Shopify vs BigCommerce vs Magento

If you’re ready to make a pivotal decision for your ecommerce success and are choosing between Shopify vs. BigCommerce vs. Magento, you've come to the right place. We have prepared all the insights you need to choose the perfect platform for your business.

Choosing an ecommerce platform is not just a leap of faith; it requires a well-informed decision free from marketing hype. According to Forbes research, Shopify and BigCommerce have secured top positions, with Shopify rated 4.6 and BigCommerce rated 4.4., while Magento is known for its enterprise-level customization.

To help you make this important decision, we provide a detailed comparison of BigCommerce vs Magento vs Shopify, highlighting their key features, benefits, strengths, and weaknesses.

The wrong platform can hinder your store's growth and success, so the first step in your journey is thorough research. Let's define which platform is right for your unique business needs.

Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce: What sets them apart

A single factor, such as the complexity of the solution or its price, shouldn't drive your decision. Instead, consider all possible aspects, keeping in mind your business needs.

Here’s a table outlining the key aspects of Shopify vs. BigCommerce vs. Magento. We’ll cover each of them in more detail below.

Pricing

Everything starts with investment. The first thing you need to consider is: How much will this cost? So, let’s compare ecommerce platforms and define the costs associated with each and help you understand what you'll need to spend on your store.

Ecommerce platforms can be costly, especially if you require numerous features. It's important to research the features you need and compare platform costs to ensure they align with your business. While some platforms offer free plans, they often come with limited features or higher processing fees.

For Shopify vs BigCommerce, both platforms offer subscription-based models, starting with a free trial but transitioning to a paid plan. The entry-level Shopify plan is priced at $24 per month, while the Advanced Shopify plan costs $299. For BigCommerce, the Pro plan is $299 per month. Upgrading to these higher-tier plans unlocks advanced features such as detailed statistics and gift cards, though premium themes and extensions can also add to your costs.

When it comes to fees, Shopify charges a transaction fee for payments made through external gateways (if not using Shopify Payments), while BigCommerce vs Shopify offers a fee-free experience. Both platforms support popular payment gateways like PayPal and Braintree.

On the other hand, Magento’s pricing is more variable, as it depends on your hosting choice and specific needs. Magento, including its Commerce Cloud version, offers a highly customizable and robust platform, often at a premium price. To get a precise quote tailored to your business, you'll need to consult with a Magento Partner or the Magento team directly.

Affordability is crucial for small businesses just starting their online store. When choosing Magento vs BigCommerce vs Shopify, consider not only the monthly subscription costs but also the processing fees. Some platforms may have low monthly fees but high transaction costs, so evaluating your sales volume will help you find the best overall value.

Hosting

A major difference between these platforms is how they are hosted. Will you be hosting the software on-premise, through a third party, or in the cloud? When deciding on the right platform for your business, it’s important to determine which hosting method best suits your needs.

Magento: On-premise, third-party, or cloud-based

It offers flexibility with different hosting options. Magento can be hosted on-premise, through a third-party, or in the cloud.

• On-premise: Magento Open Source can be hosted on-premise, which means you’re responsible for managing your own servers and infrastructure.

• Third-party hosting: You can choose third-party hosting providers to manage Magento Open Source or Magento Commerce.

• Cloud-based: Magento Commerce Cloud provides a cloud-based solution with managed hosting, scaling, and performance optimizations included.

Shopify: Cloud-based

Shopify is entirely cloud-based, with hosting included in your subscription. This eliminates the need to find third-party hosting and simplifies management. Shopify handles all aspects of hosting, including performance and security. To ensure your business is accessible whenever customers want to shop, Shopify guarantees a 99.99% uptime.

BigCommerce: Cloud-based

BigCommerce is also cloud-based, with hosting and top-tier performance included in your subscription. You won't need to worry about finding hosting or dealing with downtime, as BigCommerce boasts a 99.9% uptime.

Performance

Now, let's talk about other crucial criteria for your store – speed and performance. Users expect quick loading times, and if your online store falls short, it risks losing customers who may not return for the next purchase or even complete their first one.

With Shopify, you don't need to worry about page loading speed or overall performance. However, that brings minimal control over your hosting environment and server-level adjustments.

BigCommerce is similarly hosted and uses AWS infrastructure, which is known for its speed. But since you can't customize your hosting environment, you might face limitations in how you market your store, potentially impacting long-term sales.

In the Magento vs BigCommerce comparison, Magento stands out as a self-hosted platform, allowing you to choose your server and make adjustments to enhance performance, such as using advanced technologies like caching and CDNs. Magento provides two options: Open Source (formerly Community Edition) and Commerce (formerly Enterprise Edition). With Open Source, you're responsible for hosting and maintaining your store, though it meets basic commerce needs. Magento Commerce, however, is cloud-hosted, handling hosting, web support, and ecommerce functionality. This makes it a strong choice if you prefer not to handle these aspects yourself.

Ease of use

Another crucial factor is the platform's ease of use, which is essential for your team. You need a system that your team can quickly learn, understand, and fully utilize. Depending on your business size and structure, it’s important to have a platform that's user-friendly on both the backend and the frontend.

Magento requires significant technical expertise and doesn’t come with built-in support for site development. You’ll need a developer or a team, a hosting partner, and someone to integrate your tech stack. Even when the setup is finished, you still have a long learning curve, and its flexibility can be challenging for new users.

If we compare Shopify vs. Magento, Shopify boasts a sleek and intuitive interface, making it incredibly user-friendly and a breeze to manage. Shopify is designed for those who want an easy way to create online stores without any development background. Its drag-and-drop interface makes site building straightforward and ideal for businesses new to website creation.

While comparing BigCommerce vs Magento, BigCommerce also offers a user-friendly experience, allowing even novices to build attractive websites. It’s easy to manage products and orders through a simple shop page. Moreover, BigCommerce supports headless commerce with pre-built plugins for CMS and DXP systems like WordPress, Bloomreach, and Drupal. This allows you to use your existing frontend system while integrating BigCommerce on the backend. DigitalSuits team provides BigCommerce development services to build, re-platform, or expand your retail operation.

Features

Every business has unique needs and priorities. For B2B sellers, you might need features for different customer groups, multiple payment gateways, or various shipping options to stay competitive. While we can't list all the features of each platform here, here's a quick overview:

Magento: Feature-rich powerhouse

Magento is packed with features. It supports extensive product catalogs, native product bundles, and powerful cross-selling and upselling tools. Plus, you can tap into a vast library of extensions and add-ons. With Magento, the sky's the limit in customization, but you'll need skilled developers to bring your vision to life and keep it running smoothly.

BigCommerce: Feature-rich and cost-effective

BigCommerce stands out with its comprehensive native features, reducing the need for third-party apps and potentially saving you money. Key features include a channel manager for seamless omnichannel selling, an abandoned cart saver to boost conversions, and a wide array of payment gateways.

Shopify: Flexible and user-friendly

The Shopify vs. BigCommerce comparison shows that Shopify offers a solid set of native features and an app store brimming with third-party tools to expand your store's capabilities. Be sure to account for the costs of these apps to understand your total investment. Remember, Shopify charges transaction fees if you don't use their payment gateway, so consider this when making your decision.

Scalability

When comparing Shopify vs BigCommerce, Shopify offers a user-friendly interface and a robust app ecosystem. A rich third-party app ecosystem lets you extend functionality. Businesses should consider the costs of these apps and transaction fees in case they do not use Shopify’s payment gateway. If you decide to scale, a Shopify web development company can effectively manage and optimize these integrations for your business needs.

BigCommerce offers native features like channel managers and a variety of payment gateways. Thus the need for external apps and potential additional integrations is low.

At the same time, Magento offers a rich feature set and a high level of customization. That makes it well-suited for businesses with complex needs and large product catalogs. Note that scaling effectively with it requires technical expertise or development resources.

Customization

Сustomization is the key when choosing a platform. It defines the flexibility you get whether through templates, plugins, or the ability to add custom code.

When businesses are deciding between Magento vs. Shopify, it's important to consider that Magento is self-hosted and open-source. This means you have the flexibility to select your own server and enjoy extensive customization options for both design and functionality. Moreover, you can modify and enhance your store without limitations on integrations.

Shopify is a hosted platform that simplifies the setup process with minimal technical expertise required. However, since Shopify is hosted, you can't access the source code, which limits deep customizations.

BigCommerce is another hosted solution that makes hosting and maintenance a breeze. It simplifies your technical workload but offers less control and fewer customization options compared to Magento.

Security

Ecommerce sites must protect customer data and damage brand trust. The level of security varies by platform, so you should consider your team’s expertise and willingness to manage security measures.

Magento: With Magento, security is largely in your hands. The level of security mostly depends on your developers and how diligently they maintain the site. While Magento provides patches for known vulnerabilities, such as the SQL injection risk identified in 201, you are mainly responsible for implementing and updating security measures like SSL certificates.

Shopify: Provides built-in security. As a SaaS platform, Shopify ensures compliance with PCI standards and built-in SSL encryption for hosted sites. You can be calm for the safety of your store as it offer a more hands-off approach to security.

BigCommerce also offers robust security features as it’s a SaaS solution. It includes multiple layers of security, such as sitewide SSL, DDoS protection, and Level 1 PCI compliance. That will let you concentrate on business growth and innovation rather than security concerns.

SEO capabilities

When running an online store, leveraging powerful SEO techniques is crucial to ensure your efforts pay off. When comparing BigCommerce vs Magento vs Shopify, each platform offers distinct SEO functionalities and integrations to boost your ROI and improve your store’s search engine rankings.

Shopify provides essential SEO features like editing meta tags and optimizing product pages. It also supports deeper optimization by allowing modifications to the file structure, which helps search crawlers. However, as Shopify is a hosted solution, you can't make server-level configurations, which can limit advanced SEO tweaks.

BigCommerce offers fundamental SEO features such as meta tags, keyword optimization, and more. These built-in tools make it easy to optimize your store and improve its search engine performance.

However, when comparing Magento vs. BigCommerce, Magento stands out for its superior SEO flexibility. Its open-source nature allows you to implement custom SEO strategies and tailor your store’s design for optimal results. Magento supports advanced SEO techniques, including fine-tuning permalinks, meta content, and utilizing no-follow links, redirects, and canonical tags. This makes it easier for search engines to index your site and understand its structure, enhancing your store’s visibility and search rankings.

Theme diversity

Visual elements create the first impression for many customers, so your online store needs to be a clean, functional, and memorable extension of your brand. Choosing the right template or theme is crucial for achieving the desired look and feel.

Shopify: Hundreds of themes

Shopify offers a wide range of themes, both free and paid. These themes are mobile-optimized and can be easily integrated into your store, providing a polished and professional look with minimal effort.

Magento: Limited built-in themes

If we compare Magento vs Shopify, Magento provides a few default themes as part of its core installation, which you can use as a starting point. However, for more advanced customization or unique design needs, many businesses opt for third-party themes or custom-designed themes to fully leverage Magento's capabilities.

BigCommerce: Hundreds of customizable themes

BigCommerce also offers hundreds of fully customizable themes, both free and premium. Using their Stencil theme platform, you can incorporate the latest best practices in technology, design, conversion, and SEO. With the help of developers, you can customize every aspect of your site, including the shopping cart, to suit your specific needs.

Customer Support

Shopify and BigCommerce both offer dedicated customer service and support, ensuring you have expert help when you need it. Also, there are communities of developers who are always ready to assist and support you.

By choosing Magento, you get a vibrant, community-driven support network with a wealth of experts, certified professionals, and developers who are always ready to assist in every challenge. As an option, you can partner with a Magento agency and get hands-on support for everything from store creation to management.

Wrapping up

With many ecommerce platforms available, Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce stand out as some of the most prominent options.

Choosing between BigCommerce vs Shopify vs Magento depends on your business needs. BigCommerce is known for its comprehensive built-in features, Shopify for its user-friendly interface and app ecosystem, and Magento for its high level of customization and flexibility.

If you still hesitate and don’t know which platform is right for you, the DigitalSuits team is there to help you. Reach out for a consultation and find the perfect fit for your business needs.

Also, take a look at the list of our services in case you already have something in mind:

Magento to Shopify migration: Experience better usability, lower costs, and enhanced performance. We ensure a smooth transition, keeping your website running seamlessly during and after the migration.

BigCommerce to Shopify migration services: Seamlessly transfer your store to the Shopify platform and enjoy enhanced efficiency while preserving your store's unique brand identity.

BigCommerce migration services ensure a seamless transition for your e-store, eliminating loss or delay while enhancing visibility and providing advanced features.

Shopify migration services with DigitalSuits experts will ensure a smooth transition with zero data loss or downtime. Trust us to handle your Shopify migration swiftly, securely, and effortlessly.

Explore our services and discover the right path for your business growth!