Shopify vs Magento Open Source

by Gralio Feb 10, 2025

Shopify and Magento Open Source are both popular e-commerce platforms catering to different needs. Shopify excels in ease of use and scalability, making it suitable for businesses seeking a quick and easy setup. Magento Open Source offers greater flexibility and customization but demands technical expertise.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 5121 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 4 hours, 57 minutes of reading.

Shopify

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Magento Open Source

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About

Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that provides businesses of all sizes with the tools to create and manage online stores. From website design and product listings to payment processing and shipping, Shopify offers a comprehensive suite of features. It also provides additional tools for marketing, inventory management, and customer relationship management. Shopify is known for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and extensive app store, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced online retailers.

Magento Open Source is a free and adaptable platform for building online stores. It gives businesses complete control over their website design, functionality, and data. While technically skilled to set up, it's a popular choice for companies who want a customized online store without being locked into a rigid software solution.

Summary

Main difference

Shopify is a user-friendly platform ideal for businesses seeking an easy-to-use and scalable solution with a wide range of apps and integrations. Magento Open Source offers greater flexibility and customization for businesses with technical expertise, but requires more development effort.

Relative strengths of Shopify (compared to Magento Open Source)

Ease of Use: Shopify is known for its intuitive interface and ease of setup, making it suitable for beginners.
Extensive App Ecosystem: Shopify offers a vast app store with a wide range of integrations, enhancing functionality and streamlining business processes.
Scalability: Shopify offers scalable plans to accommodate business growth, handling increasing sales and traffic.

Relative weaknesses of Shopify (compared to Magento Open Source)

Customization Limitations: Shopify's customization options are limited compared to Magento Open Source, especially without coding knowledge.
Cost: Shopify's monthly fees and app costs can be higher than Magento Open Source's open-source model.
Reliance on Apps: While the app ecosystem is a strength, reliance on apps for key features can lead to additional costs and complexity.

Who should use Shopify VS. Magento Open Source

Shopify is a user-friendly e-commerce platform perfect for businesses of all sizes. Its intuitive interface, extensive app store, and scalability make it a top choice. Users praise its ease of use and available themes, while some note high monthly fees and limited customization options without coding.

Magento Open Source is a robust, free, and highly customizable e-commerce platform perfect for tech-savvy businesses. Users praise its flexibility and extensive features, while noting the steep learning curve. If you have development resources and seek granular control over your online store, Magento is an excellent choice.

Best for small to enterprise-level businesses.
Ideal for E-commerce, Retail, and various other industries.

Ideal for small to enterprise-sized businesses.
Best fit for Software, IT, and Telecommunications, suitable for E-commerce, Retail, and other industries.

Shopify and Magento Open Source features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Online Sales

Supported

Shopify supports online sales via websites, social media, and marketplaces.

Partially supported

Magento supports online sales through websites and can integrate with other channels via extensions.
International Sales

Supported

Shopify supports international sales with currency conversion, translations, and shipping logistics.

Supported

Magento Open Source supports international sales with multi-language, multi-currency, and cross-border shipping features.
POS System

Supported

Shopify offers a POS system integrated with online sales, managing inventory and customer data.

Partially supported

Magento Open Source supports POS functionality through various third-party extensions.
Website builder

Supported

Shopify allows the creation of a product catalog website with its native features and integrated apps. It provides features for catalog creation, assignment to companies/customers, custom B2B pricing, and app integrations for enhanced catalog management, online/PDF catalog generation, automated updates, and more.

Supported

Magento Open Source allows creating websites with product catalogs, including features for managing products, categories, attributes, images, and customization.
One-click checkout

Supported

Shopify supports one-click checkout through its Shop Pay feature.

Partially supported

Magento Open Source supports one-click checkout functionality through various extensions available in its marketplace.
Team Collaboration

Supported

Shopify enables team collaboration on order management through features like customizable order views, bulk actions, real-time visibility, and integrations with third-party tools.

Partially supported

Magento Open Source does not natively support advanced team collaboration for order management. However, features like bulk order actions, custom order attributes, and access control can indirectly support team collaboration to some extent. Third-party extensions can enhance these capabilities.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

-0.42

Rather negative sentiment

+0.43

Rather positive sentiment
Customer Service

+0.18

Neutral sentiment

+0.33

Rather positive sentiment
Ease of Use

+0.91

Strongly positive sentiment

+0.22

Neutral sentiment
Reliability and Performance

+0.4

Rather positive sentiment

-0.23

Neutral sentiment
Ease of Implementation

+0.72

Strongly positive sentiment

-0.4

Rather negative sentiment
Scalability

+0.35

Rather positive sentiment

+0.25

Neutral sentiment

Shopify and Magento Open Source Pricing

No data

User sentiment

Rather negative

-0.42

See full Pricing page

No data

User sentiment

Rather positive

+0.43

We couldn't find a pricing page for Magento Open Source.

Shopify and Magento Open Source review insights

5121 reviews analysed from and

Users love

User-friendly interface praised for its ease of use.
Wide variety of themes and templates available.
Extensive app store for added functionality.
Shopify Payments integrated for seamless transactions.

Highly customizable with a wide range of extensions.
Robust platform capable of handling large catalogs.
Strong community support and extensive documentation.
Open-source and free to use, providing flexibility.

Users dislike

High monthly fees are a common complaint.
Limited customization options, especially without coding knowledge.
App reliance for key features leads to additional costs.
Customer support can be slow and unresponsive.

Difficult to set up for non-developers.
Performance can be slow, requiring server optimization.
Frequent updates can lead to extension compatibility issues.
Learning curve is steep, requiring technical expertise.

Shopify and Magento Open Source Ratings

G2

4.4/5

(2547)
Capterra

4.5/5

(2373)
Glassdoor

3.3/5

(3293)

G2

4.0/5

(242)
Glassdoor

4.3/5

(10097)

Company health

Employee growth

18% increase in the last year

4% increase in the last year

Web traffic

10% increase in the last quarter

1% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

September 2013 - $122M

June 1984 - $3M

How easy is Shopify to use compared to Magento Open Source?

Shopify is significantly easier to use than Magento Open Source. Shopify's user-friendly interface is frequently praised in reviews, while Magento Open Source is known to have a steep learning curve and require technical expertise. Shopify's ease of use score (0.91) is much higher than Magento's (0.22), reflecting this difference. While Magento offers greater customization, this comes at the cost of increased complexity.

Which platform best supports scaling for future growth, Shopify or Magento?

Magento offers greater scalability for future growth compared to Shopify. While Shopify is easier to use initially, its reliance on apps for extended functionality can become costly and limit flexibility as a business grows. Magento's open-source nature and flexible architecture allow for greater customization and control, making it more adaptable to changing business needs and higher volumes of traffic and transactions in the long run.

What are the advantages of Shopify?

Shopify's advantages include its user-friendly interface, making it easier to use than Magento Open Source, especially for non-technical users. It offers a wider range of built-in features and an extensive app store, simplifying store setup and management. Shopify handles hosting and security, reducing technical overhead compared to self-hosting Magento. While Shopify has monthly fees, Magento Open Source, while free, can incur costs for hosting, extensions, and developer support to achieve similar functionality. Shopify's dedicated support team can be more readily available than community support for Magento.

What are the disadvantages of Shopify?

Shopify's disadvantages include high monthly fees, limited customization options without coding knowledge, reliance on apps (which incur additional costs) for key features, and potentially slow or unresponsive customer support.

Alternatives to Shopify and Magento Open Source

Ecwid

Ecwid is an e-commerce platform designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It allows you to easily add an online store to your existing website or social media pages. You can manage sales, inventory, payments, shipping, and marketing from a single platform. Ecwid offers a free plan with paid options available for expanded features and sales volume. They are known for their ease of use, strong customer support, and integrations with popular platforms.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free and popular platform for building online stores, specifically designed to work with WordPress websites. It's a popular choice, powering a large portion of all online shops. WooCommerce is known for being highly customizable and adaptable, offering a wide range of extensions and themes to tailor the functionality and design of your store. While it's free to use, additional extensions and themes may come with costs. WooCommerce is suitable for both small businesses starting out and larger companies needing more advanced features.

Clickatell Chat Commerce Platform

Clickatell Chat Commerce Platform helps businesses connect with customers through popular messaging apps and text messages. It offers tools for automated messaging, live customer support, and even accepting payments within the chat. Clickatell focuses on making customer interactions more convenient and engaging, ultimately aiming to increase sales and customer satisfaction while reducing costs for businesses.

Salesforce Commerce for B2C

Salesforce Commerce for B2C is an e-commerce platform designed to help businesses of all sizes sell online. It offers tools to create and manage online stores, connect with customers across multiple channels (web, mobile, social media), and streamline operations like marketing, order fulfillment, and customer service. The platform stands out with its focus on personalization, using data and AI to tailor shopping experiences. Salesforce Commerce for B2C promises to help businesses grow profitability by increasing sales and improving customer satisfaction.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a popular e-commerce platform designed for businesses of all sizes, though its advanced features are particularly attractive to larger businesses. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools to build and manage your online store, including features for both B2C and B2B selling. BigCommerce stands out for its flexibility and open approach, allowing extensive customization and integration with other business systems. The platform promises reliability, scalability, and robust security to support business growth.

Dukaan

Dukaan is an e-commerce platform that helps businesses create and manage online stores. It offers a user-friendly interface, customizable themes, and various features like product management, order tracking, and marketing tools. Dukaan focuses on providing a fast and scalable solution for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Its emphasis on speed, performance, and ease of use makes it a competitive option in the e-commerce platform market.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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