Online presence plays an important role and creates your brand image in minds of visitors. It says all about your brand, services, and products. Building your online store is quite a daunting task. You need to consider every single thing carefully to make sure that you can get it built successfully. One of the most essential aspects is to choose the right e-commerce platform to develop your store on.
There are a lot of choices available nowadays which actually makes it hard to choose the one. Though you can go through the features and functionalities of them and can figure out which fits perfectly to your needs. In this article, we will help you choose the one between Magento and Shopify.
Magento
It is true that Magento is one of the most popular open source eCommerce frameworks and used by various top brands. It has amazing features and flexible functionality which attracts most of the users. It provides the large community of support for users’. Since it is a very flexible platform, offers you complete freedom. If you got any issue, the Magento Forum includes an answer for everything to help you out.
Shopify
Shopify is popular among mostly small and medium-size business. One does not need to be an expert to use it as it has a simple installation process. Shopify development can help you build the eye-catching store for your business. It is truly amazing for taking your eCommerce business to the next level and powering your bottom line. Moreover, it includes a great variety of features like social media selling, quick POS integration and buys button for campaigns etc.
Below, we will discuss the basic features are essential for an e-commerce platform so that you can figure out which one suits your requirements best.
Cost
Whether you are a small, medium or big sized business, every business has its own budget. So, choosing the platform which suits you best also include what it cost you. Magento is an open source and free to use the platform, and you can have the community edition for free. You can probably reduce your cost when you choose it.
Shopify offers a variety of plans including Lite, Basic, Pro, and Unlimited. Each plan cost you differently. They will cost you from 9USD to 179USD on a monthly basis, depending on the plan you choose. Though they do not charge any transaction fees and provide a 14-day trial along with the 24*7 customer support and unlimited products.
User Interface
User interface certainly is a very important aspect for any business. It also influences to manage your store. Shopify offers a simple admin interface, making things easier for you. It helps you perform your routine functions easily such as editing products, organizing categories, adding modules, etc.
Though Magento includes flexible features its admin interface is pretty complex, you can choose it if you have a huge product portfolio and resources to manage.
Third Party Apps
Magento has many extensions and therefore capable to offer all types of functionalities. It is very simple to extend your online store with the help of its extensions including Magento Connect, the old Magento marketplace and the new marketplace Magento.
The Shopify app store is the right choice for you if you do not require any extra integration for your store; however, it does not offer a variety of apps and themes as Magento offers.
Marketing
Another important point you need to consider to choose the right platform for you which perfectly meets your marketing strategies. Magento offers almost all the necessary
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Shopify doesn’t include a lot of SEO features but comes with the basic features like robots.txt and sitemap.xml files. It includes a lot of social media features which allows you directly sell on Facebook and build saleable pins on Pinterest. Built-in promotions include coupon and discount codes. Along with, you can find other solutions for promotions in the app store.
Support
Shopify gives 24×7 customer support along with community-based support. It is true that it has better support facility than Magento, particularly for small businesses. It offers constant support to its clients for upgrades and security patches.
Magento has huge community support and there is not any customer care service to answer your queries. If you face any issues, you simply need to post that on community forums or also you can find an answer for your issues in the previous answer to the similar query.
Conclusion
Now, you may have understood the functionalities both the platform offers and included features. Both the platforms are capable to do a variety of amazing e-commerce functions but they have their own best features. You need to find out which features are important for you and then you can choose the most suitable platform for your business.
In short, Shopify is considered better for small sized e-commerce stores with no additional features and functionality demands. And Magento is more appropriate for businesses that need a lot of additions, add-on tools; customization and can handle the complexity of it. However, if you still find yourself unable to choose one, you can certainly seek advice from experts. Arka software is a Magento web development company and also offers Shopify e-commerce development services and can help out with both the technologies.
