In the world of online sales, discussions often arise about choosing the best platform for e-commerce. Recently, the topic of migrating from Magento to Shopify has attracted a lot of attention among online retailers. This raises an important question: when is it sensible to choose Shopify and when Magento?
As a developer with 12 years of experience in the Magento platform, I have worked on more than 200 online store projects, including some of my own. This rich history has given me deep insight into the advantages and disadvantages of different solutions.
As a consultant in this field, I sometimes surprise clients by recommending Shopify, even though Magento is my specialty. I believe that for beginners, the simplest solution that allows quick market entry and business model adaptation is often the best.
What makes Shopify better than Magento online store?
The biggest advantage of Shopify is that it requires less interaction with developers and hosting providers, which can save time and reduce stress. The platform allows for quick store setup without major technical complications. However, Shopify has its limitations – store ownership is limited, adding new functionalities can be challenging, and there are quite a few monthly costs (subscriptions to modules).
The basic platform and setup are certainly cheaper and simpler, which means Shopify is a clear winner in this area. In other aspects, it all depends on the developer who supports the store with additional modules and themes. Even on Shopify, usability and store responsiveness issues can arise (calls to external resources).
I checked some Slovenian providers and their stores and was quite concerned about the results. However, I also came across excellently designed and successfully operating foreign online stores, which confirms that the quality of the final product largely depends on the developers' capabilities.
Can the Shopify platform meet all desires?
To find out, I created a developer account and set up my Shopify store and started customizing the theme. I found that editing the theme is quite simple, but the platform has some limitations, especially when customizing for different markets, processing payments, and connecting with local systems. Given that I developed new pre-made themes for Magento 2 and OpenMage this year, I will approach Shopify similarly. This means you can expect more content and information about this in the future.
Is Magento still a relevant platform?
In recent years, there has been quite a bit of negative opinion about the Magento platform, which I believe is justified. The transition from Magento 1.9 etc. to Magento 2 (Adobe Commerce) was quite painful for many users. Due to numerous issues, I initially even stopped offering migrations to Magento 2 and developing new stores on this platform, as the new version had many shortcomings compared to the previous one. Magento 1.9 etc. was significantly better. However, Magento 1.9 now continues under the name OpenMage as an open-source project.
OpenMage released two new versions last month, including improvements, security patches, and other upgrades. With version 21 and support for PHP 8.3, it is now possible to achieve extremely fast store performance.
Meanwhile, the new version Magento 2.4.7 brought improvements that pleasantly surprised me. The store's performance after the first installation was very good, as they paid a lot of attention to speed and system error correction.
An example of the Magento 2 interface with additional content editing via the PageBuilder functionality:
How do Slovenian stores really perform?
For analyzing the performance of Slovenian stores, I created a website that evaluates store success through three different systems. You can view the results here: https://www.degriz.net/pagescore?site=www.degriz.net. Among the 190 tested stores, 168 had mobile page loading speeds longer than 3 seconds. Some stores that loaded quickly proved unusable due to operational errors (white page), highlighting shortcomings in managing these stores.
Efficiency issues are not specific to a particular platform but are often the result of poor development and poor store design. Slow and poorly functioning stores can appear on different platforms, whether it's Magento, Shopify, WordPress, OpenCart, or others. The quality of the final product largely depends on the developer's skills and experience, not just the choice of platform.
Initially, it is crucial to precisely define the list of functionalities needed and choose the appropriate platform based on that. Once we have the platform, we find a reliable contractor and carefully check their references to ensure their experience and quality of work.
P.S.: To assist clients, I created a quick guide to online stores, which I have just updated and will soon expand further with video presentations: https://mage-lan.com/.
P.P.S.: Here's a link to a Facebook topic where you can read various opinions: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1031063066936846/permalink/7965442970165453/
