I choose Magento over Shopify as an eCommerce consultant

Being an eCommerce consultant, I could say one thing to you: choosing an eCommerce platform is a big decision you're going to invest your hard-earned money and build your online business on this thing. It's going to define your business online for the next several years. That's a lot of pressure. I'm going to try and simplify it for you.

Here, let's discuss reasons to choose Magento over Shopify; pull up a chair, and let's talk about how choosing an eCommerce platform can be a subtle, nuanced process. It often comes down to the slightest difference or feature that makes one direction better than another. There's no way we can go through everything in a single content length.

Also, it's not a feature comparison; it's more of big things that you can look for that if they apply to your business. It can make your decision a lot easier with that in mind; it applies to Shopify.

Points where Magento stands taller than Shopify

I'm going to give you reasons to - Shopify as well, and no one is unbiased. Anybody who tells you they're unbiased is just lying to you. I have my favorite platforms, and we're Magento partners that don't do so much with Shopify.

However, I'm not going to steer you wrong either; please end up on the platform that is 100% best for you and your business now. These are in no particular order, so let's get into it.

Open-source nature

The first reason to choose Magento over Shopify applies to those in controversial or high-risk industries. If you're an industry where laws or public sentiment is constantly evolving, the open-source nature and flexibility of Magento are going to give you the stability that you can never have on Java 5.

Shopify has a history of allowing businesses to invest and build on their platform only to change their mind and give them weeks to find and migrate to another option you don't want that kind of worry and risk. It would help if you thought long term and that risk is a constant distraction and is not healthy for your business.

Suppose you're in a controversial or high-risk industry like a firearm or vape product. In that case, the flexibility that Magento provides, like being able to move to a different host or select a new payment provider, means that someone can't just tell you, now you have options. There's not just one provider that can completely shut you down. The following reason to choose Magento / Shopify is sometimes controlled. It would help if you had control, and other times you want to control.

Suppose you're in heavily regulated industries like pharmaceuticals. In that case, it may be indispensable for you to have complete control over your technology staff. Perhaps there are certain technologies you want to use, like AWS or Azure.

You have your system administrators and want complete control over your hosting stack, which makes Magento a no-brainer versus Shopify.

I also often talk to merchants that don't like or trust SaaS platforms. I don't know where this deep-seated hate comes from. They don't care for the business model at all regardless of any benefit, just not a fan. If you're one of these people, I'm not sure why you're reading this article. You've already made your decision.

The following reason to choose Magento / Shopify is b2b eCommerce is a whole different animal than b2c negotiated pricing quotes corporate accounts are all things that are the bare minimum to meet customer demands.

Flexibility

The flexibility of Magento also allows you to craft custom user experiences specific to your industry and products if you want to do bright; Magento also has the flexibility needed to handle the most complex data needs. You can tie it into whatever poorly thought-out old-fashioned back-office systems you may have cobbled together over the last 20 years.

The following reason to choose Magento / Shopify is flexibility and scalability. Most eCommerce platforms are designed to provide middle-of-the-road functionality that appeals to an extensive collection of merchants in some cases that may not provide everything you need to execute on your eCommerce vision if you're going to step outside of the norm and build something extremely custom.

Scalability

You have more options with the flexibility that comes with the open-source nature of the Magento platform. As for scalability goes you can build a new-age empire called multi-vendor marketplace with an extension on Magento now before we get into this.

I know someone will bring up some merchants like Softie cosmetics, which is a shining example of scale on the platform. What I'm talking about in this section is not about pure sales.

Softie cosmetics is a unicorn and is not representative of your business. It has scale without complexity. They're doing hundreds of millions of dollars online with like four employees now. That may be what you wish your business were like. Still, it isn't you figured out how to replicate that without involving any; what I'm talking about is the complexity of scale and providing a unified eCommerce experience across that business.

Do you have a chain of physical stores and need to integrate your website's order management and inventory across these locations? So as in your customers can see the inventory in their local store order, Magento can do that if they get up here. Do you have five or ten international brands that all need an eCommerce experience optimized for multiple languages and fully integrated with your back-office systems?

Easy installation

Magento can do that on one installation; if your goals are world domination or your business has a lot of complexity, then Magento is an obvious choice. The following reason to choose Magento over Shopify is innovation.

If you want to be ahead of the curve of technology or user experiences, then you're going to need the flexibility that an open-source platform provides. A prominent example right now, progressive web apps and headless eCommerce. There are ways to build a PWA on Shopify.

However, unless your needs are essential, you'll eventually run into some feature that needs to be customized or custom-built depending on what it is. If you're on a sass platform like Shopify, you may not have the ability to do that customization, so if you desire to be an innovator, then open-source will be better for you than sass.

So Magento is going to win over Shopify. There are a ton of features that you need to consider deciding which platform is best for you ultimately; hopefully, however, these things, if they apply to you, make that call just a little bit easier. I'm also going to give you reasons why Shopify might be better for you once that's ready; I'll pop it up on the screen here along with the following article that might be of interest to you if these extensive Magento selling points don't speak to you.

If you're still standing on the Magento side and looking to develop an eCommerce store or online marketplace with Magento, click here and scale your business to the next level.