Confused between Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce? You’re not alone. These three brands are two of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market today.
Order Management
Search Engine Optimization
Order Management
Search Engine Optimization
Order Management
Search Engine Optimization
Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce are two of the most powerful e-commerce platforms on the market. They make it easy for anyone to create, market, grow and maintain a highly profitable business all from one website. The two e-commerce rivals host tens of thousands of online retailers generating billions of dollars worth of business.
The two platforms are both beginner-friendly, offer a variety of easy-to-use features, and provide responsive, mobile-friendly templates, but each has its own strengths and weaknesses depending on your goals.
So, if not chosen wisely, an inadequately powered platform will limit the growth and success of an online store in the future. Because of this, doing proactive research on the platform you intend to use is crucial.
When selecting a platform, numerous things should be taken into account.
In this post on Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce, I will discuss some of the key areas of these e-commerce platforms, which will help choose between these three.
Table Of Contents
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Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce Overview
What Is Magento?
Magento is probably the most well-known Ecommerce platform, certainly in terms of self-hosted solutions. It was released in 2008, acquired by eBay, and then sold to Adobe. Every year, Magento handles over $100 billion in gross merchandise volume.
Magento’s expansive feature set and complete customizability make it an excellent platform for merchants with the resources to implement advanced technology successfully.
Magento is now Adobe Commerce.
Magento eCommerce software comes in two forms:
- Magento Open Source: Formerly called the Magento Community Edition, the software is free to download and install.
- Magento Commerce: Formerly called the Magento Enterprise Edition, this software aims at enterprise-level businesses with developers on hand. It comes with a high price tag.
Magento is without question an enterprise e-commerce software. It offers both B2B and B2C capabilities and is a widely used choice for its customizable nature and high functionality.
That said, though, Magento is probably better suited to bigger business. It requires development knowledge to set up and run, and if you want more than the basic free features, the price tag hops up to thousands a month.
It is a very sleek and professional tool that is designed for scaling large enterprises.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a commerce platform that allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products. Merchants can also sell their products in person with Shopify POS.
Shopify started over ten years ago when our founder Tobi wanted to sell snowboards with his company at that time called Snowdevil. He quickly realized it was incredibly challenging to sell snowboards online without an easy-to-use ecommerce platform. So he decided to create it himself, and Shopify was born.
Shopify is now the leading commerce platform designed for businesses of all sizes. Shopify statistics say that in 2022, the number of Shopify users are more than 3,740,000+. Whether you sell online, on social media, in-store, or out of the trunk of your car, Shopify has you covered. The first Shopify store was our own, and it’s been our mission to make commerce better for everyone ever since.
Shopify provides you with the foundation to run an ecommerce business. As you venture into the online selling space, you’re expected to open a storefront, showcase products, engage with customers, accept payments, and more. Shopify offers all the tools you need to manage each of those activities. Think of Shopify’s platform as a facilitator working to ease the process of selling products over the web.
What Is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a leading ecommerce builder, providing extreme scalability for online stores. It has more built-in sales tools than any of its competitors and combines these features with advanced SEO and fantastic multi-channel integration. It’s designed to help boost large and fast-growing businesses into the big leagues!
BigCommerce is more than a site builder. It has great store management capabilities to help you manage your business, such as a robust product catalog, flexible shipping & real-time quotes, coupon and discounting tools, and more.
Setting the functionality aside, BigCommerce also takes care of the things going on under the hood, like hosting your online store and handling web security. The servers at BigCommerce employ hacker deterrent security provisioning and hardware firewalls—you can trust that technical problems are going to be minimal.
Comparing Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce Features
Magento Features
👉 Catalog Management: The idea of catalog management seems simple enough, but it’s quite hard for several merchants – for various reasons. You need to maintain a single catalog for all of your products, and it should promote sales. Presenting your products with Magento eCommerce is very authoritative. You can catalog as well as control it with ease.
👉 Order Management: Order Management is a vital process that enables online stores to run efficiently & keeps customers happy, making them come back in the future. Order management in Magento bridges the in-store and online gap and drives a smooth customer experience. It ensures convenient, flexible, and cost-effective delivery. The order fulfillment system offers processes for shipping, order organization, refunds, and order status.
👉 Search Engine Optimization: Magento eCommerce platform is an SEO-friendly platform. It supports your eCommerce site to be ranked as the best website via white-hat SEO campaigns. Descriptions, Meta tags, and keywords can be configured effortlessly for every product and make your team control over how Google, Yahoo, and other search engines interpret your shop’s product offering.
👉 Advertising and Marketing: With Magento, you are provided with the option to use a wide range of marketing tools for your eCommerce business. It allows you to handle and sort out coupon codes, promotions, etc.
👉 Internationalization: Magento offers a chance to go beyond your country’s boundaries and among diverse cultures with its support of currencies and languages in different parts of the world. Magento offers you a global platform to flourish. It enables your store to be presented in different versions based on the currencies and language of localization.
👉 Easy Checkout: You are not limited to a single checkout option – Magento eCommerce includes easy checkout options. With Magento, you can allow your customers to purchase multiple products simultaneously and progress to checkout quickly.
👉 Payment Modes: Magento eCommerce incorporates a plethora of payment alternatives. Your customers are provided with the options to choose from the various payment methods as different regions have different popular payment systems.
👉 Analytics &Reporting: Magento comes with an inbuilt analytics and reporting suite that displays the performance of your online store. As it can monitor consumer trends, it empowers you to define strategies as well as work accordingly.
👉 Enhanced Security: ECommerce security is crucial for businesses and a basic theory that runs through every business is trust. All these features of Magento eCommerce are geared towards creating and increasing customers’ trust. To reduce the chance of security attacks and prevent password hacking, the eCommerce platform has added two-factor authentication and Google ReCaptcha.
Shopify Features
👉 Shopify POS: Shopify offers a feature named Point Of Sale that enables companies to sell their products in the real world. The payments are directly linked to the company’s Shopify inventory which also maintains a record of every sales transaction. The Shopify POS application provides a unified Dashboard that eliminates the need to maintain separate Sales records for in-store and online purchases.
👉 Out of the Box SEO Tools: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to the growth of any online business as it helps improve the website’s ranking on search engines. Shopify also offers support for multiple third-party application integrations to help users effectively optimize their websites.
👉 Shopify Dropshipping: Dropshipping is a business model in which eCommerce companies buy products from a third party and get them directly delivered to their customers. Shopify offers multiple applications that help businesses connect to thousands of wholesale suppliers across the globe.
👉 Shopify Analytics: Shopify provides multiple analytics tools that enable users to assess their online store’s performance. Shopify Analytics generates impactful insights related to Customer Activities, Marketing, Sales, and others to aid businesses in optimizing their operations and making better informed strategic decisions for increasing sales.
👉 Abandoned Cart Reminders: Abandoned Carts Checkout Emails is a feature provided by Shopify that allows users to identify customers who have products added to their cart and send emails to remind them of those products. Businesses can also automate this entire process by upgrading to Shopify’s advanced subscription which helps them save a lot of productive time and increase revenue generation.
BigCommerce Features
👉 Unlimited products, file storage, and bandwidth: BigCommerce doesn’t impose limits on catalog size, storage space, or the number of requests your website can receive in the space of a month. This is true even at its entry-level “Standard” tier, so you don’t have to purchase a better plan to add more products or get better loading times.
👉 Single-Page Checkout: BigCommerce has engineered a simple, single-page checkout that removes distractions and increases the likelihood that customers will complete the purchase.
👉 Less downtime: Like most cloud-based solutions, BigCommerce boasts an impressive 99% uptime rate. This is an important detail for sales and for building customer trust—shoppers can rely on stores remaining open even during a holiday rush or flash sale.
👉 Coupons & Gift Certificates: All BigCommerce plans include a great set of tools that store owners can use to increase purchases and improve loyalty. All BigCommerce plans also include coupons. A coupon code is a useful method of encouraging visitors to sign up for a newsletter or create a member account.
👉 Product Videos: As a standard feature, all BigCommerce plans allow sellers to add videos to their products. The video can be added using a simple YouTube link and appears right on the product page. A product video is an attention-grabbing method of showcasing a product with an in-depth demonstration or sizzle reel.
👉 Bulk Pricing: Bulk pricing is a feature that allows the seller to incentivize purchases at a higher quantity by offering bulk discounts. This is very useful for products often purchased in multiples. It’s one of several off-the-shelf features that make BigCommerce a compelling choice for B2B stores.
👉 Ratings & Reviews: BigCommerce includes a simple system for customer reviews and ratings. This system can be activated with a single click and made available on any product page. You can set reviews for manual or automatic approval, and set up management to help prevent spamming.
👉 Product Swatches: In all BigCommerce plans, product listings are allowed multiple variants for options like size, color, or pattern. BigCommerce provides several useful choices for formatting these options, such as dropdowns, checkboxes, and size selectors.
👉 Customer Groups & Segmentation: For sellers using the “Plus” plan and above, BigCommerce provides the ability to classify customers by group, also known as segmentation. This feature can be used for stores of all kinds but is particularly important for B2B storefronts.
👉 Abandoned Cart Saver: This feature is also available to sellers at the “Plus” plan and above. With the Abandoned Cart Saver, you can send automated emails to customers who have abandoned the checkout before completing their purchase. The design, content, and timing of the emails can all be customized.
👉 Persistent Cart: This third feature offered with the “Plus” plan helps ensure that customer carts stay consistent even when they move between devices. For example, if a customer begins to add items to their cart on their smartphone, then returns to the site later on their desktop, the cart contents will remain intact.
👉 B2B Edition: BigCommerce now offers a dedicated bundle for B2B sellers, allowing businesses to streamline operations and improve customer experience.
Magento VS Shopify VS BigCommerce – Popularity
There is no doubt that all three – Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify are extremely popular platforms in the realm of the ecommerce industry. A recently released report on the current state of the ecommerce industry revealed that there are around 240,000 registered domains on Shopify. On the other hand, BigCommerce and Magento together power close to 25,000 websites, with close to 160,000 websites running on Magento. What matters, though, is making a firm distinction between the different kinds of websites that use these platforms.
Small online retailers are typically more likely to adopt Shopify due to their inventive and active marketing strategies. The reason for this is that new and inexperienced online store owners find its ease of use—a frequently advertised feature—attractive.
When it comes to Magento, which is a BigCommerce alternative, a general perception is that the platform is most preferred by medium and large-sized online stores. But the truth is that Magento can also be a fantastic option for tiny web shops that require simple future scalability.
Small and medium-sized enterprises may manage their online stores using BigCommerce without having to worry about hosting issues. Although it offers a variety of services, it often makes hosting for mid-sized companies on a tight budget possible.
Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce – Control, and Customization
Two of the most obvious and essential distinctions between Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify are customization and control.
Since Magento is self-hosted, you have complete control over the servers and hosting you use. You have countless customization options for the look and feel of your store thanks to its open-source nature. You can update and modify the store whatever you like, with no limitations on the number of integrations.
Because Shopify is a hosted solution, you don’t need to have a lot of coding experience to use it. While you don’t have to deal with hosting and configuration difficulties, you can’t access the source code, which reduces your possibilities for adjustments at the store level.
BigCommerce, another competitor to Shopify, provides a hosted e-commerce solution. You must create an account with them in order to launch your website. As you won’t be able to customize it, this can limit your freedom. The advantage of a hosted platform is that all hosting-related concerns will be handled by the business. Therefore, you will have less control, fewer adjustments, and fewer concerns with BigCommerce.
Magento vs BigCommerce vs Shopify – User Friendliness
Shopify gives its merchants accessibility to make up for all the limitations on customizability. With its simple tools and drag-and-drop interface, you can easily change the store’s fundamental characteristics.
Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce is a user-friendly e-commerce platform. Your online store can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Keep in mind that there is no room for modification. As a result, you will need to find a solution to the problem if you wish to add a pop-in, CTA, or custom plugin.
The learning curve for Magento is a little high, but that’s just because it’s made to give merchants flexibility and support a variety of customization scenarios. Magento’s user-friendliness suffers as a result of its extreme flexibility. The platform allows for a wide range of activities. User-friendliness shouldn’t be a problem if you are a significant online store owner and have the required Magento development expertise.
Magento vs BigCommerce vs Shopify – Speed & Performance
Every successful ecommerce store depends on speed and performance. A website’s loading time shouldn’t keep users waiting too long. Online retailers are also affected by this. A user is less likely to make a first-time purchase or return for a second one if an online store is not up to par with speed and performance.
The fact that Shopify is a hosted solution must be understood. You don’t have to be concerned about the e-commerce store’s general performance or the speed at which the pages load while using Shopify. The server-level changes and your hosting environment are both largely out of your control.
BigCommerce is a hosted platform as well. BuiltWith emphasizes that BigCommerce employs the quick and efficient AWS hosting infrastructure to host its websites. However, users won’t be able to freely sell their stores because they won’t have the freedom to design their ecommerce platforms. Long-term, this can have an effect on sales. BigCommerce is only appropriate for newcomers to the e-commerce space because of this.
On the other hand, Magento is renowned for its strong performance and distinctive performance-oriented adjustments, which tie in with the control and hosting flexibility. Since it is a self-hosted platform, you have complete control over the server you use and may make any necessary modifications to improve performance metrics. This involves making use of the best Magento hosting with advanced technologies such as caching mechanism and CDN.
Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce – Payment Gateway Options
One of the most crucial components when it comes to supporting the end-user is providing a variety of payment gateway alternatives. With the combination of a unique solution and other widely used payment methods, Shopify enables convenience in the payment process.
BigCommerce, a competitor to Shopify, also provides a variety of payment choices, such as PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and other payment gateways like Sage Pay, Adyen, etc.
With the aid of modules, Magento also provides a variety of payment alternatives to increase the functionality of your e-commerce store. For configuring and establishing various payment options, there are several modules and add-ons available.
Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce – Themes and Templates
A wide selection of both free and paid themes is available from Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify. With Magento, you may select from a wide range of expensive but feature-rich premium Magento themes. Similar to paid ones, you can choose from a sizable selection of free themes for your online business.
The three main ecommerce platforms all offer movable themes at the same time.
The installation of themes for BigCommerce and Shopify is comparatively simple. There are few possibilities for customization available. On the other hand, Magento provides templates that let you totally alter the theme’s functionality and layout. It has sufficient room for adaptability and personalization.
Comparing Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce- Pros and Cons
Magento Pros and Cons
Shopify Features
BigCommerce Features
Comparing Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce – Pricing
Magento Pricing
Magento Open Source has not provided pricing information for this product or service. This is common practice for software sellers and service providers. Contact Magento Open Source to obtain current pricing.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify Pricing Plans are as follows:
- Shopify Starter – starting at $5 per month
- Shopify Lite – starting at $9 per month
- Basic Shopify – starting at $29 per month
- Shopify – starting at $79 per month
- Advanced Shopify – starting at $299 per month
- Shopify Plus – starting at $2,000 per month
BigCommerce Pricing
The annual plan of BigCommerce is as follows:
- Standard – $29.95/mo
- Plus – $71.95/mo
- Pro – $269.96/mon
- Enterprise – Contact vendor
Adobe Commerce vs Shopify vs BigCommerce – In A Nutshell
Magento | Shopify | BigCommerce | |
Free trial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
24/7 support | No | Yes | Yes |
Sell Online and in-store | No | Yes | Yes |
Business capital | No | No | Yes |
Custom domain | No | Yes | Yes |
SEO features | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Hosting | No | Yes | Yes |
Sell worldwide | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Multi-currency support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mobile-friendly | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Fraud protection | No | No | Yes |
Integrated checkout | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Integrated fulfillment network | No | No | Yes |
Email marketing tools | No | No | Yes |
App Store | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mobile app for merchants | No | Yes | Yes |
Conclusion On Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce
In actuality, no platform can have all the benefits, hence there is no winner in this comparison. Each of the three—Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify—has its advantages and distinctive qualities. Simply choose the one that best fits your business model.
Shopify is currently user-friendly, but you may want to think about the costs associated with its services and the possibility of scaling the business in the future. In a similar vein, Magento demands technical know-how but doesn’t cost anything to install or use for regular business in your store. Knowing that your store can scale with a powerful platform will give you peace of mind always.
To support your decision (whatever that may be), I contacted numerous developers, store owners, and industry influencers to find out what they thought of the two platforms and why.
Hope you liked this post on Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below. I will be happy to respond.
