Ease of Use | Extremely beginner-friendly, no coding needed | Steep learning curve, requires developers | Shopify (small–mid businesses) |
Pricing (2025) | $39–$2,300+/mo (Shopify Plus) + transaction fees if not using Shopify Payments | Free open-source OR Adobe Commerce Cloud $2,000–$10,000+/mo (based on GMV) | Shopify (predictable), Magento (large enterprises) |
Hosting & Security | Fully hosted, automatic updates, Level-1 PCI, 99.99% uptime | Self-hosted (Open Source) or Adobe-hosted; you manage PCI & patches (unless on Adobe Cloud) | Shopify (hands-off) |
Customization & Flexibility | Great with apps & theme editor; Liquid limits deep changes | Almost unlimited (full PHP access, headless possible) | Magento |
Scalability | Excellent up to ~$100–150M/year; Shopify Plus handles $500M+ | Handles billions (Walmart, Coca-Cola run on it) | Magento (extreme scale) |
Speed & Performance | Very fast out of the box (CDN, optimized) | Needs heavy optimization, caching, and good hosting | Shopify (default), Magento (if tuned) |
App Ecosystem | 8,000+ apps (many paid) | ~4,000 extensions + custom dev possible | Shopify (quantity), Magento (depth) |
Themes & Design | Beautiful, mobile-first themes (free & paid) | Powerful, but themes need dev work | Shopify |
Built-in Features | Checkout, payments, abandoned cart, POS, B2B (Plus) | Needs extensions for many basics (unless Adobe Cloud) | Shopify |
B2B / Wholesale | Shopify Plus has a strong wholesale portal | Native B2B suite in Adobe Commerce (excellent) | Tie (both perfect) |
Headless Commerce | Hydrogen + Oxygen (React-based) – powerful | Excellent headless (PWA Studio, React, Next.js) | Tie |
Multi-store / International | Easy multi-store, multi-currency | Extremely powerful multi-site, multi-language | Magento |
Ownership & Lock-in | You don’t own the code; it's locked to Shopify | Full ownership (Open Source) or Adobe contract | Magento (freedom) |
Development Cost | Lower (often $5k–$50k) | Higher ($50k–$500k+) | Shopify |
Best For | Startups, SMBs, brands $0–$150M/year | Large enterprises, complex catalogs, $100M+ | — |
