a year.
Dev resource required A focused agency or a small in-house team. A permanent senior Magento or PHP team just to keep the lights on.
Time to build & upgrade Features ship in weeks, and platform upgrades are automatic. Builds run in months, and a version upgrade (M1 to M2) is a six-figure project.
Customization & control Functions, apps, and Liquid cover most enterprise needs with fewer ways to break it. Near-unlimited code control, if you can afford to build and maintain it.
B2B & multi-store Shopify B2B and Markets on Plus handle companies, price lists, and regions. Deep native multi-store and B2B, but complex and costly to run.
Performance Managed infrastructure that is fast by default. Powerful, but tuning-dependent and slow when it is under-resourced.
Security & PCI Handled by Shopify, including PCI and patching. Your responsibility, with a heavy and unavoidable patching cadence.
App ecosystem 8,000+ modern, maintained apps. A marketplace that is shrinking as vendors move to Shopify themselves.
The honest split

Which one is right for you.

Choose Shopify if

  • You are mid-market and paying enterprise prices for headroom you never actually use.

  • You want to ship features in weeks without keeping a standing PHP team on payroll.

  • You want managed hosting, security, and upgrades with a predictable monthly cost.

  • Your B2B and multi-region needs fit Shopify B2B and Markets, which cover most of them.

Stay on Magento if

  • You are a large enterprise with deeply custom business logic and a dedicated in-house Magento team to run it.

  • You need code-level control over every layer and have the budget to build and maintain it.

  • Your requirements genuinely exceed what Shopify Plus Functions and apps can do, which is rare but real at the very top end.

Shopify or Magento: the short version

Magento and Shopify can build the same class of store. The difference is what it costs you to get there and to stay there. Magento (now Adobe Commerce) gives you near-total control of the codebase, and in return you carry the hosting, the security, the upgrades, and a team of specialists to run all of it. Shopify takes that operational weight off you for a flat license, in exchange for working inside its guardrails. For a mid-market brand, those guardrails are rarely the constraint, the dev tax is. For a genuine enterprise with requirements that break every platform, Magento’s control still earns its keep.

Shopify vs Magento on total cost of ownership

This is where the comparison is usually decided. The Magento license (on Open Source) is free, but a real Magento store pays for enterprise hosting, Adobe Commerce licensing if you are on the paid tier, a stack of paid extensions, and a permanent PHP team to keep them integrated and patched. That total lands most mid-market brands somewhere between $80k and $150k a year before they ship anything new. Shopify Plus is a flat license with managed hosting and security included, and the team you need to run it is a fraction of the size. The headline price is higher, the real cost is lower. If you’re doing the maths on your own stack, see what a Magento migration costs.

Where Magento still wins

We migrate away from Magento, and we will still say plainly: it is the right platform for some businesses. If you are a large enterprise with deeply bespoke business logic, an in-house Magento team that already exists, and requirements that genuinely exceed Shopify Plus Functions and apps, Magento’s open codebase gives you a ceiling Shopify does not. That describes a small slice of the market, though. Most brands on Magento are not using that ceiling, they are paying for it. If that’s you, our Magento to Shopify migration agency is built for exactly this move.

The upgrade tax, and why it matters

The Magento 1 to Magento 2 upgrade broke half the merchants on the platform and cost many of them six figures. That is the pattern that makes Magento expensive to own: major upgrades are projects, not patches, and skipping them is how a store ends up unsupported and exposed. On Shopify, platform upgrades happen underneath you and you never see the bill. For a lean team, removing that recurring tax is often the single biggest reason the move pays off. See our Adobe Commerce replatform process for how the EAV, B2B and redirect pieces get handled.

Moving from Magento to Shopify

If Shopify is looking like the better fit, the move is more structured than most Magento teams expect. Our Magento to Shopify migration re-maps EAV attributes to metafields, rebuilds B2B price lists in Shopify B2B, re-wires your ERP and PIM feeds, and stages a 301 redirect for every URL so your rankings carry across. The honest test is the same one as always: if the platform is consuming the time and budget that should go to growth, it has stopped paying for itself.

Decided? Here’s how a Magento to Shopify migration actually runs — the EAV remap, the B2B rebuild, the 301 map, and the 60-day stabilisation.

Common questions

Shopify vs Magento FAQs.

Is Shopify better than Magento?

For most mid-market brands, yes. Shopify delivers comparable enterprise features without the hosting, licensing, and dev-team overhead Magento requires. Magento is better only when you are a large enterprise with deeply custom needs and a team dedicated to running it.

Is Shopify cheaper than Magento?

Almost always, once you count total cost of ownership. A typical mid-market Magento stack runs $80k to $150k a year across hosting, Adobe licensing, extensions, and a PHP retainer. Shopify Plus is a flat license, and the dev headcount usually drops by more than half.

Do I need Shopify Plus to replace Magento?

Usually, if you run B2B or multi-region, because Shopify B2B, Functions, and Markets are Plus-tier. A single-region D2C brand under about $5M can often run on standard Shopify. We confirm which one fits during the architecture review.

Should I migrate from Magento to Shopify?

If you are spending on hosting, licensing, and a dev team to maintain headroom you do not use, a move usually pays for itself inside a year. It keeps your products, customers, orders, and SEO intact when it is done properly.

The next step

Decided on Shopify? Plan the move.

If Shopify is the pick, the Magento to Shopify migration page covers exactly how we move your store across without losing SEO.

Not sure yet?

Get a straight answer on Shopify vs Magento.

Send us your Magento store URL. We'll tell you honestly whether a move to Shopify is worth it for your store, with a migration plan and a fixed quote if it is.

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