Shopify Plus and Magento Commerce/Adobe Commerce (previously known as Magento Enterprise) are two leading e-commerce platforms, targeting mid-market to enterprise-level customers. While Shopify Plus is an ideal solution for businesses that have outgrown the standard Shopify version and exceed $1 million in revenue, Magento offers extensive customisation and control, suited for businesses with complex needs or in-house development teams.

Key Differences at a Glance

Comparison between Shopify Plus vs Magento Enterprise

Shopify Plus: Pros & Cons

Shopify Plus offers a user-friendly, fully hosted platform with quick scalability, strong security, and 24/7 support. Its extensive app ecosystem enhances functionality according to individual needs. However, it has limited customisation, less backend control, and processor fees without Shopify Payments add up to 0.20% per transaction to Shopify for security and compliance costs.

Magento Commerce: Pros & Cons

Magento Commerce provides a high level of customisation and scalability, which makes it suitable for businesses with complex e-commerce needs. It offers features like multi-store management and advanced SEO tools. However, it can come with high licensing costs and requires technical expertise for setup and ongoing management. If not managed correctly, businesses may be exposed to security risks.

Shopify Plus vs Magento Pricing & Total Cost of Ownership

When it comes to pricing, the total cost of ownership for Magento Commerce is typically higher than Shopify Plus due to subscription costs, custom development, and ongoing maintenance. It requires more technical expertise for setup and management, which translates into higher long-term costs for hosting, development as well as updates. 

That being said, Shopify’s lower upfront cost and ease of use make it attractive, but ongoing costs for apps and integrations might exceed initial expectations if a lot of customisation is needed.

Shopify Plus vs Magento Commerce: Feature Comparison

1. Ease of Use & Setup

When it comes to ease of use, Shopify Plus is known for its straightforward setup process, so that even users with limited technical expertise can profit from most of its advantages. The platform provides step-by-step guidance, a clean user interface, and built-in hosting.

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Its drag-and-drop functionality and intuitive navigation further reduce the learning curve for beginners, while most Shopify Plus users scale up from the standard version and already have all the knowledge needed to quickly run their store efficiently.

When comparing Shopify Plus vs Adobe Commerce, Magento offers more flexibility but comes with a steeper learning curve. The platform typically requires advanced technical knowledge to set up and configure, and businesses may need to engage developers to fully customise and safeguard their store.

While Magento’s open-source framework allows for extensive modifications, this also means more time and effort are needed for installation and ongoing management.

2. Features & Customisation

Shopify Plus offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features, including built-in payment processing, shipping management, and analytics. Its app store provides numerous integrations and extensions that can be easily added without significant technical expertise.

Customisable features include:

• Checkout Blocks® to create a highly customised checkout experience
  
• Shopify’s custom reports come with filtering and editing features to tailor reports to your specific business requirements
  
• B2B features streamline wholesale operations, including customer-specific prices, automated payment terms, and custom data fields to companies and locations

At what., we can help you fully customise your Shopify Plus store to ensure it aligns perfectly with your business needs, enhances user experience, and maximizes efficiency. 

Magento Commerce also comes with a rich set of built-in features, such as advanced product management, customer segmentation, and multi-store support.

Magento’s open-source nature allows for deep customisation, which enables businesses to tailor almost every aspect of their store to specific requirements. Additionally, its vast marketplace offers a wide range of extensions as well as third-party integrations.

3. Performance & Scalability

Shopify Plus is a fully hosted solution with a robust cloud infrastructure designed to ensure optimal site speed and performance. It offers built-in caching, a global content delivery network (CDN), and automatic updates, all of which contribute to fast page loading times.

Shopify Plus can seamlessly handle high traffic volumes and large inventories, which makes it a reliable choice for scaling businesses without requiring additional infrastructure management.

With Shopify Plus, businesses can:

• Expand to 175 countries and 21 languages
• Do omnichannel commerce with 20 channels and Shopify POS
• Gain an uptime of 99.99%
• Handle more than 10,000 transactions per minute
• Gain unlimited staff accounts

Magento Commerce, while self-hosted or hosted through third-parties, provides greater control over performance optimization. Its performance largely depends on the hosting environment and configuration. With the right infrastructure, such as dedicated servers, CDNs, and caching mechanisms, Magento can achieve high performance and handle significant traffic spikes. However, businesses are responsible for managing updates and performance improvements, which may require technical expertise.

4. Security & Compliance

When it comes to security, Shopify Plus offers a more hands-off, managed approach to security, while Magento Commerce provides more control but requires greater involvement in managing compliance and applying updates.

Shopify Plus includes robust, built-in security features to protect customer and business data. It is PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant by default, which means that all payment transactions are secure and meet industry standards. Shopify also manages SSL certificates, encrypts data, and provides automatic security updates and patches. With Shopify, all traffic seamlessly transitions from HTTP to encrypted HTTPS. 

Magento Commerce also offers advanced security features, such as two-factor authentication (2FA), role-based access control, and data encryption.

However, PCI compliance is not included by default, and businesses must ensure their configuration meets the necessary standards. Magento provides regular security patches and updates, but applying these is the responsibility of the business or its hosting provider.

This led to serious problems in the past:

• In 2015, over 10,000 Magento sites were compromised by the Guruncsite malware, and within just three months, Google blacklisted more than 8,000 stores.
  
• In summer 2024, cybercriminals have hacked 5% of all Adobe Commerce and Magento stores with payment skimmers. Even large brands were among the victims.

5. SEO & Marketing Tools

Shopify Plus provides a strong set of built-in SEO features, including customisable title tags, meta descriptions, and clean URL structures. The platform also supports automatic sitemaps and 301 redirects, which helps optimise search engine rankings.

In addition, Shopify Plus offers integrated marketing tools, such as email campaigns, product recommendations, and discounts, which can be automated for personalised customer engagement. It also supports third-party integrations, such as Google Ads, Facebook, Klaviyo or Mailchimp.

Magento Commerce allows businesses to create highly tailored meta tags, optimised URLs, and redirects. Magento also supports advanced features like layered navigation for better search engine crawlability and rich snippets for improved search result displays.

In terms of marketing tools, Magento includes basic built-in functionalities like email marketing, customer segmentation, and promotions. However, for more advanced automation and campaigns, businesses often rely on third-party integrations, such as Mailchimp, HubSpot, or Google Analytics.

6. Support & Community

Shopify Plus provides 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, and phone. Businesses also have access to a dedicated account manager to assist with strategic planning and growth. Shopify’s extensive documentation, help centre, and active community forums further enhance its support ecosystem.

Additionally, the Shopify App Store and developer community offer numerous apps and integrations to expand the platform’s functionality.

Magento Commerce offers support through Adobe’s customer service, with options for premium support plans that include 24/7 access and dedicated technical assistance. 

• 30-minute Service Level Target (SLP) for Priority 1 (P1) tasks
• Designated cloud infrastructure resource (Customer Success Engineer)
• Planned event management support
• Custom site monitoring & personalized run book
• Upgrade & patching development assistance
• Go-live process coaching
• Dedicated escalation management
• Application monitoring assistance

Businesses may also work with Magento Solution Partners for additional guidance. Magento’s developer ecosystem is vast, with a strong community providing forums, blogs, and resources for troubleshooting and customisation. The Magento Marketplace offers a wide range of extensions developed by third parties to enhance store functionality.

Payment Options & Transaction Fees

Shopify Plus offers its own gateway, Shopify Payments, which helps businesses avoid additional transaction fees when used. Shopify Payments allows you to sell in 133+ global currencies and gives access to 100+ international payment providers, such as:

• Visa
• Mastercard
• Amex
• Shop Pay
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Klarna
• PayPal
• Stripe

Magento Commerce does not impose platform fees for transactions, but businesses must manage third-party payment gateway fees independently. Both platforms provide broad support for third-party payment integrations and offer flexibility for global businesses.

Innovation & Future Updates

With over 4’500 engineers, 10’000 apps in the Shopify App Store and 300 Shopify Plus Partners, Shopify counts as one of the most innovative platform providers. Shopify Plus has launched Shopify Markets in 2022, a feature designed to simplify cross-border selling by managing currency, language, and local regulations.

Shopify Functions was also introduced to allow developers to create custom logic for discount rules, shipping methods, and checkout processes without altering the core platform.

• AI and Automation Tools: Shopify Magic leverages AI to generate product descriptions and automate customer support responses. Additionally, Shopify Flow allows businesses to create automated workflows without coding.

• Roadmap: Shopify is focusing on expanding AI-driven tools, enhancing cross-border commerce features, and improving performance for high-traffic stores.

Magento Commerce has focused on improving headless commerce capabilities, which enables businesses to decouple the front-end from the back-end for more flexible and responsive experiences. Additionally, Magento has enhanced its Progressive Web Application (PWA) Studio to support mobile-first shopping.

• AI and Automation Tools: Adobe Sensei, Magento’s AI engine, powers features like product recommendations, visual search, and customer segmentation. Magento also supports automated marketing and inventory management through extensions.
  
• Roadmap: Magento’s future updates will focus on improving AI-driven personalisation, expanding API capabilities for headless commerce, and enhancing security and scalability for large enterprises.

Which is Better: Shopify Plus or Magento? Concluding Remarks

Shopify Plus excels in ease of use, rapid deployment, and managed security, which makes it an ideal choice for businesses that seek simplicity and scalability with minimal technical management. It is best suited for brands looking for fast growth, omnichannel sales, and pre-built integrations with minimal customisation.

Magento Commerce, on the other hand, offers unparalleled flexibility and customisation options and is usually the better choice for businesses that require complex, highly tailored e-commerce solutions. It is ideal for companies with dedicated development resources or those that need deep control over performance, SEO, and customer experiences.